Hi Jus,
Our relationship with "Music Oasis/Freeze.com" is not a friendly one, we have
threatened them in the past for trademark violation.
The levers of control Mixxx has over it's IP are:
* Trademark - the "Mixxx" brand and representations
* Copyright - published works: code, artwork, documentation, website, etc
For trademark, its pretty simple, they can't use our name "Mixxx" or represent
themselves as us in a manner that creates confusion in the marketplace. We
have taken steps to defend our trademark by threatening Music Oasis & co when
they used our name and also claimed they had trademark over it on their site in
the past (they put "Mixxx Digital DJ Pro" is TM of Music Oasis on the bottom of
their webpage). They have since removed all references to "Mixxx".
With respect to copyright the situation is a bit more complicated:
* Code: this is covered by the GPLv2, which means anyone can create and
distribute binaries provided the source code and derived source code (for
changes made) are available to the public to rebuild and pass along under the
terms of the GPLv2. (Provided they do not violate our other copyrighted
materials or our trademark they are allowed to do this.)
* Artwork and other copyrighted works: These are not licensed explicitly
under the GPL, and so we can enforce copyright violations on these as we have
made no grant of redistribution rights to anyone... (This is why they have
re-skinned / rebranded their copy)
The situation with Art is one of the primary motivations of why we'd want new
skins to adopt a CC license (to prevent ripping off Mixxx) with an assignment
of copyright to Mixxx so Mixxx can take action to stop groups like Music Oasis
from ripping off the skins.
I personally have no problem with people forking GPL code for profit, but I
think there is a certain etiquette to doing it on good terms. I'm not saying
one need ask for permission, but it's not nice to pollute the original groups
trademark/market and try to pass of the work as entirely your own when all you
did was change some artwork. Given that they have made pretty much no attempt
to be on good terms with us or make even a token contribution back to the Mixxx
community from which they profit, I would be happy to see Mixxx initiate full
fledge litigation against them if they were found to be in violation of the GPL
(though I can't speak on behalf of Mixxx as a whole in this respect).
Cheers,
-G
P.S. typed this in a bit of a hurry, so @mixxx.org folks feel free to
add/correct if I missed on anything...
On 2010-03-03, at 7:59 AM, jus wrote:
> Hello,
> i was curious why there are more&more new users looking for help in the forum
> referring to Mixxx as "Digital DJ pro" or "DJ Pro".
>
> A quick search brings up http://www.freeze.com/download/Audio/Digital-DJ-Pro
> and http://www.music-oasis.com/download/Audio/Digital-DJ-Pro .
>
> They only changed the "About" splashscreen & the default skin to an own
> crappy one.
>
> Windows users are tricked into downloading a "download manager" which pulls
> the rebranded Mixxx 1.7.0 to the users computer.
> The downloader drops additional payloads such as browser toolbars, changes
> that browser startpage and set cookies that look like measurement for a kind
> of revenue sharing program.
>
> EXAMPLE:
> ProductSessionId=ab106995-89bf-4c79-a0a9-d16f367893413077&VersionId=-1&Tracking=0&SessionTime=1/3/2010
> 5:22:38
> AM&CampaignID=127849&ShortName=digitaldj&LeadmanSessionId=14c97e18-8069-41e5-9921-106995&PingRestrictionsRecorded=1&Membership=0.
>
> If the download stats on freeze.com are correct over 400000 ppl downloaded
> already...
>
>
> Is it legal under the GPL to reuse Mixxx in that manner?
>
>
> jus
>
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