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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!"
What GPL'd software did Skype use and how was it discovered that Skype was using it?
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