Open letter to Steve Dekorte
Erik de Castro Lopo
Dear Mr Dekorte,
This has been emailed directly to you as well as being posted to
Usenet in the groups gnu.misc.discuss and comp.sys.mac.apps.
I am writing to you in regard to your shareware application for
MacOSX available here:
http://www.dekorte.com/Software/OSX/SoundConverter/
Please also note that I am not charging you with contravening
anyone's software license. I am however charging you with
behaviour that is both morally repugnant and deceitful.
When I download the tarball you provide (for which you charge
US$10 for a full license) I find the following files:
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/ffmpeg
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/macconverter
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/mppdec
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/qt_export
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/ringtonetools
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/scm2wav
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/sndfile-convert
SoundConverter.app/Contents/Resources/sox
Here is some information about these programs:
Program Size Author Licence
--------------------------------------------------------------
ffmpeg 1.46M Fabrice Bellard LGPL
macconverter 17k ? ?
mppdec 85k Frank Klemm GPL
qt_export 56k David Van Brink Lootware???
ringtonetools 94k Michael Kohn Non-comm. use only
scm2wav 15k Christoph Leuzinger MIT License
sndfile-convert 795k Erik de Castro Lopo GPL/LGPL
sox 3.12M various LGPL
Now compare this with the only part of this tarball actually
written by you, the SoundConverter binary which weighs in at
399k.
From the looks of this, your contribution to the total is
significantly less than 10%. I would also argue that your
contribution (a couple of hours with the MacOSX GUI builder)
is far less that the amount of time and effort put in by the
other people whose work you are using.
How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for
work to which you have contributed well less than 10% of the
total time and effort.
Furthermore, on the web site listed above, you display a credit
for the guy who designed the icon, while none of the people who
wrote the actual code get any credit whatsoever. Interestingly,
many of the licenses above (GPL, LGPL, MIT etc) were developed
to foster openness in the field of software development, much
like the openness of scientific research. In scientific research
circles, it is considered important to credit the people whose
work yours builds on. In this case, you have failed miserably
to do so. If you were a researcher you would be charged with
academic misconduct and fraud.
Now many people might think that you are just doing what Redhat,
Suse and the other Linux distributors are doing; bundling up
other people's software and selling it. However, I see a big
difference. Redhat and Suse make huge contributions to the Free
Software world; Redhat supporting GCC and GNU libc and Suse
suporting KDE and ALSA.
In light of all this, I am curious to know, what is your
contribution? If you aren't contributing I suggest that you
take all three of following three:
a) Immediately, release the source code to SoundConverter
under a suitable free license.
b) Donate all the money you have collected so far to the
Free Software Foundation or a recognised charity of your
choice.
c) Add some credits on your webpage to the people who did
the vast majority of the work.
I look forward to reading your response in one of the above
public newsgroups.
Regards,
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo nos...@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Q: What do you call a christian who accidently read the bible
with his brain turned on?
A: An atheist
Erik de Castro Lopo
From: Steve Dekorte <steve@...>
To: Erik de Castro Lopo <nospam@...>
Subject: Re: Open letter to Steve Dekorte
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 01:31:00 -0700
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.606)
Hi Erik,
Less than that.
> (a couple of hours with the MacOSX GUI builder)
Far more than that.
> is far less that the amount of time and effort put in by the
> other people whose work you are using.
Fair enough.
> How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for
> work to which you have contributed well less than 10% of the
> total time and effort.
I don't understand the question. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything,
so I don't see what needs to be justified. If anyone wants to use the
command line versions instead, they can.
> Furthermore, on the web site listed above, you display a credit
> for the guy who designed the icon, while none of the people who
> wrote the actual code get any credit whatsoever.
Please see the SoundConverter's "Licenses" menu item.
> Interestingly,
> many of the licenses above (GPL, LGPL, MIT etc) were developed
> to foster openness in the field of software development, much
> like the openness of scientific research. In scientific research
> circles, it is considered important to credit the people whose
> work yours builds on. In this case, you have failed miserably
> to do so. If you were a researcher you would be charged with
> academic misconduct and fraud.
I don't understand the problem. The licenses are included in the app
menu as required. As far as I know, I haven't violated anyone's
license. (Please let me know if I'm wrong.) If they didn't want the
software used this way, it seems to me they would have made that clear
in the licenses.
> Now many people might think that you are just doing what Redhat,
> Suse and the other Linux distributors are doing; bundling up
> other people's software and selling it. However, I see a big
> difference. Redhat and Suse make huge contributions to the Free
> Software world; Redhat supporting GCC and GNU libc and Suse
> suporting KDE and ALSA.
Well, I offered to send money to the sox folks (which is 95% of
SoundConverter, really) but no one responded. And I paid for a
commercial license for ringtones. As for contributing to open source
projects, that's what I spend most of my time doing (See
http://www.iolanguage.com/ - about 50K lines of my code). I'm using my
shareware to pay my bills so I can work on fun open source projects.
Also, you'll notice about half my apps are freeware.
> In light of all this, I am curious to know, what is your
> contribution? If you aren't contributing I suggest that you
> take all three of following three:
>
> a) Immediately, release the source code to SoundConverter
> under a suitable free license.
> b) Donate all the money you have collected so far to the
> Free Software Foundation or a recognised charity of your
> choice.
That would be difficult as it's been paying my rent and food bills.
Some of us don't have the luxury of a full time job to support our
software side projects.
> c) Add some credits on your webpage to the people who did
> the vast majority of the work.
Ok, that's a good idea.
Btw, I understand where you're generally coming from (in your concern
for open source software), but I really don't think I've done anything
wrong here. Anyways, I hope I've addressed your concerns.
> I look forward to reading your response in one of the above
> public newsgroups.
I don't have usenet access at the moment. Please forward my response.
Thanks,
-- Steve
seaside
Am 26.10.2003 8:20 Uhr schrieb "Erik de Castro Lopo" unter
<nos...@mega-nerd.com> in 3F9B75C7...@mega-nerd.com:
Erik de Castro Lopo
Steve Dekorte wrote:
>
> > How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for
> > work to which you have contributed well less than 10% of the
> > total time and effort.
>
> I don't understand the question. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything,
> so I don't see what needs to be justified. If anyone wants to use the
> command line versions instead, they can.
Yes, but people who send you ten dollars are paying you for something
that is predominantly the work of others.
> > Furthermore, on the web site listed above, you display a credit
> > for the guy who designed the icon, while none of the people who
> > wrote the actual code get any credit whatsoever.
>
> Please see the SoundConverter's "Licenses" menu item.
I actually have not had a chance to run this program.
> As for contributing to open source
> projects, that's what I spend most of my time doing (See
> http://www.iolanguage.com/ - about 50K lines of my code).
Well, I must say that I am pleased to see that this is not as
blatant a case as it first seemed.
> I'm using my
> shareware to pay my bills so I can work on fun open source projects.
> Also, you'll notice about half my apps are freeware.
As an author of Free Software myself, I can appreciate the difficulty
of trying to pay the bills and also have time for Free Software.
However, I personally would not be happy to receive money for work
done by someone else.
> That would be difficult as it's been paying my rent and food bills.
> Some of us don't have the luxury of a full time job to support our
> software side projects.
I don't consider my current job a luxury. In fact it is a huge compromise
that I endure so that I can feed, cloth and house my family.
> Btw, I understand where you're generally coming from (in your concern
> for open source software), but I really don't think I've done anything
> wrong here. Anyways, I hope I've addressed your concerns.
I maintain that I have no problem with you releasing software that is
predominantly yours as shareware. For instance, if you wrote and released
a sound file editor as shareware and it used libsndfile for file I/O, I
would do nothing but welcome it.
However, since the vast majority of SoundConverter is not your work, I
think it should at least be freeware. Since such a large portion of the
work is released as source code under recognised Free Software licenses,
maybe your small contribution should also be open source.
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo nos...@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"I once worked for a company where as part of the BS5750 "Quality"
process I attended a meeting where I was informed that it was Company
Policy not to use free software. When I asked him for his written
authorisation for me to remove X Windows from our Sun workstations,
he backtracked." -- Phil Hunt
Dave Hinz
>
> Yes, but people who send you ten dollars are paying you for something
> that is predominantly the work of others.
Is he in violation of the GPL by doing what he is doing? If your
complaint is along those lines, it looks like he's open to "Hey,
paragraph 5 says this... and you're doing that..." kind of things.
> I maintain that I have no problem with you releasing software that is
> predominantly yours as shareware. For instance, if you wrote and released
> a sound file editor as shareware and it used libsndfile for file I/O, I
> would do nothing but welcome it.
This makes sense.
> However, since the vast majority of SoundConverter is not your work, I
> think it should at least be freeware.
If he's the author, he gets to decide that, doesn't he. If he is complying
with the licesnes for each of the other programs he's using in it, then
this comes down to "I wouldn't charge for it so you shouldn't either",
which isn't a valid statement.
> Since such a large portion of the
> work is released as source code under recognised Free Software licenses,
> maybe your small contribution should also be open source.
This would be good point for someone who understands the licenses involved
to jump in. If he's complying with the licenses, then the people who wrote
those components have already agreed to this sort of use; if he's not,
then he should change to comply with the licenses.
Dave Hinz
John Hasler
> Btw, I understand where you're generally coming from (in your concern for
> open source software), but I really don't think I've done anything wrong
> here.
You haven't.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI
Isaac
> Steve Dekorte writes:
>> Btw, I understand where you're generally coming from (in your concern for
>> open source software), but I really don't think I've done anything wrong
>> here.
>
> You haven't.
I didn't check the actual licenses, but the original post indicated
that one of the parts had a non-commercial use only license. Perhaps
he has violated that one.
Isaac
Tristan Miller
It's obvious Steve's not violating any software licences here, so it seems
your complaint simply boils down to, "I don't feel the original code you've
written which ties these free programs together is worth $10."
Erik, believe me, I am probably the last person to be dragging
free-marketeer arguments into a dispute such as this, but: relax, man. If
his code really isn't worth $10, the market will sort it out soon enough.
Nobody will buy his program, and he'll be forced to lower the price and/or
release the source. If you really feel strongly about it, you can speed
the process along by writing your own program which duplicates
SoundConverter's functionality and selling it for less than $10, or even
giving it away for free. After all, if Steve's program only took a couple
of hours to write, as you claim, surely this would be a more efficacious
course of action than publically decrying his alleged greed.
If the people who wrote the various components used by Steve's program
didn't want them being repackaged and exploited for profit, they wouldn't
have released them under the GPL and other open-source licences which
permit such activity.
Regards,
Tristan
--
_
_V.-o Tristan Miller [en,(fr,de,ia)] >< Space is limited
/ |`-' -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= <> In a haiku, so it's hard
(7_\\ http://www.nothingisreal.com/ >< To finish what you
Russ Allbery
> I didn't check the actual licenses, but the original post indicated that
> one of the parts had a non-commercial use only license. Perhaps he has
> violated that one.
He said he paid for a commercial license for that application.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Isaac
> Isaac <is...@latveria.castledoom.org> writes:
>
>> I didn't check the actual licenses, but the original post indicated that
>> one of the parts had a non-commercial use only license. Perhaps he has
>> violated that one.
>
> He said he paid for a commercial license for that application.
In that case I don't see anything to complain about.
Isaac
Russ Allbery
Yup, me either.
Erik de Castro Lopo
>
> If you really feel strongly about it, you can speed
> the process along by writing your own program which duplicates
> SoundConverter's functionality and selling it for less than $10, or even
> giving it away for free.
That may be what I will end up doing. The problem is, this
will take up time writing some MacOSX specific crap that
I would otherwise devote to writing cross platform code.
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo nos...@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"Reality is just a crutch for people that can't handle CyberSpace!!"
- Hank Duderstadt
Tristan Miller
In article <3F9C27E0...@mega-nerd.com>, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
>> If you really feel strongly about it, you can speed
>> the process along by writing your own program which duplicates
>> SoundConverter's functionality and selling it for less than $10, or even
>> giving it away for free.
>
> That may be what I will end up doing. The problem is, this
> will take up time writing some MacOSX specific crap that
> I would otherwise devote to writing cross platform code.
Looks to me like his program is just a fancy script with a spiffy GUI
slapped on. Obviously the sound components can't be too tightly integrated
or he'd be violating the licences. Should be rather easy to write a
cross-platform program which does the same thing -- doesn't wxWindows work
on Windows, Linux, and Mac?
Jerry Kindall
<nos...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> Tristan Miller wrote:
> >
> > If you really feel strongly about it, you can speed
> > the process along by writing your own program which duplicates
> > SoundConverter's functionality and selling it for less than $10, or even
> > giving it away for free.
>
> That may be what I will end up doing. The problem is, this
> will take up time writing some MacOSX specific crap that
> I would otherwise devote to writing cross platform code.
Would it take more than, say, $10 worth of your time?
--
Jerry Kindall, Seattle, WA <http://www.jerrykindall.com/>
Send only plain text messages under 32K to the Reply-To address.
This mailbox is filtered aggressively to thwart spam and viruses.
phil hunt
>Steve Dekorte wrote:
>> > How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for
>> > work to which you have contributed well less than 10% of the
>> > total time and effort.
>>
>> I don't understand the question. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything,
>> so I don't see what needs to be justified. If anyone wants to use the
>> command line versions instead, they can.
>
>Yes, but people who send you ten dollars are paying you for something
>that is predominantly the work of others.
But isn't it always like that with software? If I write a program,
I'll be wirting it in a high-level language (designed and
implemented by other people), and it'll use operating system
functions and resources (again, designed and implemented by other
people).
>However, since the vast majority of SoundConverter is not your work, I
>think it should at least be freeware. Since such a large portion of the
>work is released as source code under recognised Free Software licenses,
>maybe your small contribution should also be open source.
If his contribution is so small, and you disapprove of what he is
doing, why not write your own open source program that replaces what
his program does, and encourage people to use it instead?
As far as I can tell, Steve has done nothing wrong, assuming he
hasn't infringed the licenses for any of the open source programs
distributed wityh his app.
--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: <zen2...@zen.co.ku>, but first subtract 275 and reverse
the last two letters).
Christopher Browne
<nos...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for
> work to which you have contributed well less than 10% of the
> total time and effort.
I was under the impression that the FSF encouraged charging As Much As
Possible for free software.
Indeed, quoting the relevant essay:
"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you
should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that
you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the
cost. Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to
charge as much as they wish or can."
Perhaps the cost is offensive to Erik de Castro Lopo, and nothing
stops someone from trying to create their own replica of the software,
and charging less than $10 for it...
--
"cbbrowne","@","acm.org"
http://cbbrowne.com/info/unix.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #181. "I will decree that all hay be
shipped in tightly-packed bales. Any wagonload of loose hay attempting
to pass through a checkpoint will be set on fire."
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>
Erik de Castro Lopo
>
> In article <3F9C27E0...@mega-nerd.com>, Erik de Castro Lopo
> <nos...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:
>
> > Tristan Miller wrote:
> > >
> > > If you really feel strongly about it, you can speed
> > > the process along by writing your own program which duplicates
> > > SoundConverter's functionality and selling it for less than $10, or even
> > > giving it away for free.
> >
> > That may be what I will end up doing. The problem is, this
> > will take up time writing some MacOSX specific crap that
> > I would otherwise devote to writing cross platform code.
>
> Would it take more than, say, $10 worth of your time?
The issue has nothing to do with me not wanting to pay $10
for this thing.
I have already contributed WAAAAAY more than $10 worth of my
time to it. The sndfile-convert binary (700k of the total)
is from my libsndfile project (under the LGPL/GPL).
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo nos...@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"Don't hate the media. Become the media."
- Jello Biafra
David Kastrup
> How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for work to
> which you have contributed well less than 10% of the total time and
> effort.
Ever heard of Linux distributions? The distributors put in far less
than 10%.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
simpl...@yahoo.it
<nos...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> Jerry Kindall wrote:
> >
> > In article <3F9C27E0...@mega-nerd.com>, Erik de Castro Lopo
> > <nos...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Tristan Miller wrote:
> > > >
> > > > If you really feel strongly about it, you can speed
> > > > the process along by writing your own program which duplicates
> > > > SoundConverter's functionality and selling it for less than $10, or even
> > > > giving it away for free.
> > >
> > > That may be what I will end up doing. The problem is, this
> > > will take up time writing some MacOSX specific crap that
> > > I would otherwise devote to writing cross platform code.
> >
> > Would it take more than, say, $10 worth of your time?
>
> The issue has nothing to do with me not wanting to pay $10
> for this thing.
What he meant was that since you seem to think it will take up time
writing some MacOSX specific crpa, could that time be worth about the
same $10 that Steve is asking? You have identified in your own arguing
precisely why Steve is asking $10 for SoundConverter.
Rob.
Ben Pfaff
> Erik de Castro Lopo <nos...@mega-nerd.com> writes:
>
> > How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for work to
> > which you have contributed well less than 10% of the total time and
> > effort.
>
> Ever heard of Linux distributions? The distributors put in far less
> than 10%.
Have you ever worked on a distribution? It takes a lot more time
and effort that you seem to think.
--
"...dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral
pour encourager les autres."
--Voltaire, _Candide_
David Kastrup
> David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > Erik de Castro Lopo <nos...@mega-nerd.com> writes:
> >
> > > How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for work to
> > > which you have contributed well less than 10% of the total time and
> > > effort.
> >
> > Ever heard of Linux distributions? The distributors put in far less
> > than 10%.
>
> Have you ever worked on a distribution? It takes a lot more time
> and effort that you seem to think.
Of course it takes a lot of time and effort. On a typical commercial
distribution, maybe about 20 people are working (unless we are talking
Slackware) on a permanent basis. They are putting in packages that
have been developed fulltime by several hundreds of people. So the
distributors put in less than 10%.
That's the point of free software.
Erik de Castro Lopo
>
> Erik de Castro Lopo <nos...@mega-nerd.com> writes:
>
> > How can you possibly justify pocketing US$10 per license for work to
> > which you have contributed well less than 10% of the total time and
> > effort.
>
> Ever heard of Linux distributions? The distributors put in far less
> than 10%.
Let me see Linux distributions:
Debian : not for profit.
Redhat : funds GCC, GLIBC, .....
SuSe : funds ALSA, KDE, .....
The contributions seem pretty decent to me.
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo nos...@mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Seen on usenet (possibly a quote from an IBM exec):
"Each large company needs its Vietnam, and Microsoft will
experience it with NT..."
Doc O'Leary
Erik de Castro Lopo <nos...@mega-nerd.com> wrote:
> I have already contributed WAAAAAY more than $10 worth of my
> time to it. The sndfile-convert binary (700k of the total)
> is from my libsndfile project (under the LGPL/GPL).
Bluntly: big fucking deal. All Steve is doing is asking for $10 for
his work. What you're asking is the ability to whine in perpetuity for
releasing your code for free. Sorry, you don't get that. I have
frameworks that uses public domain code and I ask money for. Someone
could actually use them in an app without paying me a cent or crediting
me at all and ask $1000 for it and, you know what, I wouldn't care or
complain. That is how I released it and that is how it can be expected
to be used. Unless you can claim a license violation, shut up. Use a
different license in the future if you want a kick-back from other
developers.
Dave Hinz
>
> Let me see Linux distributions:
What is your argument? I thought it was about licensing, but you
seem to have dropped that once I asked which licesnes the guy is
violating. Now it's about worthiness of cause being donated to?
Are you proposing that there is a real problem, or just whining that
someone got off their ass, provided some value-added programming and
is choosing to sell it per the terms of the licenses of the products
he is incorporating?
If it's so easy, why don't you write one and release it GPL or
something?
phil hunt
>
>The issue has nothing to do with me not wanting to pay $10
>for this thing.
>
>I have already contributed WAAAAAY more than $10 worth of my
>time to it. The sndfile-convert binary (700k of the total)
>is from my libsndfile project (under the LGPL/GPL).
Given that Steve's use of your code complies with the licenses
you've released it under, why are you complaining? Did you not
intend to release it under these terms?
chris
don't want people to be allowed to use your code for anything they like
(under the rules of the GPL of course) without giving you anything, then
don't release it under the GPL! If you want a more restrictive licence,
but it under one and be done with it. Of course then you'll have the
problem you can't interface with the giant "GPL compatable"
conglomerate... but thats life.
Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
Tim Smith
>> If you really feel strongly about it, you can speed the process along by
>> writing your own program which duplicates SoundConverter's functionality
>> and selling it for less than $10, or even giving it away for free.
>
> That may be what I will end up doing. The problem is, this will take up
> time writing some MacOSX specific crap that I would otherwise devote to
> writing cross platform code.
If it will take up so much of your valuable time for you to do it, then
maybe the other guy's $10 price isn't out of line after all.
--
Evidence Eliminator is worthless. See evidence-eliminator-sucks.com
--Tim Smith