[X2go-dev] GPL violations

[Jörg Sawatzki]

Hey list,

I just got an email back from Heinz - a private mail!
You know that I have been discussing about the plugin and sources with
him and Alex on this list for a couple of months now.
Other people have asked as well where the sources for the plugin are.

Obviously they think that I cannot read C++ code and sent me the link to
the plugin.cpp source (http://x2go.obviously-nice.de/mozplugin/) again -
in the hope that I believe them. But unfortunately I had a look into the
code (trying to build it) and saw that it executes a binary: an extended
version of x2goclient with heaps of new command line options.
Asking for the source (which is your and my right according to GPL) I
got one of these famous excuses saying "oh, we are in the process of
changing to QTBrowserPlugin" and so on. 

In short: 99% of x2goplugin's sources are not published - this affects
(modified and not modified) third-party components as well. 
Everybody who publically distrubtes GPL software in binary form and does
NOT provide a link to the sources violates the license. The GPL doesn't
say "if you have time and the weather is nice you can publish the
sources if you want to".

Therefore I would not recommend anybody to use the plugin in a
production environment and integrate it into any project! It will be you
who will get into court if one of your customers enforces his GPL rights
and you have distributed it in your project.

Just to let you know: I feel a bit fooled with all the excuses and that
they try to somehow get around legal requirements by sending me some
stuff that's only a 7.5K file wrapping around the actual component.

In my opinion, the way they deal with community
input/ideas/contributions is ignorance. Nothing of the critics and
proposals was taken seriously. We still don't have a GIT repo - and that
would take them 5 minutes or less!
But that's alright - we don't have to have git. But we HAVE to follow
legal requirements in the GPL. And not next year, but NOW!

I spent a lot of time and energy into this and the result: I am
maintaining my own python code externally now, because they don't let me
contirubte! And the worst result: I am frustrated as hell, that I spend
months waiting and writing dozens of mails to enforce my rights that I
have by law.

After all, I'd just like to inform all of you, that I am going to report
this to gpl-violations.org as after explaining it again and again I
still see no change. I'll inform NoMachine as well and advise them to
enforce their legal rights as well - it is their code as well!

I am sorry for bothering you with this, but I think it is important to
draw things like this into plubic attention 

Jörg