Bounty to get Gnash ported to AmigaOS4.1

[Troels_E]

Mention of IBrowse removed from the Gnash bounty page. Thanks for the notice.

[Hans_]

@Piru

I have the binaries I requested the source code for. According to GPL the source for these should be provided, regardless why or how the GPL code got into them.

The alternative actions that they took were legal, and a perfectly acceptable response. He complied with GPL by recalling, rectifying the license violation, and re-releasing it.

Come on, you perfectly well know that Chip and COBRA are very close friends and they co-ordinated this switch just to circumvent GPL. It is a disgrace.

It's a disgrace in your eyes because you want to see it as a conspiracy. Yes, Chip and COBRA are friends, but that doesn't change the fact that avcodec is NOT part of DvPlayer and could be used by other software. The avcodec port predates DvPlayer, and Chip's decision at COBRA's request to remove the GPL code so that avcodec.library is LGPL (as it should be) was the right decision to make. It should have been LGPL as advertised boldly by the ffmpeg project that it came from. Making liba52 a plugin allows any GPL program using the library (none that I know of at present) to take advantage of this codec. Of course users are going to download use it with DvPlayer anyway; as far as they're concerned GPL relates more to developers, plus it's private use (you can use GPL'd code and not release your changes if you never distribute it).

No-where does the DvPlayer documentation advertise that the liba52 plugin exists. That's good enough for me.

What I find disgraceful is attempting to use GPL in order to force someone else to hand over their hard work based on confusion over dual-licensing. That's not what the GPL was written for. I agree that companies/developers should comply with GPL if they are using GPL code, but to try to grab their code based on their oversight and confusion between GPL and LGPL is an abuse of the license.

Finally, GPL projects are filled with little stunts to get around patents/copyrights, etc. I have no problem with that personally because it is legal and no other options are provided, but do you also find that disgraceful? Or do you have a double standard here?

Feel free to disagree with me if you like; I obviously disagree with you. This is all that I'm going to say on the matter because arguing about this is using up too much of my time.

Hans

[Piru]

@Hans_

The alternative actions that they took were legal, and a perfectly acceptable response. He complied with GPL by recalling, rectifying the license violation, and re-releasing it.

Yes, this prevents any further violations, at least directly.

But, it is not legal alternative to providing the source code for existing, previous releases.

We obviously are in disagreement about the issue. I just conclude this discussion by observing that A) I was never provided the source code as required by the license B) the liba52 was put back via a plugin. IMO that reveals the true motives (GPL circumvention).

[billt]

So? According to GPL they should have complied.

So sue him and get a judge to force him to comply. You may be correct in all those technicalities, but you're not using all the tools available to you for enforcement of what they must do as result of that original mistake, even if it's been corrected since then.

[Methuselas]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

All this makes me glad I'm not a coder. Or at least a very serious one.

I do have a question for you though, Piru. Does GPL include code, such as MEL scripts for Maya? I've found tons on sites that I use on a daily basis, but many of them say you can't use them for commercial jobs, yet we all do, but none of them ever list any sort of licensing. Am I to assume that using scripts such as MEL and ActionScripts in Flash fall in the same category?? :inquisitive:

[EDIT] - I guess I'm asking, 'cos I have a lot of scripts for dyanmic, fractal and fluid effects which I wrote and I use mostly to emulate "spell casting". I don't have a problem with people using them, much less improving my hacked code, but in MEL scripting, it's as easy as copy > paste to grab code and never give the original coder credit. Should I put some sort of GPL in my code-base to prevent that?

Sorry for getting off topic, all.

[Piru]

Does GPL include code, such as MEL scripts for Maya? I've found tons on sites that I use on a daily basis, but many of them say you can't use them for commercial jobs, yet we all do, but none of them ever list any sort of licensing. Am I to assume that using scripts such as MEL and ActionScripts in Flash fall in the same category?

The scripts have their own licensing. When someone creates their own scripts they automagically gain copyright on them. If there is no license copyright applies directly and only the author can decide about the distribution. If the particular script doesn't have any license or it isn't placed in public domain, then you can't use them without permission. Note that while very limited, stating that a script is free to use for non-commercial uses can be considered a valid license.

Only if the script is clearly designated (L)GPL it is that.

So to protect your own work you're not required to do anything specific, all work is automagically covered by copyright already. That obviously doesn't prevent anyone from abusing your work anyway. If that happens it's upto you to sue the {bleep} (if you care enough).

GPL doesn't protect your work any better than copyright already does, it in fact only gives more freedom. GPL isn't always the best choice. It can lead into some undesired side-effects (as seen with plugins for example).

So, if you wish to give other users some rights, while still making sure that you retain yours, I would suggest you to look into http://creativecommons.org/license/

The Creative Commons licenses are rather nice, and they at least aren't infectious. :-)

There are tons more licenses around, too, but I've found CC quite useful for many things.