Pardon me. I've missed the discussion of dvdrecord and non GPL compliance.
But I was trying out my new Lite-On DVD writer this last weekend ( $80 after rebates at Best Buy ). With dvdrecord, it would not detect as a dvd, but only as a cd. It also gave me certain scsi command errors. Is this a known problem with the Lite-On and dvdrecord? a dvd