[vlc-devel] Re: Possible GPL violation

[Christophe Massiot]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2005, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:

> Le Mercredi 19 Janvier 2005 10:50, Christophe Massiot a écrit :
> > I think the first thing we should do is to check that there is indeed
> > a violation of the GPL. This should be done immediately.
> 
> It is a violation of the GPL. Their EULA not only does not include the 
> GPL, but it is a blatant violation thereof.

Indeed.

> > Antoine (or anyone having downloaded the player) should send a mail
> > (and at the same time an acknowledged letter in case the email remains
> > unanswered) to the website provided the binary, asking to get the
> > source for derived work of VLC, a program under the GPL.
> 
> It looks very much like it is made of unmodified repackaged binaries.
> 
> The vlc.exe and the four .dll plugins they provide namely are all an 
> UPX-compressed version of our official 0.7.2-win32 binaries. Just 
> uncompress them, and you get the same files bytes for bytes.
> 
> So, there's no point in asking them for sources really : we already have 
> the source code and we have already a GPL violation/copyright 
> infringement already.

If this is truly the case, I don't even see why we care about it. We
have nothing to win from attacking if the only change they made is the
EULA. Just ask them nicely to put the GPL instead of their brain-dead
EULA, I don't see why they wouldn't agree, they have nothing to lose.

I haven't downloaded the package (and I don't have Windows), but I
strongly doubt there has been no change done. The press-release claims
that their software is secure and fights piracy. It also states that the
donwloaded files are encrypted. So my guess is that they have modified
the input of VLC to descramble the files. I imagine they have also
removed the stream output capabilities of VLC, which would make their
DRM pointless.

That code would be much more interesting. Can anyone actually try the
software and confirm ?

-- 
Christophe Massiot.

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