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My understanding of the issue is that cdrecord is open-source (it's in the Debian repositories, which should tell you about how "free" it is), but that the author basically said that distros can't patch cdrecord on their own and all patches to the software must go through him. So he's basically taken over revision control.
You are still allowed by the GPL to take the code, modify it how you want, and publish it. The difference is that unless he buys off on the code, it is no longer cdrecord, it's a new package called bastardized-cdrecord... Seems more like a copyright issue to me, but I'm no lawyer...
There are many bad points for cdrecord :
- the author is tired to maintain cdrecord.
- the author doesnt look user-friendly.
- the author refuses to follow Linux rules like scsi emulation.
- cdrecord doesnt seem GPL.
cdrdao can only Disk at Once (DAO) (burn cd on the fly or audio cds).
growisofs can only isos.
It would be GOOD to have another GOOD cd and dvd recording open-source software !
We need it !
Cdrecord has always had issues and I am suprised that nobody has come up with a replacement yet. Apparently the author is the main problem because he doesn't readily accept patches.
J. Schilling forked cdrtools from GPL to CDDL (from Sun company), which is not GPL-compatible.
He included many restrictions in his code like "you are not allowed to modify this section" etc. :-( :-( .
Debian has forked cdrecord to wodim ... That is free, but I don't know how widely available it is for other distros
Suse is now using wodim and I am sure other distros will as well. Debian invited other distros to work on wodim, which was a pretty good gesture in my opinion. There would be a lot of duplication of effort if each distro made its own fork.
just my opinion but J. Schilling is a powerfull programmer and cdrecord is amazing.
i mean it builds on like 35 different architectures under like 7 different operating systems and suports 500 or more disk drives.
the guy just got tired of Linux people giving him crap and acting like linux is the only operating system in the world so he told us to leave him alone and i kind of see his point on this one.
cdrecord is based on CDWrite, a unix solaris program, so it is nothing new or extraordinary.
If I code a program for Linux, I will not tell Linux to change their os, but I will adapt my program to their os.
The most powerful programmer of the world is useless if he is arrogant.
get your facts straight before you go dumping on fellow hackers their dude.
beside the fact that there are liability issues with public false statements concerning peoples buisness.
we all owe the hacker community a great deal.
some actual facts:
J Schilling wrote the first generic SCSI driver in the world in 1986 as an interface to a high resolution scanner and it is an interface that has remained unchainged since.
next he wrote a disk formatting utility for solaris.
cdrecord was an outgrowth of that work.
when cdrecord was first unveild in 1996 it contained NO CDWrite code at all.
like i said earlier cdrecord is a masterpiece and model of cross platform developement that runs on (i said 7 earlier) but it's more like 30 different operating systems and accross many many different hardware platforms.
it should be studied carefully by anyone interested in cross platform develpement, just the build system alone is mind blowing.
we can argue about the nature of liscenses all day but one problem every anarchist type organization like Linux faces is the slide toward totalitarianism. If you become totalitarian about enforcing "freedom" then there is no freedom at all. Solaris has become open source which is the coolest thing.
J Shilling about GPL
Quote:
Now, what happened to GPLd software in the past few years? The Free Software Foundation heavily reduced the effort in extending Free Software and instead started a campaign to _talk_ about Free Software instead. Other software (like solaris) meanwhile did improve or become Open Source.
so how about we get out there and question all this crap about shutting out anything using the new opensolaris liscense ! or are we afraid of real "freedom" to do with software anything you like.
like make it open source.
if arrogant programmers are useless then Linux might be the most useless.
just let the hackers be. they are like jazz musicians. all a little crazy.
I like GPL because it is freedom and it protects my rights.
Open-source is not for me, because I don't want to be exploited and my code to be stolen.
Schilling ported CDWrite code from Linux to Solaris, and then again to Linux and other platforms.
Someone will write a replacement for cdrecord, and cdrecord will be forgotten.
And no, I don't like arrogant people, no matter how intelligent they are.
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