First let me point to something important: The fork "cdrkit" is in conflict with the Copyright law and for this reason undistributable (neither in binary nor in source). The fact that some Linux distributors distribute "cdrkit" seems to unveil a social problem.
We currently have a strange situation where some Linux distributors distribute non-legal software and at the same time refuse to distribute the legal original software while claiming this is a result of so-called license problems. There are even other OSS projects that are based on code from cdrtools (e.g. GNU vcdimager) that do not legally use the code they took from cdrtools. Vcdimager did e.g. did claim that the code is under GPL although that code never has been published under GPL by it's author and the author did never give permission to put this code under GPL. So it seems that even the FSF has a very strange interpretation of legality. If the Linux distributors would really do things based on a legal analysis, they would of course not distribute vcdimager and cdrkit. If those Linux distributors would be serious, they would distribute the original cdrecord, cdda2wav, readcd, ....as the only GPLd program that uses non-GPLd code is mkisofs. THe rest is 100% CDDL. It is obvious that some Linux distributors have a social problem that needs to be addressed..... The GPL is very clear about the fact that GPLd code may call non-GPLd code. If this was not the case, then all Linux distributions would be illegal. So even with mkisofs, there is no problem as mkisofs only does what the GPL intends to be OK. The lisense change did happen 3.5 years ago and the related contributors of the GPLd code of course know about the license change. Nobody who owns Copyright on related code did ever even try to discuss the current situation, so it is obvious that what happens with mkisofs (a work under GPL calls code from _other_ works being not under GPL) is not only intended to be legal by the GPL but also accepted by all Copyright holders. The dispute was started by a completely unrelated person who owns absolutely no Copyright on cdrtools and who for this reason cannot sue people for what happens in cdrtools. Meanwhile, some Linux distributions (e.g. Suse) did start to distribute cdrtools again. What we need to discuss now is merely whether Ubuntu likes to stay at the dark side or whether Ubuntu makes fact based decisions and comes back to the FOSS community that collaborates. -- cdrtools is undistributable https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/177154 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
