The unending story of cdrtools
But these problems are never solved, it seems. In June, Jörg Schilling, the author of cdrtools, wandered into the fedora-legal list with a request for Fedora to resume shipping the "original, legal" cdrtools software. After a discussion of the type that typically follows Jörg around, Tom "spot" Callaway stepped in with a definitive response (short version: "no") which pretty much brought the discussion to an end.
Life got quiet again until early July, when Luis Medinas suggested that openSUSE might want to switch back to cdrtools. That was Jörg's cue to make one of his predictable appearances, inspiring an even longer and stronger version of the kind of discussion that tends to follow him around. This time Jörg made a direct lawsuit threat against SUSE, but showed his forgiving side too:
One might well wonder about the reversal of roles here; now it's Jörg who is complaining about the legality of cdrkit. His complaints have been posted to the web. They include the fact that the "wodim" CD recorder packaged in cdrkit is installed as "cdrecord" (a GPL violation, he says), the lack of detailed change information within the source files, the failure to print a copyright notice "as intended by the original author," an (unspecified) failure to distribute "complete" source, and a couple of alleged violations of German copyright law (which, it seems, forbids any change which Jörg disapproves of). All told, it is a long series of complaints resulting from a simple fork of a GPL-licensed program.
Most observers do not take these claims seriously. The complaint about the cdrecord binary is (somehow) based on the preamble of the GPL - which is not part of the binding terms. Section 2a of the GPL does require dated notifications of changes, but it's a rare project which carries those notifications within the source files themselves, as Jörg is demanding. The complaint about copyright notices is interesting. Cdrecord has traditionally been a verbose utility, and that verbosity has extended to Jörg's thoughts about Linux distributors and kernel developers. For example, version 2.01.01a01 (from 2004) would print things like:
Warning: Running on Linux-2.6
There are unsettled issues with Linux-2.5 and newer.
If you have unexpected problems, please try Linux-2.4 or Solaris.
SuSE Linux is known to ship bastardized and defective versions of cdrecord.
SuSE is unwilling to cooperate with the authors.
If you like to have a working version of cdrtools, get the
original source from ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/
(The current version, 2.01.01a63, has lost some of that language). The removal of some of that verbosity is what he is complaining about. But GPL section 2c only requires the printing of "an appropriate copyright notice" (not any specific notice), and it only applies to programs which read commands interactively, which wodim does not do. So this claim, like the others, has failed to create widespread worry.
In short, many in the community seem to see Jörg as a sort of comic figure, but that should not be allowed to obscure an important fact: there are some points worth noting behind his complaints. These include:
- Jörg alleges that openSUSE is
shipping two related, legally problematic packages: vcdimager
and libcdio.
Both packages are GPL-licensed and hosted with the GNU project, but
other distributions have recognized problems with them;
Debian has shipped a
patched version since 2004, and Fedora users must get it from an
external repository. Fedora also does not ship libcdio, which is
alleged to have suffered a license change which is not acceptable to
the original author of the code.
- Cdrkit is nearly unmaintained. The mailing list for changes is a quiet and lonely place. Jörg states that hundreds of unfixed bugs have been introduced into cdrkit. The reality, as shown by distribution bug trackers, is a bit less spectacular, but it is true that some bugs exist which might not be present in cdrecord - which is actively maintained by Jörg.
The first issue needs to be taken seriously; it is never a good idea to distribute code with problematic or disputed licensing. The fix here is relatively straightforward: stop distributing that code if the license cannot be verified, and, possibly, reimplement it (as Sun is said to have done with libcdio).
The second may be harder. The freedom to fork a package out from under an
uncooperative maintainer is one of the fundamental features of free
software. But forking is expensive; it only works if somebody else does
the work which has been pulled away from that maintainer. An unmaintained
fork is just more dead code. If cdrkit reaches a point where it fails to
work for users, distributors will be left with an unpalatable choice:
continue to ship unmaintained code, or go back to the original, with its
difficult maintainer and incompatible licensing. It would be much nicer to
find somebody willing to put some time into this important tool. CD recording is a detailed
and tricky task, but we have plenty of people in our community with the
necessary skills to work in that area.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 3:46 UTC (Thu)
by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047)
[Link] (9 responses)
More than anything, though, I see him as a massive waste of time. Not worth talking to, not worth listening to, not worth engaging in any fashion.
* If information is positive, and misinformation is negative, then it is indeed possible to have less than zero knowledge. Which is where we find Mr. Schilling's legal understanding.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 5:04 UTC (Thu)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (4 responses)
On the other hand, it is now many months since I wanted to burn a CD, and with USB media becoming more and more common for both data and music distribution, I suspect the importance of cdrtools is going to decrease. For a long time a huge limitation of linux (and other open-source operating systems) was the inability to use a CD-RW as a floppy, using the UDF filesystem in read-write mode. But nobody seems to do that anymore. Memory sticks are more compact, faster and have larger capacity. So all of this may become irrelevant soon...
Posted Aug 13, 2009 5:58 UTC (Thu)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link]
Posted Aug 13, 2009 7:33 UTC (Thu)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (1 responses)
I also rarely burn a CD, but I frequently burn DVD:s, usually with wodim
from cdrkit. It works perfectly, so I'm not sure having the development
of the cdrkit fork stalled is any big deal: it is a solved problem
as far as CDs and DVDs go.
New media like Blu-Ray might of course need changes, I don't know
what is the state of Blu-Ray burning on Linux, as I have no such
hardware yet (but might well have in a year or two when the cost becomes
reasonable).
Posted Aug 13, 2009 8:48 UTC (Thu)
by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
[Link]
Furthermore, booting from a CD works just about anywhere and is pretty easy to explain. Booting from a USB media works quite differently in every BIOS.
Oh, and I use wodim and never had a problem.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 8:02 UTC (Thu)
by alex (subscriber, #1355)
[Link]
Having said all that and as others have pointed out I can't actually recall the last time I needed to burn a CD. I certainly have two very dusty spindles of CDs and DVDs in my office.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 8:18 UTC (Thu)
by lysse (guest, #3190)
[Link] (3 responses)
> More than anything, though, I see him as a massive waste of time. Not worth talking to, not worth listening to, not worth engaging in any fashion.
That necessarily has to include "not using any of his stuff", though. Which is great, if working alternatives exist...
Posted Aug 20, 2009 16:04 UTC (Thu)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (2 responses)
I agree with flewellyn: the man's quite a pitiable figure, really.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 21:50 UTC (Thu)
by lysse (guest, #3190)
[Link] (1 responses)
I was going off in a "in that case, isn't he rejecting the very value system by which you're judging him?" direction, but it suddenly occurred to me that I don't actually agree with you here. Not that I think he wants to work with other people, necessarily, but he certainly wants to be *acclaimed* by other people. Otherwise he wouldn't have released cdrtools in the first place, and he wouldn't work so desperately hard at self-justification. Being right is vitally important to him, it appears - unfortunately, so much so that he apparently can't admit to being wrong... or maybe it's more that he can, but his persuasion threshold is just a loooong way above most people's? After all, most of us will only admit that we're wrong once we've persuaded ourselves of it - even if someone else has sat down and walked us through our mistake, we won't admit to being wrong until we see the mistake ourselves. That's a good thing. It becomes somewhat less good when we can out-argue the person trying to show us our mistake, at least to the point where persuading ourselves that we don't have to listen to that person is easier than persuading ourselves that we've actually screwed up. Indeed, it's probably harder for an amazingly bright person to avoid that particular beartrap.
Er, am I making sense...?
Posted Aug 21, 2009 7:10 UTC (Fri)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
The poor sod.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 8:28 UTC (Thu)
by hadess (subscriber, #24252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 20, 2009 14:20 UTC (Thu)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
Posted Aug 27, 2009 12:38 UTC (Thu)
by asdlfiui788b (guest, #58839)
[Link]
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509508#c3
was appreciated by others.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377100#c7
as well as the comment before are both comments made by
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377100#c10
is an attack against the author who was helpful.
So it seems that a person with admin privileges for the
We all know that there are always people who don't like
Posted Aug 13, 2009 8:56 UTC (Thu)
by rwmj (subscriber, #5474)
[Link] (11 responses)
He's unforunately right about "violations of German copyright law (which, it seems, forbids any change which Jörg disapproves of)". This is because many European countries provide what are known as "Moral rights". You can read that Wikipedia page for all the details, but I know it's a particular problem for free software in France (if you distribute it there and any of the authors come from France).
Moral rights include the right of the author to control the "integrity of the work". They are also not transferable. The author continues to control the moral rights even if they were done as work-for-hire or the copyright was transferred/sold to another party.
Yet another sillyness about copyright law ...
Rich.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:03 UTC (Thu)
by liw (subscriber, #6379)
[Link] (10 responses)
So I don't buy that argument.
I admit I haven't studied German law. If that really supports the claim, then the GPL is effectively dead in Germany.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:24 UTC (Thu)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (6 responses)
As far as I know, under Hungarian law the author is actually not allowed to give up/sell/transfer/etc. his moral rights. I guess its similar in German law. I don't know how this relates to the GPL, though.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 10:06 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (4 responses)
But, that doesn't mean that Jorg is right or that moral rights are a problem for free software. Moral rights are interpreted by a judge, and no judge has yet ruled that a software developer has moral rights about the technical direction of a project.
Further, if moral rights are a problem for free software, they they're also just as much a problem for proprietary software. Example: I work for CompanyX, I write some software, I leave, the subsequent maintainer makes changes, I wail about my masterpiece having been ruined and I take CompanyX to court over violation of my moral rights. That's never happened, so there's nothing to substantiate worries about moral rights in software.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 13:57 UTC (Thu)
by mjthayer (guest, #39183)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Aug 13, 2009 18:57 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 13, 2009 21:59 UTC (Thu)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link]
I think that this was in some interminable debian-legal discussion where someone claimed that the above requirement curtails freedom somehow.
Posted Aug 14, 2009 16:47 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link]
What kind of bullying do you think the law contemplates? Kidnapping the author's child? Offering the author so much money he can't refuse? Blacklisting the author with other publishers so he can't work?
Or maybe the point is just to protect an author from his own ignorance or foolishness.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 10:19 UTC (Thu)
by mp (subscriber, #5615)
[Link]
No idea if such limitations are present in the law of other countries, but I would think this cannot be only a local idea.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:59 UTC (Thu)
by rwmj (subscriber, #5474)
[Link] (2 responses)
[However note IANAL, and IANA European (C) Lawyer either]
Posted Aug 13, 2009 19:37 UTC (Thu)
by johill (subscriber, #25196)
[Link]
Posted Aug 13, 2009 21:17 UTC (Thu)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
(yes, this is a guess as to which project you're talking about, but I bet
Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:54 UTC (Thu)
by jengelh (guest, #33263)
[Link] (8 responses)
Well the point of is that the source files carry notice of who screwed around last with the source it is, IMO, a logical step in ensuring that the original author does not get the blame for bugs.
>The removal of some of that verbosity is what he is complaining about[...] But GPL section 2c only requires the printing of "an appropriate copyright notice" [...]
Since 2.01.01a62 does not have the Linux is completely fucked wording anymore (thank you), it cannot be what he is complaining about. On the other hand, I verified that wodim-1.1.7.1 does not print the copyright messages anymore (`cdrecord/wodim -atip`), and the GPL section *1* requires keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty, and GPL section 2c does not change that factIMO.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 19:10 UTC (Thu)
by coriordan (guest, #7544)
[Link] (1 responses)
keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty Note that there's no requirement (in GPLv2-section 1, where that quote comes from) to preserve the functionality of displaying these notices. Commenting out that code would certainly be fine, as would leaving that code there but deleting the code that displays those notices (except in the circumstances mentioned later in the licence, but for now we're just talking about section 1).
So the only thing left to look into is whether the cdkit maintainer completely deleted those notices (rather than commenting them or deleting the display code), and whether *that* is a licence violation. Easily repairable, and the maintainer probably wouldn't object to re-adding those lines (commented out) to comply with the licence.
Posted Aug 14, 2009 16:56 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link]
I don't think the code in question is a notice, though, whether it's commented out or not. The code is just a mechanism that generates a notice when it is run.
Copyright notices are text aimed at a human reader who might be considering copying the code, such as what is probably at the top of Jorg's source files. As long as cdrkit leaves those intact, I don't see any failure to meet conditions of GPL.
Posted Aug 17, 2009 20:26 UTC (Mon)
by oak (guest, #2786)
[Link] (2 responses)
Does it necessarily need to be in the source code? Isn't a public version
Posted Aug 18, 2009 9:30 UTC (Tue)
by jengelh (guest, #33263)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2009 0:28 UTC (Wed)
by salimma (subscriber, #34460)
[Link]
Posted Aug 18, 2009 13:49 UTC (Tue)
by schily (guest, #60311)
[Link] (2 responses)
There never was any such message.... Cdrtools treats all 30
If a platform makes incompatible interface changes that
For the last major interface incompatibility that was introduced
BTW: I cannot comment the article itself as this is hidden from the public :-(
Posted Aug 18, 2009 17:04 UTC (Tue)
by jengelh (guest, #33263)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 19, 2009 14:40 UTC (Wed)
by schily (guest, #60311)
[Link]
I updated all mailing list related entries on the cdrtools web page at:
http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/cdrecord.html
hope this helps.
Posted Aug 13, 2009 23:48 UTC (Thu)
by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 18, 2009 16:14 UTC (Tue)
by schily (guest, #60311)
[Link]
Thank you for the pointer to video of the talk.
After watching it, it seems that I did everything correctly
Posted Aug 15, 2009 0:32 UTC (Sat)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link] (3 responses)
I have posted about this in more details, with links to the legal opinions here, in my journal here : http://slashdot.org/~cecom/journal
I don't know if it is true - IANAL. It has never been done. I also know that the FSF claims that the GPL is non-revocable. However what I have read on the subject is at least some food for thought.
Posted Aug 15, 2009 6:30 UTC (Sat)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link] (2 responses)
There's something you have to realize about lawyers. Every time there's a trial, the lawyers on both sides will argue their sides. Not the right side, both sides. That's what they are trained to do. This fellow is arguing a very very long-shot side for the sake of some unnamed client or just because he doesn't like the GPL (which is true for many lawyers). When you see a judge allow someone to withdraw the GPL, you can take him seriously. Until then, no.
Posted Aug 15, 2009 20:34 UTC (Sat)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link] (1 responses)
-----
[...] The most plausible assumption is that a developer who releases code under the GPL may terminate GPL rights, probably at will.
[...] My point is not that termination is a great risk, it is that it is not recognized as a risk even though it is probably relevant to commercial end-users, accustomed to having contractual rights they can enforce themselves.
The Free Software Foundations GPL FAQ disagrees with the conclusion I reach here. The FAQ asks rhetorically can a developer of a program who distributed it under the GPL later license it to another party for exclusive use and answers No, because the public already has the right to use the program under the GPL, and this right cannot be withdrawn. 89 Similarly, Lawrence Rosen, general counsel to the Open Source Initiative, has stated (in an FAQ on the SCO/IBM case) that Linux is available free, forever. Neither statement addresses the issue I raise here; I am not aware of the legal basis for either statement. I read them as understandable efforts to keep community members from over-reacting to low-probability risks. That may be sensible real-world pragmatism, a question I leave to the entrepreneurs. As a strictly legal matter, however, these comforting statements are too strong.[...]
What would happen if an author terminated GPL rights? If a single rights-holder held all the rights in the program, then termination would stop future F/OSS development of that program; users would no longer have the right to distribute modified versions of the code, or even unmodified copies of the versions they had."
--end quote--
This guy is a professor in US law, and it is not immediately clear that he "hates" the GPL or has a reason to spread FUD.
Also in this link http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/03/35258?cur... Eben Moglen himself all but confirms the same thing:
-----
So, I don't think it is very clear cut. There is at least a somewhat plausible interpretation that the GPL is revocable.
Posted Aug 16, 2009 3:21 UTC (Sun)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
[Link]
I'd like to see this tried. A person gets a license that claims to be irrevocable and has a reasonable expectation that it is. An assign of the copyright holder then claims that the license the copyright holder conveyed doesn't apply due to the assign's arbitrary decision.
Good luck with that :-)
Posted Aug 18, 2009 14:50 UTC (Tue)
by schily (guest, #60311)
[Link] (5 responses)
This was a very unfortunate article as it did only give attention
The original software however did introduce dozens of bugfixes and
The problem started with a non-cooperative downstream packaging
As a _reaction_ to his slander, I changed the license from GPL to
I am working on OpenSource software since more than 25 years and I
Please do not use the words "the community" when talking about the
Please also note: I did check very carefully the results of a license
The fork however introduced changes that are in conflict with the
But anyway, this fork id dead since a long time and neither
> But these problems are never solved, it seems. In June, Jörg Schilling, the author of cdrtools, wandered into the fedora-legal list with a request for Fedora to resume shipping the "original, legal" cdrtools software. After a discussion of the type that typically follows Jörg around, Tom "spot" Callaway stepped in with a definitive response (short version: "no") which pretty much brought the discussion to an end.
I contacted Mr. Callaway first in a private mail in March and
As you see, the problem in case of cdrtools is Linux distributors
The problem is also people who believe that the GPL gives them
As explained above, the problem was initiated by a non-cooperative
I support OSS and I will continue to do _anything_ possible in order
Posted Aug 20, 2009 8:41 UTC (Thu)
by ledow (guest, #11753)
[Link] (4 responses)
I was going to quote the relevant bits that you've posted on this thread and show you what I mean about the "only ever talking negatively about criticism levelled at you" but it actually made this comment too big. My point is: Not once have I seen you say... "I understand people's concerns, but..." or "I think X may have a valid point" or "Okay, let's try to meet in the middle" or something similar. It always seems to be *their* fault for not understanding you. With one or two people involved, I could see that, but I've only ever read negative comments from yourself.
From my point of view as a user... I want someone writing the software that actually understands people's opinions/concerns and tries to work with them. Otherwise it is, effectively, unmaintained. You can add all the fancy features you want, but if I think that tomorrow the downloads might disappear because you have *another* dispute with someone, I can't rely on that software - or that you might switch off feature X, or provide horribly unnecessary large warnings in the utitity's output, etc.
You are producing a piece of software and giving it away for free. The reason you do this, I assume, is to benefit your users (or else, why would you do it?). For that, we are grateful, but the benefit seems to stop heavily at that point - you make something useful and then stop it being distributed, create legal concerns where there are none (your understanding of *international* copyright law appears flawed) and stop additions that actually make it better for the user. Individual patches, sure, you can reject, but the ideas *behind* the patch are often greatly needed (the whole /dev/devicename debacle from years back, for example... did we ever resolve that one because it's at that point that I lost interest in cdrtools).
Personally, the whole "personality" of cdrtools makes me avoid it now and I don't want to have to do that. I rarely have to interact with the software on the command-line anyway but out of principle, I remove it from the distribution of my choice and use alternatives. Not because it eases my use of the computer (the exact opposite) but because I disagree with propogating the personality that appears indefinitely attached to cdrtools.
You have a great tool. You can obviously code really well. But the fact that you can't see *anyone* else's point of view, including distributions, users, lawyers, etc. mean that you've shut the code off into its own little political area of unmaintained code (you still patch for it, but nobody cares because people don't want to use your licensing / patches, etc.). I'm just a user, looking for a great Open Source utility to bung some data on a CD occasionally, not some marvellously complicated commercial project. I want a nice command-line interface to do so, I don't want to have to think or deal with legal issues (that's why I prefer GPL licensing - it takes care of that side for me), I don't want my distribution to have to patch and fight with the maintainer, and I want a maintainer that will fix bugs and add features that I (and many others) need.
I don't remove *any* other software from my setup... only cdrtools. That speaks volumes to me. Maybe it should start speaking volumes to you. When an OS project forks, it means that the people who use the fork have different needs... needs that aren't being met by the original software. I hope that in continuing to write Open Source software you recognise the #1 driver behind the entire movement - let the user do want they need to do.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 16:22 UTC (Thu)
by foom (subscriber, #14868)
[Link]
I really don't care about the rest of this mess (although it makes amusing reading sometimes), but
it was really irritating that cdrtools' cdrecord bitched at me (or worse, didn't work) if I used the
device's normal name (e.g. /dev/cdrom), and instead wanted me to use a cdrecord-specific name
("0,0,0" or something).
I'm just glad that misfeature was fixed in the fork, and I hope that if people ever switch back to
cdrtools from cdrkit, they make sure that that irritation gets patched out again if it's still present.
Posted Aug 20, 2009 23:06 UTC (Thu)
by wolfrider (guest, #3105)
[Link] (1 responses)
--I've only corresponded with him once over email, but he got back to me pretty promptly and answered my question. I gotta respect the guy for what he's done for the community by providing cdrecord, and hope this all gets resolved for him some day.
--Thanks for cdrecord, star, etc Joerg :-)
Posted Aug 30, 2009 21:26 UTC (Sun)
by schily (guest, #60311)
[Link]
There is still not a single OSS CD writing software for Linux
If you like to fork OSS software, you need to have the right
I do not let my projects become orphaned. I give continuous support
The interesting question is: "Why do major Linux distributors
It would be interesting to see a related cover story on lwn soon..
Posted Aug 25, 2009 11:11 UTC (Tue)
by asdlfiui788b (guest, #58839)
[Link]
And given your mentioning of open-source software you probably want it free. And be able to give orders what to do and not to do to the creator?
Well if that does not sound like your average commercially maintained software. Maybe you should try their offers and be relieved of the stress opensource software imposes on you.
Let us take Microsoft:
Or you could take a different cd-burning utility out of the multitude of offers. Hm. Wait, all the others are less good? What a pity!
And what makes you so sure Mr. Schilling does not have access to qualified lawyers to counsel him on this matter? Maybe he could be right with his opinion on the GPL after all?
Cheers...
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
suspect the importance of cdrtools is going to decrease.
It does DVD:s also
It does DVD:s also
There are a lot of kinks in CD recording
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
other people. That would involve compromise, occasionally changing your
mind, and understanding that other people can sometimes improve on your
ideas or even have ideas of their own, three things that Joerg appears
entirely incapable of understanding.
Whenever I start to feel pathetic, I just need to look at Joerg, and I
feel better. Social deficits are one thing: the lack of desire to fix
those deficits is something else.
The unending story of cdrtools
other people.
The unending story of cdrtools
right' is without a doubt the primary reason cdrtools got released at all.
Everything points that way: the tetchy explosions when someone releases or
even *uses* a competing product, the kibozing for the names of competitors
and the product itself, the prominence given to Joerg's name in the
always-displayed part of everything he's ever written... Joerg wants
respect, which is perfectly understandable: unfortunately he goes about
getting it in a way that can only destroy it.
The unending story of cdrtools
obsolete. Thinks like this:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509508#c3
Or this:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377100#c7
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
a software author for software Gnome is based on. Both
comments explain the reasons for a bug and give specific
help on how to prevent the bug.
Gnome project banned a person who was just helpful.
being helped. Is the action from Olav Vitters something
the Gnome project should be proud of? I am not convinced...
Moral rights
Moral rights
if an author releases the work under the GPL, they explicitly give permission to do almost any kind of change to the work, including changes the original author disapproves of.
Moral rights
Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT
Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT
If anyone has a link, that would be very interesting.
Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT
I vaguely recall seeing the argument made that the (sometimes ignored) GPL requirement
Moral rights - no problem, AFAICT
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
is intended in part to address the moral rights issue: if my changes to your program break it, it should be made clear that you are not to blame.
Moral rights
My understanding of moral rights is also that you can't give them up. That's their point. It's to put limits on how much a powerful publishing house can bully an individual author.
Moral rights
Moral rights
Moral rights
Moral rights
research group? It seems to me that unless there's a way to become 'not
outside', they've eliminated any possibility of getting new development
blood into the project, which cannot be good :/
I'm right ;) )
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
> around last with the source — it is, IMO, a logical step in ensuring
> that the original author does not get the blame for bugs.
control system and a pointer to that enough? Then one can see in most
detailed way each change and who did it...
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
supported platforms equally and linux is just one of them.
result in making it temporarily impossible to support
an imprtant feature, a warning is printed as long as there
is no workaround for the interface problem introduced by the
specific platform.
in Linux less than a week before a new major cdrtools was release,
a useful and complete workaround was ready in summer 2006.
In the time between introducing the incompatible interface change
in Linux and creating a workaround, cdrecord printed a hint to
run cdrecord as real root or to install an older stable Linux kernel
from the time before the incompatibility has been introduced.
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
in order to defend the cdrtools project but Mr. Bloch was
still successful with poisoning it :-(
The GPL could possibly be revoked retroactively
The fellow's argument wasn't very convincing in the context of British law, which he's writing for. It certainly isn't convincing in the context of US law where we do have a case (the first appeal in Jacobsen v. Katzer) finding that there is legal compensation involved in Open Source licenses even if it isn't money. And there's a case in Germany.Don't believe what you hear so easily.
Don't believe what you hear so easily.
"Termination of rights
"This is one of the reasons why the Free Software Foundation strongly urges authors of free software to assign their rights to FSF. It does them no harm and it provides us with precisely the signed instrument," said Eben Moglen, FSF general counsel and a law professor at Columbia University."
--end quote--
The Volokh and Moglen comments don't apply any longer because the appeal in Jacobsen v. Katzer established a precedent. They were speaking before that happened. By the way, I think the quote you are concerned with is of Volokh, not Moglen.Don't believe what you hear so easily.
The unending story of cdrtools
to the claims from people who attacked the cdrtools project. I never
have been asked for a comment on the real background. Cdrkit is indeed
a zombie project that has been created by a person who attacked the
original project after a buggy patch from him against mkisofs was
rejected by me after it turned out that the person was also unwilling
to fix the documented bugs in that patch.
implemented many new features (like e.g. BluRay support, a Reed Solomon
decoder (error corrector), libfind that adds find(1) syntax to mkisofs).
Nearly 50% of current original software is new and no longer identical
to the fork that was based on outdated sources.
maintainer (Eduard Bloch) and with repeated personal insults send
by him against me for more than a year. He later invented the
fairy tale that there was a license problem although absolutely
no license problem existed. In order to "verify" his slander,
he invented a strange GPL interpretation that would (if taken
seriously) make the GPL in conflict with section 9 of the OpenSource
definition and that would make in addition all Linux distributions
illegal.
CDDL on May 15th 2006 and it was fun to see that Mr. Bloch continued
to spread the same nonsense as before - ignoring the license change.
It seems that the lwn article still confuses cause and reaction.
am doing of couse what is needed in order to protect the freedom
of my software against people who attack it.
people (like Mr. Bloch) who attacked free software....
change by discussing things with people from the community and by
asking lawyers. Last year, I asked Sun legal to do a second license
review on cdrtools. The result of this in depth review that took
three months was that there is absolutely no problem in the original
project.
Copyright law. The GPL is a relatively weak contract that only covers
a few parts of the complete copyright law. Everything that is not
covered by the GPL is therefore covered by the Copyright law and
people who create a fork may do so only if they honor the Copyright
law. This is not true for the fork called "cdrkit".
bug-fixes nor enhancements are implemented. Why are people
interested in a buggy and unmaintained fork that was initiated
by a person who attacked a OSS project?
only later in the public, after he verified that he prefers that
Redhat continues the questionable "cdrkit" instead of the legal
original software. He unfortunately did never send a reply that
contained a legal argument (making it impossible to have a fact
based discussion with him) and so it seems that he is unwilling
to deal with the constraints of OSS.
that do not verify claims made by a person like Mr. Bloch, who
attacked the project without being even a minor contributor to
the project. The problem is also people like Mr. Callaway that
do not like to talk about serious problems. The problem is of course
also a lightheaded way of dealing with problematic projects like
vcdimager.
the right to ignore the Copyright law.
downstream packaging maintainer. I am in hope that in future, people
inform themselves first about the real background before supporting
the claims from people who attack OSS projects.
to preserve the freedom of my OSS projects - regardless on who is
trying to attack me. It is important to understand that I am an
advocate for the users of my software.
The unending story of cdrtools
> /dev/devicename debacle from years back
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
that is not based on cdrtools. Some programs may claim that they
are not based on cdrtools but they are based on cdrtools - just
carefully check the sources to prove my statement.
skills for this software, you need to be addicted to spend
a lot of time for working on the software and you need to
carefully listen to problems of the users of the software. None
of this is true for the fork "cdrkit". There may be a few "loud"
people in the net that try to make you believe that there are no
problems in "cdrkit". If you carefully listen to the net and look
for real users, you will see that a lot of people are really
disappointed about the current situation.
for "star" since 1982 and I give continuous support for "cdrtools"
since January 1996.
ignore the demands from their userbase?"
The unending story of cdrtools
"I don't want my distribution to have to patch and fight with the maintainer, and I want a maintainer that will fix bugs and add features that I (and many others) need."
- [x] Fixes bugs.
- [x] Adds features that you and others need. Well, based on their market study, they do. And if you pay them enough they will probably implement your stuff.
- [x] Most likely will not complain, only take more money.