[LAD] At the hands of Professor Keller and Raymond

[Robert Keller]

Ralf,

I think you have a misimpression, created by laseray (aka biophotoray  
aka Raymond Martin), who apparently is trying to steal control of my  
project, known as Impro-Visor.

I do want to cooperate, and will be looking into what I can do to  
repair the damage he is causing. However, I need a little time,  
because I just got back from Europe and this is not my only obligation  
today. I can't move on the immediate demands of others, as this person  
seems to think.

It would not be wise to contribute to his fork meanwhile, because  
there is a much more recent version that has not been released yet,  
including bug fixes to the preview version which was posted briefly as  
an executable (the only thing that is behind his asserted 'violation').

For reference, I include below a message from Raymond which exposes  
his intent. Whether or not there was a violation on my part, it is no  
excuse for his sort of malicious behavior.

As I am not formerly a member of the linux-audio-dev community, I just  
now joined as a result of this.

I must appeal to the reasonable members to understand and help me.

Thank you.

Regards,

Bob Keller
Impro-Visor project director
Professor of Computer Science
Harvey Mudd College
Claremont, California 91711

-----

Begin message from biophotoray at yahoo.ca to keller

On Friday 24 July 2009 19:52:48 you wrote:
 > What you said below is absolutely untrue. You have no right to make  
this
 > assertion. I already explained my circumstances and have no need to
 > continue to do so. There is no release at this time, so there is no  
current
 > violation.
 >
 > Please quite harassing me.


What I have said is absolutely true, you are in denial. I have every  
right
to claim so. You violate a license then you are a violator. What part of
that do you not understand?

Okay, no need to go on, but just don't be surprised if I fork the  
application
or distribute the binary and source on other sites, including the  
preview
version, which I have backwards engineered to obtain the source code
already. There is nothing that in the GPL that says I cannot do those  
things.

Also, don't be surprised when other people coming asking about this  
separate
site/version. Don't be surprised when it has a very similar name also,  
there
is no trademark on the term "Impro-Visor" and it is free software so  
there is
very little that can be done about it. Say what you want then, but I  
will
definitely explain the situation also and make it known why it exists  
and the
history that brought it to be.

Raymond


End message from biophotoray at yahoo.ca to keller



On Jul 26, 2009, at 12:39 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:

> Dear Mr. Keller,
>
> you gave your average interesting project a bad note by keeping the  
> source code closed. Why not open the source? Cross-fertilisation can  
> make it much more interesting, everybody could benefit from it and  
> you'll get deserved fame, even if it's shared fame. Just my 2 Cents.  
> I'm also fine if the source will kept closed. Please excuse my  
> broken English and my frankness.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ralf Mardorf
>
> laseray at gmail.com wrote:
>> [snip]
>
> Pardon Raymond :)
>
> only now I visited http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~keller/jazz/improvisor/.  
> This looks like nice but not very interesting software and it seems  
> to be the effort of Professors Keller or probably of his students.  
> They could do this, because they didn't need to program some  
> requirements before. I guess if they won't share their knowledge,  
> they shouldn't use FLOSS, but pay for similar requirements. They  
> look like they have the money to do this. It's always the same, some  
> privileged people won't share. We are living in a dog-eat-dog  
> society and this wasn't made by Professor Keller, he's a victim  
> himself and unable to do better. Be lenient with him.
>
> The forge, http://sourceforge.net/projects/improvisor/, is a good  
> idea, but I don't think that a lot of those students will change  
> from Professors Keller's project to the FLOSS communities  
> alternative, because of the relationship of dependence.
>
> Nobody should waste his lifetime with being annoyed about those  
> people. There are other privileged people who share their harvest  
> with everybody.
>
> Maybe Professors Keller will come to more academic fame by keeping  
> his knowledge a secret, but who cares? At the end his work isn't  
> much more than one of the thousands of workshops and chord and scale  
> "computers" available for free by the internet, but his program has  
> got the intelligence of Weizenbaum's Eliza.
>
> Hm? Are Professor Robert Keller and a Non-Professor Bob Keller twins?
>
> Cheers,
> Ralf
>

Robert Keller
Csilla & Walt Foley Professor
Computer Science
Harvey Mudd College