Possible GPL violation by Avermedia

[Harald Welte]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 12:02:24AM +0700, Mikhail Gusarov wrote:

> Avermedia already released the drivers, and "it's better than nothing"
> argument is silly: they just stolen code from v4l, to save some
> resources for development. Stolen code is not very hard to
> reimplement. Stolen code does not contain know-how which would be hard
> to learn. So they were lazy, and they violated GPL, so it would be
> honest to force *Avermedia* regulate the legal questions with Xcieve,
> not the v4l developers.

I totally subscribe to this statement.  A copyright violation is a
serious legal offense, and it is definitely up to Avermedia to settle
with their upstream partners how they will be dealing with support for
Free Software.  Only such pressure from the customer (AVer) to the
supplier will actually ever make the suppliers aware that they need to
think about how to enable development of free software drivers.

A random end-user doesn't have any power and is in no position to talk
directly to the upstream supplier.  the device manufacturer has power,
since he buys large quantities from the upstream supplier.  So he'd
better think of something to keep his customers happy.

Cheers,
-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>          	        http://gnumonks.org/
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