They are violating the GPL and the philosphy of OSS for months and you say: give them a break! Great!
A lot of people on this list seem to have the opinion that Alex and Heinz are so great and they work is so valuable that they don't need to follow law and order today...but maybe tomorrow?
What would you do if you have asked for sources for months? You won't say: Oh well, give them a break!
There is absolutely NO way around it: Even if they were called Barrack Obama and Bill Gates, they would need to fullfill the requirements of the license.
It is sad that lots of people try to find weird reasons why these two guys don't have to follow the same laws and duties as everybody else does.
Jörg
Am Mittwoch, den 22.09.2010, 16:43 -0400 schrieb brian mullan:
Joerg
I agree with John in his view of Hienz and Alex. They are good folks BUT everyone has to remember they are ONLY 2 people !
They have a separate life where they have to earn money to support themselves & families too.
x2go is something they have dedicated themselves to because it aids them in their other income related activities.
There's an old saying:
Nothings impossible for those thatdon't do the work.
Given that Heinz and Alex have been working for the past year to create this new release of x2go ... again while working on their day jobs ... oh, and while building the new x2go wiki etc.
Now that they are in what is hoped to be the final stages and frankly I'd rather they focus on that and worry about where to post the source code when they have some breathing space.
Give them a break is my vote.
Brian Mullan
------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:51:42 -0400 From: "John A. Sullivan III" <jsullivan@opensourcedevel.com> To: x2go-dev@lists.berlios.de Subject: Re: [X2go-dev] GPL violations Message-ID: <1285181502.3417.19.camel@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 19:47 +0200, J?rg Sawatzki wrote: > 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 <snip> Hello, Joerg. I've listened to you very patiently on this list for a while now because you do contribute and help and you are correct about the GPL. I, too, am frustrated about the lack of access to all the source and the difficulty in finding the source that is available (although less so than you because I have not had the time that I wish I had to look into the sources and contribute more). However, I believe you are seriously misreading Heinz (with whom I have now worked for a couple of years) and Oleksandr. Yes, they should (make that "must") publish the code but I also realize they are two honest and sincere fellows with full time jobs outside of X2Go who have given us an enormous project with no significant financial backing of which I'm aware. Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day (week, month) to get it all done. Perhaps we may disagree with their priorities but let's not think there is some malicious, hidden agenda. Receiving such emails probably does more to make them wonder why they ever launched this project than it does to help the situation. I am painfully familiar with being a completely overwhelmed open source maintainer. Sometimes there is not even enough time to enable volunteers who are willing to help (set up git, wiki, code, etc.) to help. It can just feel completely overwhelming. So let's please contribute, guide, even positively correct but let's not jump up and down on the dev's heads. That doesn't help at all. I'm am sincerely grateful for what Heinz and Oleksandr have done despite my concerns which are very close to yours. Peace - John PS - regarding the plugin specifically, I believe they have made it clear that the plugin is NOT released. They have kindly responded to requests for access to the plugin by list members by making it available. Perhaps now they wish they had not been so kind and kept it under wraps until it was ready for release including source.
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