Serious statements from the author of MediaCoder

[stanley]

Recently (actually since I posted an article introducing MediaCoder’s new CUDA support on the doom9 forum), a group of people, mainly those developing software similar to MediaCoder, began to pick holes in MediaCoder. Some of the same people, requested that the FFmepg group put MediaCoder on the FFmpeg shame list, accusing MediaCoder of abusing and modifying FFmpeg without publishing the patch. They also insinuated that MediaCoder contains virus and malwares, as well as tampering with the MediaCoder description on Wikipedia and changing the description as adware. I am very angry and shame on them. I hereby make the following statements:

[Full statements text on the blog]

[cwh060]

Good for you Stanley, I for one have supported your development and spread the word about how good MediaCoder is around many of the forums I visit.

Thanks for an excellent product.

cwh

[stanley]

Thank you!

[nosignal]

I second that.

[BikeHelmet]

Take it easy Stanley. That Diego guy is an unhelpful ***. I'd post it there to inform him of it, but it'd just be deleted instantly.

If they can't be bothered explaining what exactly is non-compliant, then the fault is with them. They can't assume that every person is a native English speaker with 2 years in law school, and understands that crap. And to make that assumption while insulting you, after you made an effort to get it right... that's not very nice.

But they can and did do that, so I wish you luck.

[encroder]

That Diego guy LOL, should be demoted. Makes no difference if he has to repeat over and over each time for each case. That is the role he has, obviously disliking every moment of it. So now he is angry with everyone that asks tell me what is wrong and how to correct it.

So far as other members there, they would rather ask those in need of help to an IRC channel. Now that is embarrassing for any group that's trying to be serious.

Remidy get rid of Diego and replace with better, there will be many better. Also they should have many more people, not only one person is answering the questions. I write this here as i'm sure they will be monitoring.


Stanley hope everything has been fixed and corrected via IRC, and all is ok. If so forget this episode, move on and forget.

[Vix]

encroder, bikehelmet, cwh060 -- there is something you need to understand before you blame the wrong persons.

If you find Mediacoder to be a great application, it is because it lets you use easily Mplayer, Mencoder, FFmpeg, MP4box and other software. These are really great tools that have been worked meticulously to an unbelievable level of quality. Mediacoder cannot exist without these libraries -- remove them, and Mediacoder is dead! Stanley himself says "MediaCoder is standing on the shoulder of giants".

But those giants let you stay on their shoulders as long as you let other developers stay on yours. This is the spirit of their license, the famous GPL.

So what really happened in the FFmpeg Issue tracker is that those giants have brushed Stanley off their shoulders because he would no longer publish under the GPL. Of course it was a harsh treatment. It was naturally so. Stanley would claim he couldn't understand the GPL, which is not acceptable for a guy who obviously read tons of documentation on how to make those libraries work in his front-end.

And besides, searching the Internet has never been so easy. I've searched for 30 seconds and I found the official FAQ which pretty much covers what Stanley should do in order to climb on the shoulders of giants again:

If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license?
Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library.
-- http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfLibraryIsGPL

Which means that as long as Mediacoder contains Mplayer and Mencoder, Mediacoder is also under the GPL. Full Mediacoder sources must be published. Let other people stand on Stanley's shoulders.

It is amazing to me, encroder, bikehelmet, cwh060, that instead of really helping Stanley to do this simple research, you are just encouraging him to keep walking in a path that would lead to Mediacoder's public shame!

Also,

If I distribute a proprietary program that links against an LGPLv3-covered library that I've modified, what is the “contributor version” for purposes of determining the scope of the explicit patent license grant I'm making—is it just the library, or is it the whole combination?
--The “contributor version” is only your version of the library.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.htm ... torVersion

Which means, in case Mediacoder is published without Mplayer and Mencoder, the sources of the modified FFmpeg library must still be published.

Was that really so difficult?

I agree with Stanley that all this has started from within Doom9.org whose MeGUI blows in front of Mediacoder. But the GPL is an entirely different issue. It has to be respected so that more applications like Mediacoder can be born. And consider the tears of Doom9ers when Stanley returns to GPL... they would have to suffer more Mediacoder postings in their forums

[encroder]

Vix are you part of the shame list team or the team itself, i'll write as if you are.

Because the seemingly overworked or just don't care Diego, should have pointed that out to Stanley in plain concise easy to understand laymans english. I couldn't help because i can't read Diego mind, as i'm sure many others couldn't including Stanley.

Stanley it seems had to guess at what was needed to do to correct the problem. It's a big shame list that's for sure, all he got was go away and read and then you'll know, type of answer. If everyone there it is given the same verbal as Stanley has had, i can see the reason for the shame list been so big. Ok so they used the code without knowing more, and some will have known.

But inhouse needs to have more people, so communication is better to helping those in need to understand clearly and how to fix the problem. Not say you better get it right or that's it, there's no help doing that. Sure will be repeating yourself over and over forever, but that is what helping others is like. To help is to explain andmake others understand the logic behind in what you need of them. Even if it means explaining the same thing time and time again. For those that cannot do should leave it to those that can. Diego hasn't the abilty to help others, some have some haven't it's easy as that.

To me Stan;ey wasn't in the wrong the people answering were in the wrong. Don't let it continue, fix it then help people the right way.

[stanley]

If I distribute a proprietary program that links against an LGPLv3-covered library that I've modified, what is the “contributor version” for purposes of determining the scope of the explicit patent license grant I'm making—is it just the library, or is it the whole combination?
--The “contributor version” is only your version of the library.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.htm ... torVersion

Which means, in case Mediacoder is published without Mplayer and Mencoder, the sources of the modified FFmpeg library must still be published.

MediaCoder DOES NOT link against any GPL-ed library. It only invokes executives just like Windows Explorer does. If Explorer invokes a GPLed program, doesn't that mean it must be distributed under GPL then?

[earthsound]

If I distribute a proprietary program that links against an LGPLv3-covered library that I've modified, what is the “contributor version” for purposes of determining the scope of the explicit patent license grant I'm making—is it just the library, or is it the whole combination?
--The “contributor version” is only your version of the library.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.htm ... torVersion

Which means, in case Mediacoder is published without Mplayer and Mencoder, the sources of the modified FFmpeg library must still be published.

MediaCoder DOES NOT link against any GPL-ed library. It only invokes executives just like Windows Explorer does. If Explorer invokes a GPLed program, doesn't that mean it must be distributed under GPL then?

Stanley, maybe I can help clear this up. First of all, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Consult a competent attorney for legal advice.

Also, I am not a developer of (nor do I work with) any of the projects that MediaCoder uses/distributes code from.

Having said that, since FFmpeg was a large reason for all of this, I'll use it as an example.

From what I can tell, FFmpeg is distributed under one of two licenses, either the GNU LGPL v2.1 or the GNU GPL v2 (or later, if you wish).

MediaCoder falls under one of these licenses by merely distributing (or copying or modifying) either the source code, libraries, or binaries (modified or not) from the FFmpeg project along with MediaCoder.

Invoking a GPL-ed library, as you put it, has nothing to do with this, as

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by

either license.

By distributing the licensed code (even in unmodified binary format), you have to follow the license, which, in the case of the GPL, means that you can copy and distribute the executable provided that you "also do one of the following":

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

In that same section, it says:

If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

I think that if you changed your installer to grab the libraries/binaries from another source, you could just offer access to the source code from the same place & you would now be in compliance.

It wouldn't require you to make MediaCoder open source again, but you could at that point.

Otherwise, you would need to do one of the above 3 points in order to comply with the license and keep distributing the executable(s) as you currently do, whether you modify the source or not.

It isn't that difficult to comply, as you can see. However, merely including a notice in the EULA that they are distributed under the GPL is not sufficient enough to comply with the license.

I hope this is helpful.

cheers