Re: [gentoo-user] CD ROM does not play audio CD's

[Daniel Iliev <daniel.iliev@gmail.com>]

On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:33:12 +0200
Joerg.Schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (Joerg Schilling) wrote:

 
> The CDDL has been designed to be compatible with all OSS licenses.
> The GPL has been designed to be incompatible (*) with all other
> licenses including the LGPL. OpenSource needs collaboration. This
> cannot happen with the asymmetric incompatibility the GPL tries to
> impose.
> 
> *) The GPL allows GPLd code to call code from any license but
> disallows that GPLd code is callsed by non-GPLd code.
> 
> 
> > - Why is it in your opinion more free, in a few words?
> 
> The GPL tries to take off freedom in otder to keep freedom. This does
> not work in most cases (I tried to sue two companies to no avail), so
> why take off freedom at all?
>

OK, all this means that in your opinion CDDL is better than GPL, but
by no means it grants you the right to disregard GPL in favour of CDDL. 

Like it or not, there are GPL-ed pieces in cdrtools and if you want to
use those pieces you have to comply with the GPL. That's the will of
their respective authors. I don't like the EULA of Microsoft, so I
don't use their products. It's as simple as that.

As I see it there are two options to stop the pointless discussion if
CDDL and GPL can be legally mixed in cdrtools. First - revert back to
GPL, second - move everything to CDDL. I see two solutions for the
second choice:

 - remove/rewrite the GPLd parts (which would be enormous waste of
labour and/or crippling the package)

 - you could try to ask those authors to release a new version of their
work under CDDL. If they agree there will be no place for doubts - you
will be well within your rights to use CDDL.


> > - Why did you prefer to release it CDDL and see people go berserk
> > (right or wrong they are, it doesn't count here) instead of keeping
> > it GPL and let everyone live peacefully? In other words: why is
> > CDDL *so important* to you that you prefer to see bad forks of your
> > software pop out instead of having a compromise about licenses and
> > let your software live happily?
> 
> If you did read my FAQ, you would know that this is wrong.


I've read it even before this thread was started and I really don't
know. I have the FAQs from your site open right now and I still can't
understand. The only two references to CDDL I can find are:

=============
"Cdrtools are now available unter a OSS license that gives more freedom
than the GPL
On May 15th 2006, most of the code has been relicensed under the CDDL.
The CDDL has been selected as one of 8 preferred licenses by the OSI."

[ http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/cdrecord.html ]
=============

(...which is irrelevant to this discusion)


and

=============
"The attacks have been based on the fact that cdrtools was licensed
under the GPL. As a result, on May 15th 2006 most projects from the
cdrtools project bundle have been relicensed under CDDL (giving more
freedom to users than the GPL does)."

[ http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/linux-dist.html ]
=============


Are you saying that you went to CDDL because some people attacked you
for using GPL and later the same people made a fork exactly because the
CDDL in cdrtools is not compatible with the GPL?

Then why didn't you just get back to GPL!?


> > Again, you don't understand the purpose of *human communication*. 
> > Communication is exactly made to iron out misunderstandings. 
> > Communicating with people that are already on your side/already 
> > understand what you're going to say *makes no sense*.
> 
> I am sorry to see that you don't understand how human communication
> works. Only 20% of human communication is done by words. For this
> reason, communication that is only based on words has a big chance
> for missunderstandings. I asked back because it was obvious that you
> already did missunderstand the license "delaration" from Gentoo.
> cdrecord/cdda2wav/... are under the original CDDL. There is no
> CDDL-Schily.
> 

Yes, absolutely! It is even more relevant when we write those words in a
non-native language. That is why it is even more important to answer
exactly to the same questions you were asked, instead of writing
whatever comes to your mind at the moment.

P.S.

If you cared at least a little about Gentoo, you'd go to
http://bugs.gentoo.org and write a bug report requesting a correct
declaration of the license. I'm sure your request will be fulfilled.


-- 
Best regards,
Daniel
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