[MPlayer-dev-eng] Fwd: [x264-devel] Suspected GPL violation by Erightsoft "super"

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Monday, 23 October 2006 at 23:16, Corey Hickey wrote:
> Rich Felker wrote:
> >On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 09:18:34PM +0200, Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
> >>Yet another GPL rape
> >>
> >>---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >>From: chl at iupr.net <chl at iupr.net>
> >>Date: Oct 23, 2006 7:17 PM
> >>Subject: [x264-devel] Suspected GPL violation by Erightsoft "super"
> >>To: MPlayer-devel at mplayerhq.hu, x264-devel at videolan.org,
> >>ffmpeg-devel at lists.sourceforge.net, musepack at gmail.com,
> >>theora-dev at xiph.org
> >>Cc: license-violation at gpl-violations.org
> >>
> >>
> >>Hi guys,
> >>
> >>the SUPER codec by Erightsoft
> >>
> >>http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html
> >>
> >>contains lots of GPL and LGPL code:
> >>mplayer, ffmpeg, x264, musepack, theora,
> >>which they admit and give credit for.
> >>
> >>Still, their product is proprietary,
> >>and they insist on it. I tried to get
> >>the source through their forum, but they
> >>of course won't give it:
> >>
> >>http://www.erightsoft.net/Supforum.html
> >>
> >>I'll forward this to the different mailing
> >>lists, so you can discuss and coordinate
> >>possible action if you want.
> >>
> >>Christoph
> >
> >For cases like this, I suggest contacting their hosting provider,
> >individual author isps, local police in their jurisdictions, etc. and
> >reporting copyright infringement. This should get them taken down and
> >might scare them into compliance.
> 
> I took a look at this, and the severity of the violation might not 
> warrant raking them over the coals just yet. Their program appears to be 
> a wrapper for mplayer/mencoder/ffmpeg/etc., which are each provided as 
> separate executables. The most recent post (as of now) in the forum 
> referred to above includes:
> 
> > Did you have a look at your download lately? It's a single EXE file
> > including everything, how "separated" is that?
> 
> The "single EXE file" is their installer, which extracts the separate 
> binaries.
> 
> The obvious violation I see is that they haven't provided the source 
> code for their executables of open-source programs. Probably they just 
> don't know they need to. Of course they should know, but I don't think 
> it's worth attacking them until somebody politely and specifically 
> informs them of their infringement and how they can comply without 
> opening their own "precious" source. If they ignore the issue beyond a 
> reasonable length of time, then do whatever is necessary.

I sent them a mail a couple of months ago (31.07). There was never any
response.

I will re-send the mail, Cc'ing -legal.

Regards,
R.

-- 
MPlayer developer and RPMs maintainer: http://rpm.greysector.net/mplayer/
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and
oppression to develop psychic muscles.
	-- from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan