Andreas Kuckartz wrote: Ain't gonna hurt noone :p Have you seen what's happening to the audacity project? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2572777204&categ… It's got to the point where they need legal help. The guy is making a few false statements like he has community support and is giving money back to the developers. IMO there are going to be a few rip off artists trying to make a quick buck off our work over the next few years while the market expands and in the process making false statements to lure customers. It doesn't make us look professional if we accept it. Better to lead with the right in cases like these. -- Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd. Http://www.boosthardware.com Http://www.djcj.org - The Linux Audio Users guide ======================================== Apparently upon the beginning of the barrage, the donkey broke discipline and panicked, toppling the cart. At that point, the rockets disconnected from the timer, leaving them strewn around the street. Tethered to the now toppled cart, the donkey was unable to escape before the arrival of U.S. troops. United Press International Rockets on donkeys hit major Baghdad sites By P. MITCHELL PROTHERO Published 11/21/2003 11:13 AM

I don't know, if you're selling people audacity on cdrom, as long as you include the source I wouldn't think its illegal, I don't know why anyone would buy it on cd, but notice that he didn't get any bids, and now that its relisted, there's still no bids. On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Patrick Shirkey wrote:

Brian Redfern wrote: I checked this out too, and it is disturbing. It's also, as Patrick suggested, an example of a likely scenario in the near future as Linux audio apps become increasingly sophiticated and usable under more professional conditions. It's true that there's little that can be done to avoid this scenario, but I believe that community opprobrium (i.e. verbal torches and pitchforks) can do some good in such a case. Alas, eBay doesn't make it easy for a non-member to add a comment to a sale item. I'm thinking some not very nice thoughts about Luminousity right now... Best, == dp

Or they're buying on his web site? This whole thing is amazingly bogus, but there are 5+ billion people on earth. He only need to take $9.99 from a few of them to become quite wealthy...

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 02:14:10PM -0800, Brian Redfern wrote: Completely irrelevant. If he includes the GPL and his source code he could charge $200 and if sombody's fool enough to pay for it that's legal under the GPL as I understand it. The GPL does *not* have any stuff about "reasonable copying costs" etc. like those old DOS shareware licences did. If the source and GPL are included, that sets a practical limit on how much he can get away with charging because anyone else can get a copy and undercut him in the same market. One legal nightmare I can envisage is trademarking his name for the product. I'm not sure if the GPL says anything about that... If Luxuriousity Office gets a name for itself, Open Office might be perceived as a derivative "clone". (Actually it says "Open Office" all over his web site at the moment) Doesn't seem so from the web site: " Today, programmers from around the world collaborate on the project and it has made this program one of the most popular audio editing programs in history." " Luxuriousity is pleased to be a community distributor for this program and can offer it to you for a price that barely covers the manufacturing costs and the limited support. The team of developers currently working on this program have asked Luxuriousity to have our customers pass on their ideas on how this program can be enhanced"... They may or may not have done that, of course... -- Anahata anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827

Dave, This is a bit shady but, as long as the guy is giving out the source code with attached GPL/LGPL licensing verbiage, it's legal. If he's not giving out source code he is in violation of the license/copyright. I'm sure that EBay, if notified, will take him off if he's violating copyright. They don't want to be anywhere near a copyright infringement case. Jan On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 16:08, Dave Phillips wrote:

I haven't looked closely enough, but do we KNOW he's only distributing binaries? I'm a bit surprised at the idea that it isn't breaking the licenses to rebrand, unless you add significant original content. Just changing the name Ardour to Mark's Magnificent DAW Engine seems like quite a bogus thing to do to make money. The only thing that's mine is the name. This whole thing is pretty amazingly blatant, isn't it? It's like warez gone public for the 'good' of humanity...

I'm rolling on the floor having a good laugh with you Jan! I think you're quite right, and quite sarcastic sometimes!!! I love it! Well, Mandrake did change the boot splash, didn't they?

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 05:26:42 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: Quite, couldn't agree more. There are two posible conditions 1) this guys is doing this and make no money (effectivly), in which case, so what? 2) He's making a reasonable ammount of money, in which case you could too. As he's (aparently) not made any changes, changing the name is unneccesary and a bit anoying however. - Steve

Greetings to all: Very interesting discussion. I think the legal aspects are well understood here, basically boiling down to : 1. If he abides by the GPL we can't really cry "Foul!" 2. If he's slagging the GPL he should be taken to task for it. But to me there's also the not-so-underlying issue of his community involvement. If he's really giving something back then that should be simple to determine, we just ask Dominic Mazzoni about it. Now, if it happens that the guy is just taking the work of the Audacity developers without making any reciprocal contribution, frankly I think the community should get pro-active and do whatever's possible to bring him to his senses (I'm back to torches and pitchforks again). I didn't mean to imply that we should notify eBay, particularly since it's now unclear what he's doing or not doing, but I had hoped there might be a space for comments. I'd like to have added some comments of my own, as would some others on this list, I'm sure. It may be possible that potential customers would read those comments and decide, "Geez, this guy's ripping off work and selling it without the creator's blessings. That kinda sucks. And hey, this other guy says I can get it for free anyway, so why should I pay this Luminousity perp ?". Well, I hope people might respond that way... So does Luminousity add any value to the packages he's selling ? Best regards, == dp Jan Depner wrote:

--- Dave Phillips <dlphilp(a)bright.net> wrote: But are they? I mean, is there precedent? Has the GPL (or any open source license) been tested in court? Or are we just going on our collective opinion of what the licenses mean? Forgive me if I'm just not privy to any precedent. I've only been a "full-scale" open source adopter for less than a year and have limited knowledge of its history (only what I've gleaned from Eric Raymond's book and website). But I can't help but wonder if we all just *assume* the GPL has legal clout. I know part of what we hope to get out of the SCO fiasco is validation that our licensing models work. But have they been proven thus far to protect our IP while providing the appropriate freedoms? Just wondering, Greg __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/

On Friday 05 December 2003 05:17, Daniel James wrote: Well, the GPL doesn't have any advertising clause, which is why it's incompatible with old BSD-style licenses. It appears to state pretty clearly that you can tell the user about their rights under the GPL in a splash screen or something similar, but the section where it says that is a legally enforceable part of the license (if it were, then "ls" in the GNU utils would be violating the GPL for example, by not mentioning the GPL if invoked without any arguments.) Shareware vendors never did, either. I agree that it's unethical but it's hardly an uncommon practice... it's just that that type of vendor never did much with free software for Windows till recently. He certainly goes out of his way to mention that a community developed it, but he also goes out of his way to make it non-obvious where exactly that community is. I certainly don't think he'd try to sue people who made further copies of Audacity after buying them from him. And for whatever reason, people don't seem to mind buying free software.... the guy has a 99.5% feedback rating with 4801 positives and 23 negatives. He has had about 500 repeat buyers, going by his feedback ratings, which is way too many to be astroturf. To me this just demonstrates how poorly we free software enthusiasts have done at promoting free software to Windows users. As a matter of fact, if you look through his feedback, you'll get to page 18 (as of today) before you find anyone complaining (and then with a neutral, not a negative) that they "Paid 8 bucks for software I found for free at another site. Oh well!" Whereas there are a number of neutrals arising from people buying the software (usually the gimp) and deciding it sucks. (Lots of backhanded compliments in the positive feedback though that suggests he includes no documentation with his stuff... I suppose that's how he can get away with selling printouts of Grokking the Gimp and the OpenOffice manual on his site, and I guess that's the only reason he ever mentions the real names of those programs...) I agree that the guy kinda sucks, but I'm also wondering if people buying "his" software will, after discovering Audacity's real identity, get exposed to other free software that way. How about a splash screen in the next version that says something like "If you bought this from someone on ebay, you got robbed!" the first time you run it? Or, more positively, "For a free copy of this and lots of other free Windows software, visit gnuwin.epfl.ch or www.theopencd.org." At least that would force him to either learn how to use a compiler or stay back at 1.0. I suppose it depends on how much of a problem the developers really consider this guy to be. Rob

Dave, Me too, but not too many. Instead, embrace the idea. I'm sure we've all thought about and raised these concerns at different times. I know I was talking up ways to work around this a year ago on the Ardour lists. I'm convinced there are ways to do it and it's going to take people doing things like what is on Ebay to get the group moving. Maybe it's just me reacting wrong to what I've read, but none the less some of this conversation seems like people don't want to really accept the financial model that Open Source predominately promotes - that effectively to the end user the software is free, as in no money, and that the only way people make money in and around Open Source are 1) Selling CDs, 2) Providing support or 3) licensing specifically by getting a manufacturer of hardware to embed the program in their design. This guy is doing #1, or trying to, so what's wrong with that? While I do NOT like the way this person is promoting his product it *seems* _legal_ on the surface of it, and not that different from buying a book from Sams that has a Samba CD in it. Maybe Sams provides more support, or better info, but maybe this guy on Ebay has written some user's guide or something that adds value also. We don't know yet. (Anyone wanna buy a copy and find out?) I'm sure the Samba guys, or the kernel guys, or the XFree86 guys, at one time or another, have looked at what's happened with Open Source and thought 'what if...', but the answer to that question is generally that it wouldn't have been as big. Open Source is just different. I think the community just needs to wake up to this. When it does, and when it decides it *wants* the developers to make some money, then I'm convinced there are ways for all of us to make money for the developers, and that will be good for all of us. (Even if that is bad sentence structure...) ;-) - Mark

I think it is important to find out whether he has actually modified the program in order to change the name. This would make his branded software subject to GPL section 2, which begins thusly: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 08:26:22PM +0900, Patrick Shirkey wrote: He has implicit consent because the GPL allows him to do what he's doing. I don't see why charging a "fee for the physical act of transferring a copy" (GPL) shouldn't include an element of profit. As for contributing back, if he says he is doing so, I agree that some semantic acrobatics might be required to justify this ;-) If the developers want some financial support, they should (as has been suggested elsewhere in this thread) offer the software for sale in a similar way. Most GNU projects that are available for Windows would sell, for reasons that have already been discussed. Linux versions wouldn't do so well because the marketplace is both smaller and smarter, but again lots of Linux users (including myself) have paid for CDs of software for good reasons so there'd be some business there too. Perhaps sourceforge should set up a CD distribution sideline. The fact that it's possible to get it free won't stop some people paying for it. http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk started as a service for the convenience of the UK Linux community, charging only to cover its costs, but became a full time business. -- Anahata anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827

On Sun, 7 Dec 2003 02:07 am, Mark Knecht wrote: Great intent but I suspect the honest and fair management of this kind of thing is why it doesn't happen. There's all sorts of possible variations on the general theme, encourage developers to put PayPal accounts on their web pages etc, but even if 600 people donated $10/yr, each, sure it would help, but only a little depending on local currency. For a western developer it might be some useful pocket money compared to weeks worth of wages for developers from undeveloped countries. I'm not saying anything that's not already obvious but one way to go would be to emulate what Mark Shuttleworth is doing aimed at the Mozilla project where he has a certain ($3m I think) budget for open source (again, I think) and offers "bounties" whereby developers for projects can apply for funding and if it's approved they get it. In other words I suspect if a more central fund base could be set up where developers apply for more-than-insignificant funding then it could end up being more useful in the long term in that some developers could find themselves employed/engaged full time for many months at a time. It could also allow (the lucky few perhaps) to be more responsive and dedicated towards what they love doing instead of just in their spare time or when time permits. I think there have been, or are right now, systems to do this but the egg/chicken situation exists that a funds base needs to be built up before it can be usefully dispersed and that fund base needs to be trusted before folks will commit real dollars to it. This is a very worthwhile thread so I hope others show some interest in seeing the basic idea evolve and perhaps one model could be an approach to Mark Shuttleworth asking him if he wouldn't mind helping us to expand on the base he already has established, if suitable for our needs, and perhaps he could seriously help kick it off... This is really a general open source issues and not just an ALSA thing so maybe a wider solution could be looked at. Regardless, I'd certainly be willing to contribute if a) it was easy to do so and b) I felt comfortable the donations got to where they are genuinely useful and not unduly siphoned off or frivilously frittered away. I'm not suggesting this is an ideal system or anything but at least it's an example of something that is actually happening as opposed to being just a good and honourable idea... http://markshuttleworth.com/bounty.html --markc

Rob wrote: And that weasels are slippery buggers. I'm pretty sure he has reworded the add a few times recently. But maybe I just read too much into what he wrote. -- Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd. Http://www.boosthardware.com Http://www.djcj.org - The Linux Audio Users guide ======================================== Apparently upon the beginning of the barrage, the donkey broke discipline and panicked, toppling the cart. At that point, the rockets disconnected from the timer, leaving them strewn around the street. Tethered to the now toppled cart, the donkey was unable to escape before the arrival of U.S. troops. United Press International Rockets on donkeys hit major Baghdad sites By P. MITCHELL PROTHERO Published 11/21/2003 11:13 AM

On Thursday 04 December 2003 03:33 pm, Brian Redfern wrote: I think the concern is with the fact that he's not selling "Audacity" - he's selling "Luxuriousity Sound Editor". I took a look at the web site: http://www.luxuriousity.com/ It's pretty disgusting - he also sells Luxuriousity Office (OpenOffice), Luxuriousity Photo (Gimp), and a number of other re-branded products. If he was selling unmodified copies, I don't think there would be a legal issue, and I don't think developers would be as strongly offended. Since he is *presumably* distributing modified versions of the program (application title changed) without making his modified version available for download, he *might* be in violation of the GPL. |) |)enji

Benjamin Flaming wrote "Audacity" - (OpenOffice), What was rebranded to create "Luxuriousity Slim - Weight Loss Hypnosis Audio" ? :-) Andreas

Renaming doesn't violate the GPL. You are free to do anything with the code except try to distribute binaries and keep the source code closed. Also, you do have to include a copy of the license. Other than that, pretty much, anything goes (with the exception of removing copyright notices). Jan On Thu, 2003-12-04 at 17:08, Anahata wrote:

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Rob wrote: Actually no, he 100% entitled to sell CD of Audacity labled as such as long as he provides the source code. I think the GPL makes that very clear. But it doesn't seem like a good business plan to sell a CD of something that can be downloaded even on a modem in a reasonable amount of time. -lee

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Anahata wrote: [snip] Yep, it's not a good business plan. I didn't follow this thread too closely, so I'm not comparing myself to the guy selling audacity on ebay. But I started a few months ago selling open source / free software thru the mail in Canada. I figure there no point really in sending stuff elsewhere when you can get it locally cheaper. Anyhow, I don't want to get any further off topic. It's not a good business plan, well I mean http://www.waglo.com/nattor/ certainly isn't making any money - but that's decidedly not why I chose to offer this service. - -- Robin Y. Millette (aka Lord D. Nattor) http://rym.waglo.com

Yea, unfortunalty, People who understand computers don't always realize that the "average" Person understands *nothing* about computers *other* than booting, clicking an icon and shutting down. Seriously. These are the People I'm thinking about (constantly) when I set My goals on setting up Linux Audio Studios. It may sound odd, but I'm actually lucky that I'm not a "natural" at computers. I struggle like hell to understand everything. But because of this, I think I understand the "average computer user". Please don't think I'm putting anyone down (this community is great!!!). But in all the years of learning computer related stuff, I can recall the term "it's easy" so many times and came to realize that it means "(I've) been working with comptuers for years so (You) should know how to do it by now". I think that puts Linux at a disadvatage when it comes to the "average" user. And there have been some "computer minded" people that I've known that have *never* understood that. I hope I can be a bridge to the "average" user. I know that Microsoft broke some very serious laws that helped them get (serious) advantage of the Market. But (the impression I get) is that very few People realize the *other* reason why Windows has grabbed the Market... They've done everything they can to "dummy proof" using the computer. I'm perfectly happy constanly working with developing Software and spending hours and hours testing this, sharing this info and that info, and testing and setting up things. So I'm happy with being part of this community. It's very creative and exciting. But if the software is going to end up in the "general" community, then it needs to be a click away from setting up and intuitive to run. Although, I have no idea if any of the Linux/Audio developers are interested in their software going anywhere outside of the "Linux Community". And that's O.K. if they want to develop strickly for folks like us. I know that I (personally) want to turn other People on to these great programs. But that's just Me. So I spend tons of time trying to figure out how to make things easier and more intuitive to use. Rocco

LinuxMedia wrote: I'll share a short story. Recently I had the experience of setting up a friend's computer with Windows 2000. It was an upgrade from a Win98SE system that had become so thoroughly virus infected (it was on the net with no firewall or other protection) that I thought the best thing to do would be to upgrade the system. So I did, and with the help of a Windows-savvy friend I spent *5 hours* applying M$'s suggested security patches. When I delivered the machine it was working like a champ. Three days later my friends called me to complain that "the computer was bogging down again and didn't work". Okay, so I finally get over there and discover the following items : 1. The virus protection had been disabled. 2. What they call a "computer" we know as a "browser". 3. The machine was fine, their network software configuration had been changed. 4. The DSL modem needed reset. Now, the guy who owns this machine can disassemble a Harley-Davidson and put it back together blindfolded. He's not stupid, but he is, as you write, totally ignorant about computers. When he says "memory" I now know he means disk space; when he says "computer" I now know that he's referring to the Web browser. And so on... Of course he has no idea how things got changed on the system. It is hard to determine: there's so much adware, spyware, and other crap out there, and I'm missing all of it thanks to Linux. Geez, I didn't realize that Windows users *pay* for programs to eliminate pop-up and pop-under ads. Mozilla just has a nice little toggle in its settings, no cost at all ! So I went over two days ago and repaired the system again. It does seem that the virus protection conflicts somehow with one of the M$ security packs, but I'm damned if I can figure it out. My Windows-savvy pal is going to help me out again, but this is the last time we're trying to fix things. To say that Windows 2000 is something of a "bare" system is an understatement. Few diagnostic tools, and even fewer real solutions beyond the M$CE mantra : "Reboot, reinstall, reboot, reinstall, reboot, reinstall"... So I agree. The typical computer user knows next to nothing about this device which has become so important in our daily lives, which sets them up to become victims of their own ignorance. I can understand why you're concerned about making the Linux experience as painless as possible, but you've got a big task ahead of you, as I'm sure you know. Best regards, == dp

On Friday 05 December 2003 01:51, lee(a)fallingforward.net wrote: While it's never gone as far as lawsuits being filed, Red Hat long ago managed to get the cheap CD makers to not use the Red Hat name when referring to even the all-free-software download edition of Red Hat (which I suppose is an obsolete situation now that it's Fedora.) Their claims were based on their trademark, one of which Audacity has admittedly never filed as far as I know. http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/12/10/2014239 - "Red Hat: You can distribute Red Hat Linux, just name it something else" Shareware disk vendors have been doing it for 20 years, though I don't think anyone's ever gotten rich off of it. Never underestimate people's desire for immediacy, convenience, physicality, or simply their lack of research... especially in the Windows world. I actually think some retail productizing of free software would be a good thing, though not the way this guy's doing it. Rob

I espeically love the generic business drok with his raised fist, that's funny stuff. On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Rob wrote:

Benjamin Flaming wrote: Missed those because I went to the november archive. (forgot we are in December). I was waiting for a response and there it is ;) Good to know they are on the ball and the LAD list too. -- Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd. Http://www.boosthardware.com Http://www.djcj.org - The Linux Audio Users guide ======================================== Apparently upon the beginning of the barrage, the donkey broke discipline and panicked, toppling the cart. At that point, the rockets disconnected from the timer, leaving them strewn around the street. Tethered to the now toppled cart, the donkey was unable to escape before the arrival of U.S. troops. United Press International Rockets on donkeys hit major Baghdad sites By P. MITCHELL PROTHERO Published 11/21/2003 11:13 AM