[MPlayer-dev-eng] KiSS of copyright

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi

On Wednesday 10 March 2004 18:00, Gabucino wrote:
[...]
> > And he asked me not to share it, so IMO it would be better if he posts
> > the complete archive himself.
>
> Kiss asked us (me and A'rpi) not to disclose it (and I also despise
> forwarding private emails very much - especially as it contains the phone
> number of Peter Christensen), but of course I can tell you everything
> inside it, we have nothing to hide, despite what richard and ivan says.
>
> Mailings have been started at the beginning of January, but the first mail
> admitting code stealing occured only on 26th January. In that mail Kiss
> offered that they'll rewrite that "insignificant" piece of code, and
> release new firmwares shortly. In my answer, I pointed on the irrelevance
> of line numbers of the stolen code in light of the used GPL license, and
> also my disappointment of how could they expect I will believe that stuff
> without seeing any proof of then actual rewrite happening. The rest of my
> mail was warnings about more license violations and stuff (kernel config
> files, libjpeg, suggesting opensource donations, and whether they have
> dual-licensed libmad).
>
> In the answer, they actually had an offering and not only null-speaking:
> fixing all those license problems I've asked, and they offered a donation
> of hardware into our new server, and also settling the case in a good
> manner in respect for the OS community.
>
> I've answered that is all well, and told the parameters of the new server
> which was being planned since months (1U sized P3 machine with disks).
>
> Shortly I've received a mail which suggested finally making the common
> press release closing the case, and a 2500 USD (515061 HUF) donation which
> matches the cost of the hardware I outlined. We've argued about this on IRC
> (Feb 19 15:51), confirmed that it does approximately cover the costs, and
> A'rpi gave his agreement to the donation. The IRC logs were read by lez
> (author of subreader.c), Alex Beregszaszi, Michael Niedermayer. D Richard
> Felker was also present, but silent.
it was not obvious to me that the 2500USD where offered by kiss, and even less 
that there could be a relation between this donation and a copyright 
infrigment, maybe its worth mentioning that 90% of the disscussion on irc was 
in hungarian which several of us cant speak

>
> And now this uprising all of a sudden.
i cant speak for anynone except myself, but IMHO accepting donations from kiss 
is legally a very bad idea, before they release the complete sourcecode under 
the GPL as required by the GPL IMHO/IANAL
anyway, IMHO if u do accept a donation from kiss u should only do so after 
they signed a contract which clearly states that this is unrelated to the 
copyright infrigment and does not give them any right or license to the code

>
> This is the timeline and things as they are now. Questions?
yes, could u publish ur emails, which u sended kiss with all text which was 
written by kiss removed? this should not conflict with any non dissclosure 
promisses u made to kiss

-- 
Michael
level[i]= get_vlc(); i+=get_vlc();		(violates patent EP0266049)
median(mv[y-1][x], mv[y][x-1], mv[y+1][x+1]);	(violates patent #5,905,535)
buf[i]= qp - buf[i-1];				(violates patent #?)
for more examples, see http://mplayerhq.hu/~michael/patent.html
stop it, see http://petition.eurolinux.org & http://petition.ffii.org/eubsa/en