GPL Kerfuffle Takes Xbian For Raspberry Pi Offline

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."

Comments

Re:While I'm very against GPL violations

[FrangoAssado]

My guess is that they didn't want to release the code because, perhaps, they didn't have any, or perhaps because it was all chewing gum and bailing wire and they didn't even have it under source control.

If that had been the case, he could simply have tar'ed his whole tree and put it up in the same place he was distributing the installer. The GPL defines "source code" as:

The “source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.

I don't think anyone can argue that the exact tree that was used to develop the code is not the "preferred" form to make modifications to it -- it is the form he used to make his modifications.

Re:GPL Kerfuffle

[Attila Dimedici]

Just because you needed to google the term does not mean that the poster did.

Re:Dumb Link Award

[hairyfeet]

Well far be it from me to point out /. editors don't actually edit or anything, but would it have really killed either them or the dude that posted it to tell us WTF XBian was? Or why we should care?

I mean not everyone is in the pi builder community, so a couple of words telling what it was, or what its difference between it and the other one was, which again don't know WTF it is except it has something to do with the Pi, would have been nice.