From: Nix on
On 28 Jan 2010, Paul Martin said:

> In article <7s95umFm69U1(a)mid.dfncis.de>,
> Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> In article <slrnhlskdj.49l.h(a)realh.co.uk>,
>> Tony Houghton <h(a)realh.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>>It actually prevents people from adopting it if they want to distribute
>>>it in strict compliance with common licences (interpreted the way nearly
>>>everyone else interprets them).
>
>> Cdrkit is in conflict with GPL and Copyright law and cannot be legally
>> distributed either in source or in binary.
>
> Why? You keep saying this, but never have any evidence to back it.

It should be obvious by now that Joerg doesn't lower himself to giving
evidence. We're all supposed to believe Joerg because he's Joerg. (That
his interpersonal interactions would make many inclined to disbelieve
him if he said the sky was blue is possibly relevant here.)

(actually right now, right here, the sky is black.)

> cdrkit is based on cdrtools code that YOU released under the
> GPL. Having done that, you can't retract it retrospectively.

He's not retracting anything that I can tell, just annoying everyone who
dares mention a competing product until they say they've switched to
make him go away. (This sort of thing was much more fun when Kibo did
it.)

> Anyway, cdrkit is only an interim solution. Nowadays the active
> development is on libburnia.

What about libcdio? There do seem to be a *lot* of alternatives in this
area these days, and thankfully the really old horrendously buggy stuff
is long faded into the mists of time.
From: Nix on
On 28 Jan 2010, Paul Martin told this:

> In article <pan.2010.01.28.11.50.28.354511(a)stovell.nospam.org.uk>,
> Phil Stovell wrote:
>> On Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:39:20 +0000, Nix wrote:
>
>>> I can burn them and I can read them for as long as I can read CD-Rs, but
>>> both give up the ghost completely after a few years. Sucky technology.
>
>> CD-Rs I burned in 2002 as backups for digital photos still work perfectly.
>
> I have some Fujifilm CDs (that cost me �2 each) that I burned back in
> 1996 that still play back fine.

Maybe I'm storing them wrong or something.
From: alexd on
Meanwhile, at the uk.comp.os.linux Job Justification Hearings, Joerg
Schilling chose the tried and tested strategy of:

> hostile packaging

Jesus wept. Get a grip.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) (UnSoEsNpEaTm(a)ale.cx)
23:09:12 up 8 days, 2:11, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
DIMENSION-CONTROLLING FORT DOH HAS NOW BEEN DEMOLISHED,
AND TIME STARTED FLOWING REVERSELY

From: unruh on
On 2010-01-28, Tony Houghton <h(a)realh.co.uk> wrote:
> In <slrnhm2dn8.8r3.unruh(a)wormhole.physics.ubc.ca>,
> unruh <unruh(a)wormhole.physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
>
>> On 2010-01-28, Paul Martin <pm(a)nowster.org.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> Incidentally, do you have slander laws in Germany?
>>
>> Why, are you worried?
>
> No, probably wondering why JS complains so much about others acting
> "illegally", but freely commits libel against them.
>
>> It is the people who claim that CDDL and cdrtools violate the GPL that
>> surely need to justify their claim, not his claim that they do not.
>
> The author of the CDDL has stated publicly that it was deliberately
> based on a licence that is incompatible with the GPL.

No. He has stated that he based it on a license such that if someone
violates that license (eg starts selling cdrtools and making it
proprietary) he has a chance of successfully suing them in Germany. His
claim is that the GPL does not protect against misuse of the code, that
the German courts would simply throw out the case. I am not a lawyer and
have not immersed myself in German copyright law, so can make no comment
on that. He has claimed that his code and license is completely
compatible with the GPL however in the sense that it can be run in
conjunction with GPL programs.


>
>> He
>> is the author. It would be really really really hard for him to sue
>> anyone for using his software in combination with GPL given his
>> statements in many public fora.
>
> From what I've seen I doubt that would stop him from at least kicking up
> an even bigger fuss than he is now. Why do you think he changed the
> licence? It seems quite likely he had a grudge against Debian, thinking
> that their patches polluted his precious code, and tried to come up with
> a way that would force them to distribute it untouched, but didn't
> understand the licences properly.

No, his claim is that he found that he was unable to use the GPL to
protect the open source nature of the program in Germany.

>
>> Thus the only problem could be the
>> author of a GPL claiming that use of cdrtools violated GPL. Exactly how
>> does it violate the GPL? It is people claiming that who need to reveal
>> chapter and verse.
>
> The GPL isn't just about the authors' rights, it's about the users'
> rights, probably more so than the authors'. I don't know what action

Yes, and CDDL also gives users rights. Firefox is not AFAIK GPL, but
Debian coexists with them. Many programs used by any Linux distro are
not GPL. You look at the license, and see if you can live with it.
I have looked at both CDDL and GPL and cannot see the problem.


> they could bring against Debian, but Debian can't adopt the position of,
> "We'll just ignore the small print because we don't think anybody can or
> will do anything about it." Even if only authors did matter, other

Sure they can, and they do it all the time. Everyone does. And anyone
can sue anyone else at any time, even if the law is totally against them
(SCO vs IBM I think is still dragging through the courts). You make an
estimation of your likelihood of actually getting sued, and your
likelihood of winning if you were and live your life accordingly.
Otherwise if you want certainly, you kill yourself. That is the only way
you are certain that you will never be sued.
> authors were involved in developing cdrtools. They might not appreciate
> their rights being ignored.

I assume that he has come to an agreement with the other authors of
cdrtools, or they would have objected to his changing the license. I
have no insight into that however. Do you have evidence that they have a
problem with what he has done?

>
From: unruh on
On 2010-01-28, Paul Martin <pm(a)nowster.org.uk> wrote:
> In article <slrnhm2dn8.8r3.unruh(a)wormhole.physics.ubc.ca>,
> unruh wrote:
>
>> It is the people who claim that CDDL and cdrtools violate the GPL that
>> surely need to justify their claim, not his claim that they do not. He
>> is the author. It would be really really really hard for him to sue
>> anyone for using his software in combination with GPL given his
>> statements in many public fora. Thus the only problem could be the
>> author of a GPL claiming that use of cdrtools violated GPL. Exactly how
>> does it violate the GPL? It is people claiming that who need to reveal
>> chapter and verse.
>
> There is no difficulty with the incompatibility of cdrtools and the
> GPL, in that the community is finding ways of working around the
> problem by avoiding the versions of the code that introduced the
> incompatibility. We're all happy about this.

There IS difficulty with the attitudes, in that the users are getting
screwed while this petty bickering is going on. Joerg has written very
nice code ( agreed to by the authors of cdrkit, since they use his
code). It works and is maintained and extended as new devices, etc come.
It is now up to version 65, while cdrkit is effectively at version 2 of
the same software. That IS a problem.


>
> The only person unhappy about this is J??rg, who finds that his efforts
> are increasingly ignored. Unfortunately, J??rg has also proved to be a
> difficult person to work with, which doesn't help the situation.
If you do not care about the users you are right.

I agree that Joerg is difficult. He has extremely strong opinions and
does not change track easily. But he also writes very nice code, and
that brings with it a lot of forgiveness, especially by users who do not
have to deal with him. That the Debian people are incapable of doing so
says as much about them as it does about him.
>