Re: [LAD] GPL Violation Alert! - I talked with the President of Beat Kangz Today

Interesting stuff, espcially when you consider that but a week or 2
ago, another chap from a university, who was unaware of the
implications of the GPL, got nailed for not releasing his code as per
a strict definition of the GPL, and took a lot of sustained abuse for
it as a result. He's moved quickly to remedy this and asked for help,
not wanting to let ignorance of the facts get in the way of doing the
right thing.

In contrast, a commercial company has simply swiped plugins,
themselves under a GPL or derivative, and ignored the licensing
requirements contained within, making no reference to the authors, and
or assigning credit within the rules. And it certainly looks like they
weren't planning to do so until it became public, and they had little
choice. Far from being a 'sweetheart" the owner has got caught with
his hand in the p2p equivalent of the software till, and has issued
soothing noise to all and sundry, in an effort to keep the potentially
unprofitable publicity to a minimum. And for the same reasons that our
newest colleague got shoved down his throat, now it seems all is
warmth and light, because "A.J" says so.

Why didn't the "wonderful" Mr. AJ contact the authors first, and
discuss what he planned to do with them before he simply took the
software, for profit? Or at least notified them, and credited them
before he started counting his money, even out of common decency?

Call me cynical, and the plugin authors certainly have the last say,
but there seems to be a rather large dose of hypocrisy going on
here....

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Michael Fisher<mfisher31@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> Everybody,
>
> Good.  I wasn't really trying to get Beat Kangz in trouble or anything
> like that.  More than anything I was just disappointed to see that these
> LADSPA plugins were being distributed with their software with not a
> single mention of credit to the actual developers.  As a computer
> programmer myself I understand the work involved in creating code.  The
> way I found out about this was me running the program from terminal and
> with the mac Console open to submit some bug reports to them.  That
> reminds me, I still need to do that.
>
> I actually know one of the staff members at beat kangz, so I really am
> not interested in causing trouble.  Credit due, where credit deserved is
> all.  And I figured the LADSPA developers should be aware of what was
> going on.  I suppose it's not really that big of a deal, because say I
> had those plugins already installed on my system, then the Beat Kangz
> software would only be searching for and loading them.  My problem was
> that their installer included them, which would be distribution of GPL'd
> software.
>
> That would be pretty awesome if they decided to open development.
> Really, it would only make their products much stronger.  If their using
> LADSPA plugins, I can only assume that development is taking place in a
> Linux/*nix type environment as they are obviously familiar with Linux
> Audio stuff.  Wouldn't surprise me if the actual hardware "box" is
> running an embedded linux of some sort.
>
> On the lighter side...  The Virtual Beat Thang is in my opinion pretty
> nice.  A few bugs here and there (the thing just came out), but really
> not a bad peace of work.  Great drum sounds.  I have it working with
> jack-osx which makes it even more powerful.  Might as well just make it
> natively support jack in my opinion.
>
> -Mike
>
> Ronald Stewart wrote:
>> GPL Violation Alert! - I talked with the President of Beat Kangz today
>> his name is A.J. and he is a sweetheart and his head is on straight.
>> He is currently going to work on an official statement and he wants to
>> embrace and thank the developers and give the authors credit on their
>> software and materials moving forward.  Additionally, Beat Kangz is
>> interested in opening up development with authors to make Beat Kangz
>> even better including funding open source development and projects.
>>
>> I think the hiccup is that they didn't know how to properly
>> thank/engage in regards to GPL and such.  It's sounds like more of a
>> noob thing and definitely not a jerk thing.  Let's give these guys the
>> benefit of the doubt because their heads are on stragiht.
>>
>> Stay tuned.
>>
>> Much Love.
>>
>> Thank you
>>
>> Ronald Stewart
>> Creative Director
>> Trinity Audio Group Inc.
>> 9854 National Blvd. #322
>> Los Angeles CA 90034
>> 310-733-9285
>> ronaldjstewart@email-addr-hidden <mailto:ronaldjstewart@email-addr-hidden>
>> www.indamixx.com <http://www.indamixx.com>
>
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