[vlc-devel] WARNING: VLC is being sold without permission!!

[jpd at videolan.org]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 11:20:59AM +0100, Christophe Mutricy wrote:
> It's not illegal to sell GPL'd software as long as you follow the GPL
> i.e. mainly providing the sources if you're asked.

Abusing other people's trademarks, impersonation, and so on probably
are much less legal. Legal steps, though, are a bit of a problem.


> IMHO and with no offense intended, the problem is the users who jump
> on the sponsored links even if the official VideoLAN website is the
> first of the non-sponsored links in google.
> I'm not sure how we can educate the users about that

We could, for example, provide multiple translated front pages that
clearly state the only place to get vlc is at <cc>.videolan.org, for
free, signed and all. We could do various things to make much clearer we
don't get any money from the importors' websites. Even by simply saying
that you can get the stuff for free even if we don't mind donations, but
that forced expensive SMSes don't benefit us at all.