The unending story of cdrtools
The unending story of cdrtools
Posted Aug 18, 2009 14:50 UTC (Tue) by schily (guest, #60311)Parent article: The unending story of cdrtools
This was a very unfortunate article as it did only give attention
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.
The original software however did introduce dozens of bugfixes and
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to the fork that was based on outdated sources.
The problem started with a non-cooperative downstream packaging
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.
As a _reaction_ to his slander, I changed the license from GPL to
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.
I am working on OpenSource software since more than 25 years and I
am doing of couse what is needed in order to protect the freedom
of my software against people who attack it.
Please do not use the words "the community" when talking about the
people (like Mr. Bloch) who attacked free software....
Please also note: I did check very carefully the results of a license
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.
The fork however introduced changes that are in conflict with the
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".
But anyway, this fork id dead since a long time and neither
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?
> 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
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.
As you see, the problem in case of cdrtools is Linux distributors
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 problem is also people who believe that the GPL gives them
the right to ignore the Copyright law.
As explained above, the problem was initiated by a non-cooperative
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.
I support OSS and I will continue to do _anything_ possible in order
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.
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
> /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.