The unending story of cdrtools

Posted Aug 13, 2009 9:54 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (guest, #33263)
Parent article: The unending story of cdrtools

>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.

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.

The unending story of cdrtools

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.

The unending story of cdrtools

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.

The unending story of cdrtools

Posted Aug 17, 2009 20:26 UTC (Mon) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] (2 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.

Does it necessarily need to be in the source code? Isn't a public version
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

Posted Aug 18, 2009 9:30 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (1 responses)

But that information would be lost on git-archive and similar.

The unending story of cdrtools

Posted Aug 19, 2009 0:28 UTC (Wed) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Many projects auto-generate their ChangeLog file before creating archives of releases -- that ought to do nicely.

The unending story of cdrtools

Posted Aug 18, 2009 13:49 UTC (Tue) by schily (guest, #60311) [Link] (2 responses)

> Since 2.01.01a62 does not have the Linux is completely fucked wording anymore (thank you), it cannot be what he is complaining about.

There never was any such message.... Cdrtools treats all 30
supported platforms equally and linux is just one of them.

If a platform makes incompatible interface changes that
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.

For the last major interface incompatibility that was introduced
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.

BTW: I cannot comment the article itself as this is hidden from the public :-(

The unending story of cdrtools

Posted Aug 18, 2009 17:04 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (1 responses)

Unrelated to cdr* itself, could you perhaps provide an updated e-mail addresses on the cdrtools page? I tried the two listed on there, but both bounced last time I tried (01/2009).

The unending story of cdrtools

Posted Aug 19, 2009 14:40 UTC (Wed) by schily (guest, #60311) [Link]

> could you perhaps provide an updated e-mail addresses on the cdrtools page?

I updated all mailing list related entries on the cdrtools web page at:

http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/cdrecord.html

hope this helps.