Thieving copyright infringement

[i_wolf]

Hi all,
Just a note to some of you here that may be interested. For those of you that do not know XVID is an open source project for MPEG 4 compatible video. It is covered by the GNU licence agreement. This is a video format that most people believe is currently as good as DIV X 5 if not better. I have used it extensively and it is fantastic. IMO better than the current build of DIv x 5 and better than Quicktime mov.
A company called Sigma Designs(www.sdesigns.com) has stolen the source code behind the XVID project and labeled it as their own. Sigma Designs has infringed the developers work by more or less copying the whole code behind the XVID project and labeling it as their own. Over at www.xvid.org they have decided to stop the development of xvid in protest that sigma designs and "their" realMAGIC codec has infringed the GNU agreement. Sigma Designs are stealing the work of the average person, who works hard in his/her spare time to develop software for the greater good of others.
Even divx networks support the XVID team. www.divx.com
This is a great injustice to the open source movement. I mention it here in the general column, hoping that those of you who agree what Sigma designs is doing is wrong, will write to them and ask them to stop their unlawful behaviour.
This type of behaviour is something that really effects users of PCs MACS SPARCS etc... The code can be compiled for many platforms. If companies start to steal the code of people that make it opensource and get away with it, WE are the ones that lose.
Regards all and thanks for reading,
I_wolf

P.S. I thought that this might particularily strike a chord with the mac community who have constantly had their numerous MAC OS ideas stolen from M$. This is a different sort of thievery none the less but should not be tolerated.

 

[barkmonster]

It's a sad fact of life that in both the world of computing and the music industry plagiarism is common and no one can do a thing about it half the time because an "inspired by" or "based on" type of idea could still be argued as being original work.

When you think about it, NeXT could have sued microsoft for ripping off a lot of it's interface elements just as much as Apple could :

Recycle = Recycle Bin (can't even come up with an original name for it)

Open/Close/Minimise Window Widgets = Exactly the same to my eyes apart from the size.

The Dock = Make it text and icons, add the equivelent of the apple menu, call it the taskbar.

File Browser = Window Explorer

Proportional scrollbars = Proportional Scrollbars that can shrink to unusably small with lots of files

The music industry has it's fair share of rip offs :

Grand Master Flash - White Lines (chorus melody) = S Club 7 - S Club Party (chorus melody)

Faithless - Insomnia (lead) = Sash! - Encore' un foir (lead)

There's people stealing ideas left right and centre all the time, It's got to be an impossible task to enforce and it's a shame apple and a lot of musicians are baring the brunt of other companies/artists lack of originality.

PC should be running DOS 10 or OS/2 now, windows shouldn't even exist.

Pop music should be banned for lack of taste an exploiting the young and impressionable.

 

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by barkmonster
Pop music should be banned for lack of taste an exploiting the young and impressionable.

AMEN!!!