[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] FOSS shame

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Michael Niedermayer <michaelni <at> gmx.at> writes:

> > > heres my current try:
> > > --- shame	(revision 411)
> > > +++ shame	(working copy)
> > > @@ -6,6 +6,9 @@
> > >  This is a list of projects or companies violating FFmpeg's license. The
list
> > >  is part of an effort to get them to comply with the licensing terms by
shaming
> > >  them in public.
> > > +We have consciously chosen not to include <i>not for profit free
software projects</i> as we
> > > +belive that thouse who give their work to the world for free should not
be shamed
> > > +on such lists.

The reason that I am against this is not that I want to put any open-source
project on the list, but that
1) I am convinced that it is very difficult to define "not for profit free
software projects"
2) What if a project that originally was not on shame decides to put some ads on
its homepage? Would that mean the license violation depends on things totally
unrelated?
Note that the only thing - afaik - the only known open-source violator did so
far was to remove the information about the violation from its forum (sorry if
this turns out to be wrong, but I originally read the forum entry and could not
find it again after some searching).

> > I don't like this.  Everybody should respect licenses.  There is no
> > reason to exclude free sw projects if they turn out to be stubborn
> > and unwilling to fix issues they may have.

That is my opinion as well.

> I dont complain to people because i have some legal basis to do it.
> For me there first needs to
> be something done by them that i consider seriously wrong.
> 
> Taking someone elses hard work and pretending its ones own is seriously
> wrong.
> Also taking some one elses hard work and selling it for a profit without
> giving that person any share at all is also something i feel isnt right.
> And last, obviously improving someones FOSS work and not giving these
> improvents to the worlds public under FOSS again is also something i
> consider wrong.
> OTOH, not including the unchanged source of ffmpeg, including a pathset
> including the LGPL license text, including the wrong LGPL version, just saying
> under LGPL, 

> or linking to some non free codecs alone

Are you sure?
(Nearly) all of the current offenders would be able to fix their issues if we
all agree about this. I thought we would at least require them to dynamically
load such libraries at least.

> are just not something
> that i mind anyone doing. But if someone is doing something that i
> consider seriously wrong then i surely will use all these little things to
> fight them.
> 
> I dont like the kind of "zero tolerance" thinking where one puts everyone
> on the shame list because they violate the text without violating the
> spirit of the text.