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VLC 1.1 Forced To Drop Shoutcast Due To AOL Anti-OSS Provision
The folks over at VideoLAN are in the process of releasing version 1.1.0 of VLC, and one of the major changes is the removal of SHOUTcast, a media-streaming module from AOL-owned Nullsoft. "During the last year, the VLC developers have received several injunctions by e-mail from employees at AOL, asking us to either comply to a license not compatible with free software or remove the SHOUTcast capability in VLC." Within the license is a clause prohibiting the distribution of SHOUTcast with any product whose own license requires that it be "disclosed or distributed in source code form," "licensed for the purpose of making derivative works," or "redistributable at no charge." The license would also force VideoLAN to bundle Nullsoft adware with VLC. Update: 06/22 00:52 GMT by H : The 1.1 release is ready from their site; you can also read up on the release information.
to say fuck you AOL. Seriously quit being a dick.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
You'd think those guys would seize any opportunity to stay relevant. It's one thing to shoot yourself in the foot, another to do it when you're inches from death.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
AOL wants to flex what little muscle it has left and try to have an impact on something? KMA AOL, VLC is going to cast your SHOUTcast aside. No one will miss it, and more importantly, no one will miss AOL when it fades off into the sunset.
Doesn't VLC already come with DeCSS inside to decode DVD video? Isn't DeCSS "illegal software" ? ... so why does that make this module any different? Can't they just ignore the injunction and keep going?
Promise I'm not trolling, just confused, or perhaps not understanding the situation.
Shoutcast is great, not an AOL creation, just acquired.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
Sure. Just type in the AOL Keyword, "AOL".
Wow, I didn't know AOL developed software. I thought they were just a Frisbee manufacturer.
Speaking of which I really miss getting the free sample Frisbees from them every month. Did they go bankrupt or something?
Reverse engineering and design for interoperability is legal in the US. Unless there is an active patent or AOL's code is incorporated into VLC they don't have a leg to stand on and are just engaging in bully tactics. Considering that this is AOL I'm not surprised that they're likely to shift to the SCO business model and squeeze all they can from the fumes of their diminished empire.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"When sold or distributed to End Users, the Integrated Product shall not [...] (c) incorporate any Publically Available Software, in whole or in part, in a manner that may subject SHOUTcast Radio or the SHOUTcast Radio Materials, in whole or in part, to all or part of the license obligations of any Publically Available Software. As used herein, the term "Publicly Available Software" means any software that contains, or is derived in any manner (in whole or in part) from, any software that is distributed as free software, open source software or similar licensing or distribution models; and that requires as a condition of use, modification or distribution that such software or other software incorporated into, derived from or distributed with such software: (1) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (2) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (3) be redistributable at no charge." (Emphasis mine)
This is a standard provision that is part of any license agreement for commercial software, and all it says is that you can't distribute the software in a way that makes it subject to the GFDL or some other Free license.
I'm not sure what the real reason is, but the OSS provision isn't it.
Seriously, is anyone using this? With the horrible memories I have of AOL I would not use anything they made and I would think most people feel similarly.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
DISCLAIMER: If you are an employee of AOL you are not authorized to read the following comment.
How does XBMC get away with SHOUTcast support then? Or should I be asking this question?
really whips the llama's ass
SHOUTcast is just a bad copy of icecast. Keep using icecast for your audio and video streaming and do not accept lesser, closed source imitations.
I do hope that the specific VLC developers involved with the shoutcast fiasco get the drubbing they deserve, if for no other reason than as an example for others and as payment for the trouble they've caused the rest of the project. It's 2010, closed source does not belong on the net and FOSS developers have no business undercutting FOSS projects.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
As an iPhone developer, I can tell you the majority of streaming radio apps on mobile phones are listening to Shoutcast servers. That's where most of the money lies for AOL/Nullsoft in Shoutcast. The protocol is very simple and similar to HTTP so the iPhone OS supports it (sort of) out of the box, and some of the more advanced features (like in-stream song names) can be taken advantage of by manipulating the HTTP headers.
Shoutcast predates icecast. And, in any case, this appears to have been a Shoutcast directory client, not a media server.
-mkb
You didn't get 'several email injunctions from AOL employees'. A judge puts an injunction into place. AOL asked you to stop. It may have lead to an injunction at some point had you told them to piss off, but you complied, and thats where it ended.
The 'license issue' you quoted also basically says 'if your software license imposes restrictions that are anti-closed source software, then we don't want to play with you.' This is pretty much identical to the point of GPL but in the other direction. Same stupid constraint, you're just pointing it out like you license is different than there. Same rule, just used by the other side. Get used to it, they are just doing to you what you want to do to them, you have nothing to bitch about here.
The toolbar bundling issue is just another retarded constraint, but GPL (in my opinion) is full of retarded constraints that make it less than open by my definition. I wouldn't do it either if it were me, but thats what happens when you want to use someone elses stuff, you have to play nice with them.
Yes, I'm going to be marked as a troll, but really this is just as much a GPL being anti-closed source as it is AOL being anti-open source. Both sides are doing the same retarded thing, using a license the other one doesn't like and then blaming it on the other person.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Make it a separately installed "plug-in". What's the problem? Do the same with any other module of questionable legality.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I remember something about junk mail in the form of floppy's and CD's but its all so blurry. AOL used to sell something didn't they? well it escapes me. At least they found a way to make themselves even less relevant. I almost thought it couldn't be done
I wonder; the EU might make email address portability mandatory if we start shouting loud enough about this. Would you like that AOL? Do you really want to annoy us?
Is this really feasible?
Software and stuff uses the host part of the address to know where to send it, would there have to be a kind of secondary DNS system for email addresses or would it just be made mandatory that all existing servers are modified to do a kind of transparent forwarding.
Also if some server shut down then that would cause a lot of problems
I've operated a media distribution system (mostly video ppv) for about a decade. About 7 years ago, I ended up blocking the AOL browser completely. It was a worthless piece of shit that caused 50% of our customer service issues. Coupled with their idiotic "no refresh for 30 days" DNS servers (which means any time you moved a website to a new IP, it "vanished" for a month for all AOLosers) and their proxy servers that made tracking large-scale credit card fraud extremely difficult, it literally cost us money to even have AOLosers in the customer base. I was in the process of compiling a list of AOL IP ranges and had plans to block them completely when they finally rolled over and died in the dial-up market. Almost overnight, they became 99% irrelevant and my life got so much easier, I was able to start taking regular vacations.
In summation, GO TO HELL, AOL! You're nothing but a festering boil on the ass of the internet and your rotting corpse needs to be dumped into an active volcano.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
You don't even have to look the the future: I am the author of an alternative browser for the iPhone that formats pages for easy reading on the small screen.
I was recently contacted by a website owner informing me that my browser would be blocked from accessing their website because it does not display web pages in exactly the way they had intended.
What is the point in using a format (HTML) that is designed to be interpreted in many different ways, depending on who is reading it, if you need exact control over your content? There are better tools for that job.
Having AOL say "you can't bundle our stuff" is right up there with Real Media saying the same thing. Who the f* cares? I mean really. Good bye, good riddance.
Amarok dropped Shoutcast support in version 2.2 (October 2009) because of this.
Seriously AOL, are you that determined to drive every last customer away?
Oh no. Now look what you've done. You have me thinking that maybe I should install FreeBSD when I get this other Opteron assembled with all the rest of the stuff laying around. You proselytizer!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Hi all. We were disappointed to see VLC's announcement today that they were removing access to the SHOUTcast service in VLC. While the SHOUTcast service is proprietary, SHOUTcast has always supported open source development since its birth in 1999 and we will continue to do so in the future. The SHOUTcast API terms of service allow the SHOUTcast API to be incorporated into open source software applications via SHOUTcast API partner program so long as the terms of such open source software do not subject SHOUTcast Radio or the SHOUTcast service to the open source terms. VLC's comment that the SHOUTcast Toolbar is spyware is not accurate. The SHOUTcast Toolbar is not spyware. The SHOUTcast toolbar may only be downloaded by a user upon their prior consent. We will be reaching out directly to VLC to clear up any confusion that exists about this situation.
Yes, the article and the C&D letters appear to be about the directory service provided by Shoutcast, called Shoutcast Radio. This is separate from Shoutcast, the protocol. The quoted sections posted over at the VLC web site specifically say "Shoutcast Radio" so it's reasonable to think they're talking about the directory service, not the streaming protocol. The protocol itself for streaming the audio is open, and AOL even tried to promote it under the name "Ultravox" and it never seemed to get anywhere. But all I see that the VLC site is talking about is Shoutcast Radio, the directory service.
It's also important to know that the protocol behind Shoutcast serves way more than half a million people. Most iPhone Apps that receive streaming audio are receiving them via the Shoutcast streaming protocol even if they're not using the Shoutcast Radio directory. In many cases the ICEcast open-source implementation of Shoutcast is what's being used. Let's see, CBS Radio (AOL and Yahoo Radio), AMFM's iheartradio, and so many others are using something very much like the Shoutcast protocol, once and no longer known as "Ultravox," for serving iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad clients. I don't know about Android but I would suspect they're using ICEcast since it's the one supported by the Ogg Vorbis crowd, too.
Shoutcast/ICEcast ICY protocol is in so many more places than people know. It might not be purely AOL's Shoutcast by Nullsoft, but it's someting mighty close to it, serving tens of millions of people.
We don't need the Shoutcast Radio directory. That's the technology in question from what I'm reading at VLC's web site.
Kriston
But that's a completely absurd thing to expect.
It would mean that once you have a customer, you're now obligated basically forever to handle all the traffic that comes to their address -- and after a certain number of customers, that can become quite a bit -- for free. Suddenly its not just your paid customers who are eating up your bandwidth, but *past* customers too?
Now sure, AOL has plenty of bandwidth. But still, that's not the point. The design of the email system isn't like phone numbers-- there's not a centralized and organized series of exchanges which route where numbers need to go and arrange for them to arrive at their proper destination... there's just "aol.com". AOL /has/ to receive and process that mail. And now you think they should forward that off forever?
Sure, it'd be *nice* of them, as a service.
Obligating someone to serve a former-customer forever is sort of silly though, even if they are dicks to said former-customer. The remedy to being the customer of a dick, is to stop being their customer.
If the potential cost of someone not finding you at your new email address is worth more then dealing with a dick-- you're free to make that choice.