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GPL Kerfuffle Takes Xbian For Raspberry Pi Offline

Posted by timothy on from the oh-you-mean-that-was-a-license dept.

tetrahedrassface writes "Rasbmc developer Sam Nazarko is reporting that Xbian had violated the GPL and stolen his installer code without providing attribution and not releasing their source. His breakdown of events is interesting, and currently the Xbian project has been taken offline with several tweets saying Xbian development is terminated."

5 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Re:GPL Kerfuffle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, it's of Gaelic/Scots origin and means "disturbance in the force"
    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kerfuffle

  2. Re:Dumb Link Award by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, to play devil's advocate here...

    If the just came out and said "the xbian project is cancelled", and DIDN'T post the link for verification (yup! Its dead!), then there would be people denouncing the statement as FUD, and shouting [CITATION NEEDED].

    Rather than take it as "Hey, Check out this TOTALLY AWESOME project that is so totally cancelled on their inactive website! Its a complete waste of time!" I would take it as the req. for the [citation needed] crowd.

    *shrug*

  3. NOT a GPL violation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The disputed code is not licensed under the GPL. The actual License can be found here:

    http://svn.stmlabs.com/svn/raspbmc/LICENSE

  4. Probably is a GPL violation by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
    The license text referred to indicates a poor understanding of licenses and law. It's what we generally refer to as a "crayon" license. The term "crayon" is referring to a Monty Python sketch about a dog license with the word "dog" crossed out and "cat" written in in crayon.

    The bottom line is that the stuff you wrote is probably derivative of other code, which you say is "exempt" from your license, but that's not enough, you must use a GPL-compatible license. And I don't see from that license text that you would understand what was derivative and what was not.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  5. Re:Permission not needed by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative

    Attribution actually isn't a hard requirement of the GPL, it's just polite.

    People who are saying this just don't know what attribution is. It is absolutely always required. When you say "Copyright (C) name of legal entity, that is attribution. If you don't have some statement of that kind, you are always, absolutely, without exception, violating the GPL.

    --
    Bruce Perens.