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Skype Gives Up Anti-GPL Appeal
l2718 writes "Yesterday we discussed Skype's appeal of a German court's ruling against them regarding a violation of the GPL. Harald Welte (the plaintiff) now reports in his blog that following oral argument, Skype decided to drop the appeal and accept the lower court ruling in Weite's favor. More details and analysis at Groklaw. Congratulations to Mr. Welte and GPL-violations.org!"
Does this allow reverse-engineering of the skype protocol?
What GPL'd software did Skype use and how was it discovered that Skype was using it?
It doesn't have to be accompanied by the Source Code, but it does have to be accompanied by the text of the GPL -- which explicitly states that you are entitled to the Source Code and if you didn't find it included with the software, then you need only ask for it.
..... things could get quite interesting in the USA where guns are legal .....
The GPL is usually the only thing giving you permission to make copies of someone else's copyrighted work (unless your use constitutes Fair Dealing or you have separately-negotiated permission from the copyright holder or their authorised agent); therefore, anybody copying software covered by the GPL whilst failing to abide by the conditions it imposes is probably violating copyright.
Unfortunately, the GPL fails explicitly to mention the use of Reasonable Force in pursuit of your entitlements. Maybe in v4
(As an aside, I note that this could be eliminated entirely by a requirement for every piece of software, whether it be sold or given away gratis and whether or not it be intended for redistribution, to be accompanied by its Source Code. Permission to copy could then be placed *in* the Source Code. I'll be writing to my Elected Representative about this, soon after I have received his response to the last letter I sent him and allowed a customary grace period to elapse.)
Let's hope other cases end with a similar outcome. Anyone up for tackling Visual Hub (OS X)?
I believe that the same violation of the GPL is occurring with the software Visual Hub for the Mac. While the core program is a separate GUI frontend and it's source need not be provided, the work of this popular video conversion utility is done by ffmpeg with the related codecs and multiplexers. The single modified ffmpeg binary is downloaded separately from the same servers as Visual Hub. When Visual Hub downloads the binary it presents a dialog saying it is separate due to licensing issues in SOME COUNTRIES. While there may be issues of using reverse-engineered codecs in some places, the GPL, which is not mentioned in the dialog, has no such boundaries. As I understand it the ffmpeg code is from the same group of developers as Mplayer and VLC. While there is an lengthy list of projects on the Mplayer site showing projects that use ffmpeg, Visual Hub is not Among them. As far as I could see, the Visual Hub author is also not shown as a code contributor.
While I find Visual Hub worth the price, I think it is wrong that the developer is not providing a direct link for a single archive of the source and make files for each version of the ffmpeg Mac binary that he's distributed.
This apparent violation of the GPL makes it far more difficult for others to examine and contribute code/fixes for improvements, and also makes it much harder to build other utilities, perhaps some where the entire utility including another gui frontend, is open source. The licensing must be complied with for all components of the binary (GPL/LGPL).
The modified ffmpeg binary being distributed appears to have has some command-line features stripped out, like the portions providing help and copyright information.
I think that when the Visual Hub utility presents a dialog to download the binary, there should be specific mention of the GPL and an option/button to get the ready to build source (codecs and all, exactly as used to make the Mac binary). The support site and documentation should also provide info on getting it too.
Occasional mention of such things on the support forums brings a shill poster talking about such things as the great bandwidth burden of providing source. That's utter nonsense as relatively few of the users of the utility would need/want the source. But under the GPL it should be available to them. It's not like everyone would be rushing out with free copies of the complete Visual Hub, the GUI interface is separate. It would be great if that were open source too, it does have a lot of room for polishing use of the more advanced features.
If I'm mistaken about any of this, I'd welcome correction.
What steps should one follow to insure that the Visual Hub developer complies with the GPL?
"To all those who don't like the license: you don't have to use it. Just write your own code. But if you want to use GPL code, the license comes with it. It's a package deal. Thanks."
(which has been oft-said on /.)
And those who don't like restrictive copyright on music: you don't have to listen to it. Just write your own songs. But if you want to listen to copyrighted music, the restrictions come with it. It's a package deal.
(Not-so-oft-said on /. )
"And there be unix which have made themselves unix for the kingdom of heaven's sake." - Matt. 19:12