On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 9:22 PM, Philipp Überbacher <murks@tuxfamily.org> wrote:

If he really did violate the license then this has to be sorted out. He
should probably also use some other name to rule out confusions such as
the one you just experienced.

he used a different name than any Fons had used. his name did still include the four letters "zita".

However, the bad quality code is a different issue. You really can't
force people to write good code or do sensible things with code you
release under a license like the GPL, everyone can fuck it up as bad as
he wants to and release it.

i use the GPL because i think it is a good way to get better quality software in the long run for users.

part of what makes it a better way is that it tends to (only tends to, it does not require) suggest collaboration and respect for the developers that came before you. people do fork GPL projects (for good and bad reasons), but overwhelming they attempt to *contribute* to them. acknowledging that we all stand on the shoulders of giants is even easier when the giants are still alive and easily reachable via email.

when people like jeffg (who even after repeated explanations continue to spout nonsense about how block structured audio processing on Linux or any other general purpose OS actually works) take GPL'ed code and fail to interact in any way with the original author, they are not violating the letter of the GPL but they are violating a big part of its "real world spirit". sure, nothing in the GPL requires this communication, but not doing so makes the GPL less productive, less useful, less appropriate.

however, as philipp noted, i think that i have never seen any open source license that would prohibit what happened here. it would be a great shame if fons' immense contributions to audio software, and linux audio software in particular, ended up being released under closed source licenses in the future.