Where are the source code of GP Ogg Player ???!!

[slainer68]

Last week i downloaded OGG vorbis player for GP32 which is a port of the OGG vorbis decoder from xiphus Corp.

I was really shocked to see there are no sources with the package !

Does the GP32 Ogg player author know that the OGG Vorbis decoder is protected by the General Public License ?

If the author choose to use code from the OGG decoder, he must respect this license and therefore publish the source code of his program and even if the software is alpha or beta version. The GPL says that every software that has GPL code inside it and that is published (private or public) must be released with sources and the sources must be available for all.

If the author does not want to share its sources, it does not have the right to the use some code that is protected by the GPL.
And if the author does not want to share its sources, the OGG Player should be deleted from the sites that publish it.

Slainer68.

 

[deathterrapin]

Actually the ogg decoding libs are released under a bsd style licence, which allows them to be used in closed source things.

 

[Arutha]

Direct paste from Xiph.org:

Distribution Terms in Plain English
Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and Vorbis specifications, whether in a private, public or corporate capacity. The specification is fully open to the public to be used for any purpose. However, Xiph.org and the Ogg project (xiph.org) reserve the right to set the Ogg/Vorbis specification and certify specification compliance.
Xiph.org's Vorbis software libraries (libvorbis and vorbisfile) are distributed under a BSD-like license; these libraries may be used by any application, Open or proprietary, linked or incorporated in whole, so long as acknowldgement is made to Xiph.org Foundation when using our codec source in whole or in derived works. See the file 'COPYING' in the source for all the details.

All other portions of xiph.org's reference Vorbis software are distributed under the (GNU) Library General Public License (LGPL).

Because the specification is open, third parties are welcome (and encouraged) to implement third party Vorbis software under other licenses using xiph.org's reference source as an authoritative reference.

=============

And a site with some Q/A style licensing questions: http://www.8to32.com/ogg.htm#flic

Per the 2nd paragraph: "so long as acknowledgement is made to Xiph.org Foundation..."

And so, from the OGG Player's readme: "This program uses 'Tremor' of 'Xiph.org Foundation' to decode ogg vorbis codec. " AND "Tremor is : Copyright © 2002, Xiph.org Foundation"

Seems like acknowledgement and compliance with the license to me. While I appreciate your attempted defense of the GPL, it is not in affect for these libraries. In addition, your condescendingly rude tone is not apreciated, at least by me, to someone who is merely attempting to improve the software we have on the GP32. Kudos to the author of the GP OGG Player and I hope this doesn't put him/her off from continuing development and release!

 

[slainer68]

yeah... i'm sorry, i'm completely wrong.

I was just deploring the fact that there are no more GP32 GPL projects. Why all the authors want to protect their sources ? why don't they share sources with the GP32 dev community ? they don't earn money for the work they do therefore there is nothing to lose with making their projects GPL but there are a lot of things to gain : the project will be immortal. i'm sick and tired of seeing all the dead projects on the net because their author did not want to release their sources. maybe there are affraid of giving away their code but maybe they don't know that the GPL protects their rights and guarantees that the project will be always free.

When you look on the web which dev projects are the best, the most stable, etc... there are always open source. i do not understand why on PC there are a lot of open source projects and there are often of better quality than commercial softs and not on console. For example, I have got a PlayStation 2. I was really happy when they released for the first time a real DivX player. But this player was not open source and therefore, i did know it will die soon, and this was true : the team that made the divx player for ps2 did not update it since the first release (which is still buggy and not optimized).

On the other side, when you look the Xbox DivX Player, it is totally different, it is open source and it is one of the most active project of sourceforge.net. The Xbox divX can today read a lot of files including DivX 3/4/5, Xvid, MPEG4, MP3, etc... and is very stable and usable.

I am sure that it would be a GREAT idea to begin the more future projects on GP32 under the GPL if we want more quality and fully usable programs on GP32.

Note : I've found that InfoNes is GPL : see http://sourceforge.jp/projects/infones/
And what ? the author of InfoNES-GP32 and fNes (which is dead I think) do not release the sources.
I just sent an email to the author of infoNES-GP32 to ask him the source.

 

[Arutha]

Sorry if I was overly harsh/annoying myself... I always get defensive of the people who code thing for the GP32 as my skills aren't good enough yet to do so myself. Most people who "comment" on projects for the GP32 just want to whine wanting more for free.

However, you make some excellent points and good suggestions for improving development for the GP32, and I don't know why more people don't GPL their projects. The only reason I can think of is that coding is often a source of pride. But as you mentioned, open sourcing it where many people can assist with the project not only keeps it alive but lets many people work on optimizing the areas they are best at.

At the very least, it is a good hope that maybe with some urging people without the time to continue on their project will open source it rather than letting it die away.

Thanks again for some great thoughts!

 

[WaWaWang]

a nice ogg player would be SWEEEETT!!!