[LAD] GPL Violation Alert! - Sorry if this is a duplicate

Hi Tom! I just recently purchased a software item called 'The Beat Thang' . You can find it at www.beatkangz.com. I am running MacOSX Leopard. After installing their software and low and behold in my '/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/' folder appeared a subfolder named 'LADSPA' . hmmmm... I should probably tell you that I mostly use linux for audio recording so I am familiar with ladspa, especially your plugins (very nice). Anyway. These guys are distributing binaries of the following ladspa plugins: * tap_chorusflanger * tap_echo * tap_echo * tap_pitch * tap_reflector * tap_vibrato There are other ladspa plugins too. See attached screenshot. They are not giving credit, providing source, anything really required of them from the GPL as far as I can tell. I thought you might want to know about this. It really bothers me though because I personally stand for the GPL and think that folks who use GPL'd software should abide by the rules. I'm pretty sure their installer is responsible for 'installing' the plugins because I can erase the LADSPA folder, then reinstall the Virtual Beat Thang and magically the LADSPA folder reappears. There is no mention for credit to you guys (Linux Audio Developers) on the Beat Kangz website either. Also, when I run their program from the terminal it outputs to stdout that indeed these ladspa plugins are being loaded. It kind of makes me wonder what other open source software they are using and perhaps linking statically to libraries and what not. -Mike

Thanks for reporting this. I notice in the screenshot that there are other LADSPA plugins there (vinyl by Steve Harris; the CMT plugins; AFAIK all others are also GPL'd LADSPA). I would ask you to write a similar mail to the LAD mailing list with some more provocative subject ("GPL violation alert" or something like that) so everyone knows about this. Then together we can write a letter to Beat Kang asking that they abide by the GPL, or remove GPL from their stuff. Lets be clear: other than publicity, we don't really have a weapon against them. Legal action is probably out of scope for us, so in case they don't follow what we ask for (which is likely since I'm sure they knowingly violated the GPL in the first place) humiliating them as publicly as we can may be the best we can do. FSF or EFF may be able to help us with this (I'm sure there is at least one organisation dedicated to protecting the GPL, but I'm not sure). Tom