forty-two License "issues"

[marvin]

KaiCherry & co. It has come to my attention that you may be in breach of several OSS licenses for software components included and/or utilised by your application forty-two. These third-party works are not mentioned or given credit anywhere within the application, website or by yourselves. While you have not modified the source of any of these works, and are keeping those parts which you utilise and/or distribute separate from your own code, your application, forty-two, is still classed as a derivative work and is therefore subject to (but does not itself need to be covered by or distributed under) the terms of the GPL and/or LGPL. I therefore respectfully suggest that when distributing forty-two you include information pertaining to these third-party works including full credit to the authors, locations of the projects and their source and the respective licenses which they are covered by.

I am aware that the GPL/LGPL and exactly what is classed as a derivative work is a hotbed of debate and you are of course free to completely disagree with my interpretation This said, and apart from any license violations I feel it unfair of you to seek respect from the community for the hard work you have undertaken while denying others the same respect.

I am not the license holder for any of the works which forty-two utilises so do not have the right to demand you make any changes. I am also not trying to harm the development of forty-two, or demean your work in any way, merely give those whose work you are using and your application depends upon the credit which they deserve.

Below is a (possibly partial) list of the works I believe to be used and the licenses they are covered by:
ffmpeg - GNU Lesser General Public License (LPGL)
ifogen - GPL
mplayer - GPL
mkisofs -GPL
mp2enc - GPL
mpeg2enc -GPL
mpgtx - GPL
mplex - GPL
vcdimager - GPL
tocgen - GPL
yuvdenoise - GPL
yuvkineco - GPL
yuvscaler - GPL

[wiedenu]

This said, and apart from any license violations I feel it unfair of you to seek respect from the community for the hard work you have undertaken while denying others the same respect.

While I'm not saying that I agree/disagree with anything else in your post, this I have to disagree with. Kai and Co. are the first people to make an easy-to-use program that puts all these other programs together. While they may be using GPL programs already made, they have put these several programs together in one clean package.

I believe, and think others do also, that Kai and Co. have greatly earned respect from many people in this community because of the reason stated above.

As for "denying others the same respect" I think that many of the people who have worked with forty-two since 0.6 or before know what programs are being used and where to give credit. Maybe for new users (with the uncertain future of 42) there should be a list like in your post, and where the individual programs came from.

Who knows? All I know is that these guys who put together forty-two and Discom are some awesome guys and greatly deserve our respect, whether or not they were seeking for it in the first place.

[wiedenu]

All that said - Just bought Discom

Kai and Co. definately have some s upstairs.

[KaiCherry]

KaiCherry & co. It has come to my attention that you may be in breach of several OSS licenses for software components included and/or utilised by your application forty-two. These third-party works are not mentioned or given credit anywhere within the application, website or by yourselves. While you have not modified the source of any of these works, and are keeping those parts which you utilise and/or distribute separate from your own code, your application, forty-two, is still classed as a derivative work and is therefore subject to (but does not itself need to be covered by or distributed under) the terms of the GPL and/or LGPL. I therefore respectfully suggest that when distributing forty-two you include information pertaining to these third-party works including full credit to the authors, locations of the projects and their source and the respective licenses which they are covered by.

You are incorrect in your assertion that it is a derivative workforty-two's GUI's are GUI app wrappers, dvdmp and dvdvx are in fact commandline app wrappers.

NO CODE is incorporated *whatsoever*...the binaries are distributed *unaltered* and any alterations that may have been made would be submitted back to the authors.

In fact our stuff in no way attempts to mask any of this. The abstraction is there.

Incidentally, we're adding a page to our website about this anyway.

"Binary inclusion" is not a derivative work, but hey, like I said, we'll be more than happy to put the links to the sources of the binaries we put in a folder for our user's convience, for all of them who'd like the download the sources and compile to their hearts content

-K

[wiedenu]

who'd like the download the sources and compile to their hearts content

definately

I would most like to compile those! I was thinking about running them on my LC II that I'm gonna get Linux on.

Ha, like that's gonna happen. Even if I could get mpeg2enc to run, it'd take five years to do one hour!

[KaiCherry]

KaiCherry & co. It has come to my attention that you may be in breach of several OSS licenses for software components included and/or utilised by your application forty-two.

You specifically joined this forum and waited your three days to post this?

Would not an email to one of us, or a Private message, been a more apropos way to express your concern for these issues than a public forum...

Or did you have some other motive in mind?

Hmmm...

Also if we "may be in breach of..." again, why make the subject so authoritative?

*sigh*

As soon as Chris is back online I'll have him *rush* up the page we planned to do anyway after we finished DiscoPlus to avoid me, and everyone else here, having to endure a hailstorm of GPL posts.

-K

[Ross]

I guess I've been doing this stuff longer than anyone reading this forum.

The GPL does say at least a pointer to the origin must be provided to the user. This is a very minor request, and I am sure this will show up in the fine print of the ReadMe file.

I admire the hard work and dedication by the authors of ffmpegX and forty-two. But most of all, the folks over at Linix Square for providing the foundation to build on.

[KaiCherry]

Yes Ross, you are correct...

We are in fact doing this (slowly) and of course our intent was never to claim authorship or ownership of other's work.

In my former life, one of my jobs during the Glorious 90's was Sr. Sys Arch on a Linux Kiosk for a certain company, which among other things included GPL abstraction.

In the *new* folders there is a brief credits file with links for those who care to look and I believe chris will have the page on our site as well soon.

It just (as my grandma used to say) "plucks my nerves" that this person could/would just email one of us to ask what we planned to do about this.

-K

[marvin]

Thanks for you response KaiCherry

However you choose to read the licenses, as you distribute the binaries, you clearly do need to comply with them, the LGPL and GPL are, as Ross says, pretty clear with regard to this.

Sorry, no ulterior motives but I and many others do feel strongly about these issues, and don't feel that it's the sort of thing that should be considered an afterthought. It's not a lot of effort to include the needed info and as community and disclosure are key principles to the licenses, I guess I don't see a public forum as an odd way to discuss this. I admit I don't understand why, but I'm sorry if this somehow upsets you or you find it an inconvenience. I'd be happy to help put together the relevant links and docs if you want.

I certainly didn't have "some other motive in mind" or want to turn anything into a "hailstorm of GPL posts".. and don't believe that I have. The GPL/LGPL are after all not there to cause trouble or restrict development, rather the opposite. These are simple things to sort out, but need to be understood by the community. Many people here may well understand the foundations of forty-two, but the majority of other users probably don't. It's great that these tools have been put together in a simple and easy to use package, with extra features unavailable in the independent parts. It's great to be able to build upon the huge resources out there, it's great to come up with new and interesting pieces of software which utilise these resources, it's a shame when credit is not given to the years of work put in by others. As a developer, I'm sure you can relate to the "bad-feeling" instilled when respect for your hard work is placed "low in the list" of priorities of others.

[KaiCherry]

The intent has never been to obfuscate the roots of this in anyway. In fact, if my instructions were followed, there is a credits file inside the bundle listing the links to the projects in question.

No harm i'm sure was intended on your part, but as someone who was not a developer, I still think another communitcation method would have probably been more appropriate.

At least you haven't demanded that I "release the sources IMMEDIATELY as you are using GPL'd software."

So I tip my hat to you; you've obviously studied the GPL(s) enough to know that

If I seemed a bit more...pissy...than warranted I apologize, because after all you are right. We were just a bit sloppy and slow, and frankly I was in quite a lot of pain when I typed my response so it was bit edgy, which wasn't what I was really trying to convey.

-K