[XviD-devel] Possible GPL violation by Nvideo Technology

[Michael Militzer]

Hi,

thanks for pointing this out. We can confirm that there are XviD strings
in the software but we didn't have a closer look yet (e.g. how XviD is
actually integrated in their app etc. (not that it would make a
difference)). Will investigate further...

Regards,
Michael


Quoting Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski <dominik at rangers.eu.org>:

> Hello, folks.
> 
> You probably haven't heard about NPlayer[1], supposedly Nvideo Tech's own
> product.
> 
> They advertised it in June 2004 on doom9 forum[2], but vanished quickly
> when someone uncovered it as a potential MPlayer ripoff.
> 
> It isn't so obvious now, probably because they obfuscated the strings in
> the binaries more thoroughly (some kind of compression, I guess).
> 
> We (MPlayer team) never investigated it[3], but maybe it's time to change
> that.
> 
> What does it have to do with XviD? Well, now they're selling NConvert[4],
> which seems to contain at least XviD 0.9.1 copyright notice in one of the
> files that get installed:
> 
> [~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/nvideo-tech/firmwire]$ md5sum enccore.firm
> 7ed2323299043249e02246c7001aea50  enccore.firm
> [~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/nvideo-tech/firmwire]$ strings enccore.firm |
> egrep 'XviD|source code'
> This software is derived from the GNU GPL XviD codec (0.9.1).
> Your software distributor has to give access to its source code.
> 
> I thought you might be interested in investigating that.
> 
> Regards,
> R.
> 
> [1] http://www.nvideo-tech.com/nplayer_detail.htm
> [2] http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78043
> [3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.mplayer.devel/18174
> [4] http://www.nvideo-tech.com/nconvert_detail.htm
> 
> PS. While googling for the copyright notice, I came across this:
>
http://www.pdaphonehome.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25576&perpage=20&pagenumber=2
> PS2. I guess nobody is buying "their" software or else we would've
>      heard about it by now...
> 
> -- 
> MPlayer RPMs maintainer: http://rpm.greysector.net/mplayer/
> "I am Grey. I stand between the candle and the star. We are Grey.
>  We stand between the darkness ... and the light."
>         -- Delenn in Grey Council in Babylon 5:"Babylon Squared"
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