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

[Corey Hickey]

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.

-Corey