Kiss Technology Counters MPlayer GPL Arguments 634
Snaller writes "Recently, MPlayer claimed that KISS Technology were violating the GPL by using parts of their MPlayer movie playback code in proprietary software. Now The Danish National Radio has interviewed the managing director of Kiss Technology, Peter Wilmar Christensen. He denies all claims of wrongdoing and suggests that if the pieces of code are the same, perhaps they were leaked from Kiss Technology and were then used by the Mplayer group. He also adds that the GPL is a weak license which has never been tested in court. Gabucino from the Mplayer team is furious, and accuses the director of outright lying."
Untested? Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
Is it just me, or is this an attempt at blatantly copping-out by capitalizing on all the anti-GPL hysteria that has been rampant recently?
The GPL certainly hasn't been tested in court (yet), but that doesn't mean it hasn't been tested. A large number of out-of-court settlements (some of them rather expensive) prove that corporations are willing to respect the license, and that its defenders are willing to enforce compliance.
Looks like the server is melting already... (Score:5, Informative)
The Danish National Radio (http://dr.dk) has made an interview with me (as MPlayer representative), and Kiss Technology's managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen.
It is going to be broadcasted tonight at 20:35, but it is also downloadable from the Internet right now:
* streaming
* downloadable file
A written article is also available, in Danish.
We have made a rough english translation of the session (thanks to Anders Rune Jensen). Our commentaries can be found at the bottom.
Speaker: The development of MPlayer was started by a little group of Hungarian programmers 3 years ago.
Speaker: We needed a program that could play media files under Linux and were so unsatisfied with the existing choices that we started making a better alternative - said Gabucino, the spokesperson for the MPlayer programmers.
Speaker: MPlayer has reached a wide recognition in the Open Source community. Gabucino emphasizes the program's stability and ability to play many different movie formats as some of the obvious advantages.
Speaker: The trouble with Kiss technology started recently when one of the MPlayer developers was shopping for a new DVD player and went for a product by the Danish company. For fun the programmer started looking at the software in the Danish DVD player, the so called firmware, and compared it with MPlayer's own code. There were enough similarities to take a closer look at the case and make the MPlayer team angry - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The specific part of the code in which the similarities are found is the one controlling the subtitles when playing movies. The reality is that the code doesn't contain anything really brilliant. On the contrary, it's very simple. So Gabucino is puzzled why anyone would even bother using the code instead of writing it themselves. He suggests that it could be laziness on the programmer's side.
Speaker: I think it's actually a very normal thing that programmers borrow Open Source code because they are too lazy to write it themselves. There have been some cases prior to this which have caused quite a lot of trouble. I think there are hundreds of examples like this that we just don't hear about - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The MPlayer team has published the accusation of the code theft on their website and has tried to document it by listing the strings in the code which are identical in the two pieces of software. According to Gabucino, there are so many similarities that it's unthinkable that this might be a coincidence.
Speaker: Normally this type of code is different depending on who implemented it, so, when there are so many identical strings, it's obvious that we're dealing with theft, the Hungarians believe.
Speaker: GPL or General Public License which MPlayer is licensed under is a very widely used Open Source license, which gives the users certain rights and certain duties. Long story short, it is okay to take the code from MPlayer and develop it further, as long as the result is given back to the community. In this specific example Gabucino and the other Hungarians therefore demand that Kiss Technology should release the software used in its DVD players. And makes it clear that it is not a matter of getting some money from the Danish company, but a matter of fulfilling the requirements of the GPL and releasing the software.
Speaker: Kiss Technology at first didn't react to the Hungarians' inquiry, but after the story began to get large publicity in the different net-medias and forums the company began to investigate the case this week. There are two main questions: whether code from MPlayer really is inside the Kiss software and how the licenses of Open Source software should be interpreted and applied. Apart from being accused of taking code from MPlayer, Kiss Technology has also been accused of using other Open Source software, but managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen denies all accusations with small requisitions. The DVD player from K
If You Don't Accept the Terms of the GPL... (Score:5, Informative)
Mplayer.hu site article (Score:5, Informative)
2004.01.10, Saturday
posted by Gabucino
The Danish National Radio (http://dr.dk) has made an interview with me (as MPlayer representative), and Kiss Technology's managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen.
It is going to be broadcasted tonight at 20:35, but it is also downloadable from the Internet right now:
* streaming [real01drdk...-mplayerrm]
* downloadable file [mplayerhq.hu]
A written article is also available, in Danish.
We have made a rough english translation of the session (thanks to Anders Rune Jensen). Our commentaries can be found at the bottom.
Speaker: The development of MPlayer was started by a little group of Hungarian programmers 3 years ago.
Speaker: We needed a program that could play media files under Linux and were so unsatisfied with the existing choices that we started making a better alternative - said Gabucino, the spokesperson for the MPlayer programmers.
Speaker: MPlayer has reached a wide recognition in the Open Source community. Gabucino emphasizes the program's stability and ability to play many different movie formats as some of the obvious advantages.
Speaker: The trouble with Kiss technology started recently when one of the MPlayer developers was shopping for a new DVD player and went for a product by the Danish company. For fun the programmer started looking at the software in the Danish DVD player, the so called firmware, and compared it with MPlayer's own code. There were enough similarities to take a closer look at the case and make the MPlayer team angry - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The specific part of the code in which the similarities are found is the one controlling the subtitles when playing movies. The reality is that the code doesn't contain anything really brilliant. On the contrary, it's very simple. So Gabucino is puzzled why anyone would even bother using the code instead of writing it themselves. He suggests that it could be laziness on the programmer's side.
Speaker: I think it's actually a very normal thing that programmers borrow Open Source code because they are too lazy to write it themselves. There have been some cases prior to this which have caused quite a lot of trouble. I think there are hundreds of examples like this that we just don't hear about - Gabucino said.
Speaker: The MPlayer team has published the accusation of the code theft on their website and has tried to document it by listing the strings in the code which are identical in the two pieces of software. According to Gabucino, there are so many similarities that it's unthinkable that this might be a coincidence.
Speaker: Normally this type of code is different depending on who implemented it, so, when there are so many identical strings, it's obvious that we're dealing with theft, the Hungarians believe.
Speaker: GPL or General Public License which MPlayer is licensed under is a very widely used Open Source license, which gives the users certain rights and certain duties. Long story short, it is okay to take the code from MPlayer and develop it further, as long as the result is given back to the community. In this specific example Gabucino and the other Hungarians therefore demand that Kiss Technology should release the software used in its DVD players. And makes it clear that it is not a matter of getting some money from the Danish company, but a matter of fulfilling the requirements of the GPL and releasing the software.
Speaker: Kiss Technology at first didn't react to the Hungarians' inquiry, but after the story began to get large publicity in the different net-medias and forums the company began to investigate the case this week. There are two main questions: whether code from MPlayer really is inside the Kiss software and how the lice
Re:GPL == strong (Score:5, Informative)
It will be pretty solid in countries that recognize it, and as far as I know Denmark does.
Jeroen
Re:If You Don't Accept the Terms of the GPL... (Score:3, Informative)
Now, lets assume that KISS Technology did take code from MPlayer. The only thing that gives them the right to use that code at all is the GPL. Whether the GPL is valid or not, MPlayer has the copyright to that code. Being the copyright owners, MPlayer was nice enough to release their code under a license that allows other people to use it pretty freely. If the GNU/GPL is found to be invalid, those rights die with it, and the code is covered by standard copyright laws. I'm sure that KISS does not want to have to return all of the nice open source code that they've been using (until they can contact all of the authors, up the ENTIRE chain of derivitive works).
That is only if KISS did steal code. If they didn't steal code then they are just mean for insulting the GPL.
Re:Untested? Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
EXAMPLE [infoworld.com]
EXAMPLE [theregister.co.uk]
GPL Not Weak (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, if the license fails, standard copyright laws prevail. Remember, the GPL gives you additional rights over normal copyright law. If the GPL fails, you lose your rights to use the code, not gain them.
Re:GPL == strong (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Untested? Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
And it isn't the translation's fault that he sounds like a complete idiot not knowing what's going on around him either. Many of his claims are just plain stupid, but that he begins to claim that perhaps mplayer has stolen from them is ludicrus! First of all mplayer came first (two years), have a cvs archive proving it and so on, but is it at all possible for the mplayer folks to have copied it without hacking Kiss' machines? Please shut this man up, I'm ashamed!
Re:Untested? Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GPL == strong (Score:5, Informative)
-----quote
I hear quite often that my license has not been tested in court. This puzzles me. It is, because of the structure of my license, the defendant's obligation affirmatively to plead it, if she wants to. After all, if she is distributing, it is either without license, in which case my license doesn't get tested--there's an unlicensed distribution going on and it's enjoinable--or the license is pled by the other side
For ten years, I did all of the GPL enforcement work around the world by myself, while teaching full time at a law school. It wasn't hard, really; the defendant in court would have had no license, or had to choose affirmatively to plead my license: they didn't choose that route. Indeed, they didn't choose to go to court; they cooperated, that was the better way. My client didn't want damages, my client wanted compliance. My client didn't want publicity, my client wanted compliance. We settled for compliance all the time. We got compliance all the time.
------end quote
The URL is http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/main
Done in the spirit of Free software, anonymously and with no karma whoring intentions. The licence was written by Eben Moglen but someone else brought forward the idea. GNU project founder Richard M. Stallman.
Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
That's a common misconception. You need no license to *use* GPL'ed software. I quote the GNU General Public License: [gnu.org]
So you see, there is no need to accept the terms of the GPL to simply use GPL'd software; you only accept the license by redistributing the software.
Re:Good Luck (Score:3, Informative)
As for everything else, though, I don't disagree....
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Informative)
If you modify the program, you accept the terms of the license. If you give a copy to a friend (modified or not) you accept the terms of the license.
Re:How come companies like Kiss cant'be punished b (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. If you were a megacorp doing this, and knowing you have a watertight case, you'd have a) an injunction stopping them from distributing the code (literally freezing their business), b) you'd sue for both damages based on the profits *they've* made plus c) tort and possibly even more for d) fraud since they now represent themselves as authors of the code.
There is nothing in the GPL, or in copyright law that say everything is fine if they begin following the licence. In fact, they can still be sued, convicted and lose the right to use any of that software (not to mention any derivative work, ouch) for any reason.
The reason it doesn't happen is because it takes a lot of time and money to pursue it in court, money most Linux developers don't have up front, and the awarded damages are unknown. Not to mention many companies didn't know, and so the FSF usually cuts them a deal - they start following the GPL, and the FSF will leave them alone.
But I sure wish someone would actually do it, and bitchslap some company real good with felony copyright violation. Just to show that there are teeth, even if they don't go sinking into anyone that steps too close.
Kjella
Re:Looks like the server is melting already... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GPL == strong (Score:4, Informative)
That's quite simple. If they alter it in such a way as to generate different executable code, then that becomes clear when you have them build the executable from the source code they submit and compare that with the executable they're actually distributing. If they're different, then they lose.
If they end up being the same, then someone skilled in the art of programming in whatever language is relevant should be able to compare the code submitted with the GPL'ed variant to determine whether or not they're equivalent, and should be able to explain to the judge how they're equivalent.
Re:Reply to original article (Score:3, Informative)
One Word: Liability.
It is not clear that releasing code into the public domain (whatever that really means) gets you off the hook if someone incorporates it into another product and it then blows up their nuclear reactor, shoots an airliner out of the sky, or steals their wife. The BSD license is the author's way of saying "Sure, you can use it as you please, you just can't sue me if it doesn't work the way you expected."
Sigma Designs? (Score:3, Informative)
I found reference's to Sigma Designs alleged GPL infringment on the web sigma infringement [216.239.59.104]
That article is relating to a file called "khwl.o" not sure what it does, but after looking at an ascii dump of the KiSS kernel I found references to it
khwl.o [blackapology.com]
Sigma [blackapology.com]
I started looking through the Ascii dumps of these files. Someone more qualified than me ought to take a closer look because Im seeing stuff that looks like code from a bunch of different sources in their, Maybe some of it is on different licenses but I am seeing possible stuff from things like NXClient, Microwindows and a bunch of other interesting looking stuff.
The initial thought was that Sigma designs (they seem to make Multimedia Chips & Hardware etc) maybe supplied KiSS with drivers for their chips and this got merged into the code without them knowing. That might mean that Sigma are mainly at fault here.
nick
Re:Untested? Bah. (Score:5, Informative)
In any copyright infringement case, the infringing party must either:
a. Have a license, or,
b. Not have a license, or,
c. Not be infringing (i.e., the defendant's code is *not* copied from GPLed code, nor a derivative of GPLed code).
In the FSF's cases, the only possible license is the GPL. The defendant must either:
a. Admit they were using GPL code without a license or,
b. Admit that the license they used the code under is the GPL, or,
c. Claim that their code is not copied from, nor derivative of, GPLed code.
The result of this enforcement strategy has been that the defendant *always* complies with the GPL. The alternative is to come into court and admit that you have been redistributing copyrighted material without a license! Courts frown on that mightily. So, *all* defendants have chosen compliance with the GPL.
Note that if the defendant claims c., that they are not infringing (i.e, they claim that their code does *not* contain any code licensed under the GPL, nor any derivative of code so licensed) then the GPL is *not* tested. This becomes a separate issue of fact (i.e., *is* the code in question actually copied from code licensed under the GPL, or is it not?), *not* a test of the GPL itself.
If KISS's code is copied from, or derivative of GPLed code, they are screwed, because they must either admit to redistributing someone else's copyrighted material without a license, or they must admit that the license they distributed the code under is the GPL. Ether way, they lose.
See Eben Moglen's keynote address to the University of Maine Law School's Fourth Annual Technology and Law Conference [columbia.edu] for the FSF's counsel's description of how he's done this enforcement, all by his lonesome, while teaching full time at Columbia Law School, for years.
Re:GPL == strong (Score:5, Informative)
In the current KISS situation, the strings that are matched between the DVD firmware and mplayer are (1) in the same order and (2) include a subtitle format that mplayer was using in 2001 while the KISS firmware seems to be from 2003.
While the former could be a coincidence, how does KISS explain the later? They suggest that code leaked from KISS into mplayer!
You are right. mplayer has no right to break into the house of KISS and examine their ``tv''. But mplayer does have the legal right to bring their case before a judge, show the evidence that suggests that KISS has their ``tv'' and the judge can order KISS to show the ``tv''.
I hope that mplayer can gather the legal resources to persue this case -- why not have a European GPL precident?
Re:Untested? Bah. (Score:3, Informative)
Judges early opinion [fsfeurope.org]
Re:Cebit 2003 (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Easter eggs (was Re:GPL == strong ) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not very enforceable in the Nordic countries (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not very enforceable in the Nordic countries (Score:1, Informative)
If you choose to misappropriate my copyrighted work, it is a copyright violation and has nothing to do with the GPL or the public domain. Copyright law has slight variations in different countries, but in all countries that honour copyright it is illegal to redistribute other peoples work without their consent. That is what copyright means.
Swedish law, at least, places very few restrictions on signing over copyright, but that is unimportant. The GPL is not about signing over copyright, it is merely a license to use, extend and redistribute copyrighted work. The GNU project use a system where authors sign over their copyright to the FSF, so that a lawyer representing the FSF can protect this copyright in court. This is a separate agreement between the original copyright holder and the FSF, and is not part of the GPL.
All this according to Swedish contract and copyright law. I am not going to point to specific passages, as it is of course more complex than that. A good place to start reading is 1960:724. (Yes, I know you're not Swedish and don't have a copy of Swedish law lying around, but someone else who is and has might be interested).
Re:Sigma Designs? (Score:1, Informative)
Who have a history of GPL ignoring: busybox gpl hall of shame [busybox.net]
Also of intrest: this lkml thread [lkml.org]
Re:Untested? Bah. (Score:2, Informative)
Guess what? You can't do that in America, either. That goes for everywhere in the world, because that isn't what the GPL is meant to do.
However, as that very post you linked to says, in Germany, you CAN stop the violator from continuing to distribute the product while it contains your GPL'd code, and you can claim damages for the copyright violation. Again, this is the same as everywhere in the world, and it's what the GPL is meant to do.
Look up that article that was posted here and on Groklaw a while back about how the GPL is a license not a contract... it should clear up this misunderstanding.