On Tue 27 January 2004 21:25, Joerg Schilling wrote: > From: Lourens Veen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >Well, first there was cdrecord, which is GPL. Then DVD writers > >appeared, and someone adapted cdrecord to be able to record to > > his DVD drive, and called it dvdrecord. He didn't make very > > clear that this was a modified version of cdrecord (or at least > > not clear enough as far as J�rg's concerned) which according to > > J�rg violates section 2a of the GPL. Hence his calling it > > illegal. > > WRONG! > > There is only one cdrecord source. A reduced version of the > source is available under GPL. > > Cdrecord-ProDVD is now nearly 6 years old!
My bad, I should have thought a bit better and realise that dvdrecord was created as an open source alternative to cdrecord-ProDVD, and hence that cdrecord-ProDVD already existed. > On October 22th 2001, a week after the test binary has been > available, a first DVD patch to cdrecord appeared. The illegal > version that is found on RedHat systems is just made by applying > this completely outdated patch. > > The patch itself is not illegal but it has many bugs. If somebody > creates a binary from it and don't makes clear that this is not > the official cdrecord, then he is violating the GPL. Almost. The GPL states that "You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change." in section 2a. Hence what makes dvdrecord violate the GPL is the fact that there is no mention of the changes in the sources, not the fact that it is not mentioned in the binary or the output. Section 2c says it must display an appropriate copyright notice whenever the original cdrecord would have done so, which it does, if I read the source correctly. Lourens -- GPG public key: http://home.student.utwente.nl/l.e.veen/lourens.key
