[arch-general] Burning From Command Line

[Xavier Chantry]

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 8:32 PM, C Anthony Risinger <anthony at extof.me> wrote:
>
> at the possibility of playing devils advocate, i don't see anything
> outrageous by Jeorg's claims... even after reading the full 40+
> messages twice and the "yay" thread started afterwards.
>

Sorry to inform you that you did not read enough.

> seriously, nobody is going to sue us for using the cdrtools package...
> who? the guy that more or less owns it and is trying to get us to use
> it?  doubtful.
>
> this seems like a bunch of political/personal nonsense, with a fair
> amount of personal jabs and condescending attitudes toward Jeorg.
> mind, i am entering this conflict without prior knowledge or bias.  i
> did not even know there was a difference between wodim and
> cdrtools/cdrecord... as Jeorg pointed out this is a _problem_.  his
> software's reputation is most assuredly suffering from this
> misinformation.
>

If you think I had any bias towards Joerg before reading this mailing
list, well, you are wrong.
Any judgments I might have is based on what he posted here.
I don't see why other people should be biased either, Arch ML was
spammed well enough on this topic that any reader can make his own
opinion.

> if Arch was truly worries about legal issues (which seems to be a
> complete moot point from my experience here), surely this package:
>
> http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/libdvdcss/
>
> would not even be REMOTELY close to an OFFICIAL repo!  am i right?  i
> don't know ANY other distro that includes it.
>
> in the spirit of open licenses, mildly incompatible or not, include
> the best tool for the job = cdrtools.
>

It's not the only issue. What we need is a Arch developer that is :
1) willing to package cdrtools despite the license doubts
2) willing to work with Joerg as upstream (see
http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-general/2010-May/013557.html)

That possibility was never completely excluded.
But by endlessly trolling on our Mailing List and not showing much
co-operation, Joerg is making more enemies than friends among Arch
community and developers.
IMO he would do himself a big favor by staying quiet.
Since his software is technically superior, and is not completely
unknown, people should recognize that and start using it by
themselves. If a Arch user reports recording troubles with wodim, it's
likely that another Arch user will recommend him to try out cdrecord,
which is documented in Arch wiki and available in AUR. The good
reputation of the software is built by the community, not the words of
wisdom of the software's author.

> on a final note, Jeorg, it would be extremely beneficial if you could
> cite a hard resource regarding the legalities involved here, as you
> seem to have a resource. or maybe just dual license cdrtools (why
> not?).  why was the license changed to CDDL exclusive anyways?  i've
> been in lengthy license discussion over on Phoronix, and i must admit,
> the more i get into software as a living [6+ yrs now], the less i like
> the GPLv* (notice nobody moves TO the GPL, they only move AWAY...
> this, CouchDB [apache], etc... GPL is too purist IMO)
>

20 people asked this before you on this very same mailing list. Why do
you think you are so special that he would listen to you ?

And if you had read this :
http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-general/2010-February/010989.html
You would know there is not even a need for a dual license or a
license change, just a simple clause :
<<<
  After speaking to Jörg we began our review of the complete source of
  cdrtools, and soon verified that GPL compliance on mkisofs was broken.
  We told Jörg that as far as we could see he was the only copyright
  holder on the CDDL'd libraries, which he confirmed.  In that case, I
  pointed out, he could give all the permission necessary to solve the
  problem, without any license changes: he simply needed to give
  permission as the relevant copyright holder on the CDDL's libraries
  for combination with mkisofs and distribution of the binary and source
  under the terms of GPL, without any additional restrictions.  We
  drafted for him the thirty-nine words needed: "You are permitted to
  link or otherwise combine this library with the program mkisofs, which
  is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  If You do,
  you may distribute the combined work under the terms of the GPL."
>>>