[linux-audio-dev] Fw: Open letter to Steve Dekorte

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Subject: [linux-audio-dev] Fw: Open letter to Steve Dekorte
From: Erik de Castro Lopo (erikd-lad_AT_mega-nerd.com)
Date: Sun Oct 26 2003 - 09:27:28 EET

Hi all,

I just thought some you you might be interested in how a small mnority
of the MacOSX world sees the fruits of our hard work.

Regards,
Erik

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 18:20:39 +1100
From: Erik de Castro Lopo <nospam_AT_mega-nerd.com>
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Open letter to Steve Dekorte

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  nospam_AT_mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"He who writes the code gets to choose his license, and nobody
else gets to complain" -- Linus Torvalds

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