[skunark]

MQA meets open source:
https://www.musicpd.org/news/2018/02/gpl-violation-on-cary-audio-pms500/
https://www.caryaudio.com/products/dms-500-network-audio-player/
I hope Cary Audio can abide by the GPL license and open source their changes quickly. 

Jim

[JohnR]

I'm not sure. I always understood the GPL to refer to source code, and to not restrict linking to/from proprietary libraries.

After all, the GPL is a copyright licence not a usage licence.

However, I know that in the Wordpress world, the claim is that even calling the API of a GPL program means the calling program must be under GPL. I have had great difficulty seeing how this can be the case. It does appear that in the end, the winner is whoever can pay lawyers the most to bully others into submission.

[skunark]

Its license and a copyleft

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html
They have to provide the source to anyone that ask for it otherwise the license is revoked.  The mpd author has noticed the changes so Cary Audio might be sol.

Hopefully they created an a generic decoder API to use with the propriety mqa decoder. Otherwise they will have to opensource their mqa decoder or up to a common API. They probably should be requesting mpd be dual licensed so they dont have to expose their changes if that ship hasnt sailed.

The Google/Oracle java lawsuit was that API can not be copyrighted hence Googles rewrite of java components that sparked the lawsuit.   

Jim

[JohnR]

I would imagine that the core of the MQA decoder was written by MQA, so I doubt that Cary can release the source code to it, if they even have it. Similar with RAAT server.

I guess this has me wondering though. Does the GPL mean that any company that ships a product that contains Linux is obliged to publish all of their source code on request?

[skunark]

Yes, i think every company that ships with linux is required to provide the source code.  If you don't modify it you can mostly just point to the linux distro and GitHub repos.    If you want to customize anything and not release the source you need to look for BSD style licenses and not GPL.   

If MQA worked with Cary Audio to integrate their decoder, that's probably won't shield them from having to release the source code.  There's plenty of examples with big tech where they had to open source a driver to avoid the lawsuit.   This is where the popcorn emoji would come in handy as speculation on what will happen could be very boring or SCO entertaining...

I'm curious about MP3s with MPD though since it's hasn't always been open and it's always worked with MPD.  Its possible that the mp3 decoder had a clause on to allow for third party libraries or was just dual licensed.   I assume MQA would have to follow the same sort of approach as it's lossy cousin.

[JohnR]

Here is Roon's response: http://mailman.blarg.de/pipermail/mpd-devel/2018-January/000689.html

[skunark]

Seems that Room is on the right path, but Cary Audio is in a world of hurt.

(we are still catching up on the their emails)
http://mailman.blarg.de/pipermail/mpd-devel/2018-February/000701.html

You can't exactly admit the mistake, plan to fix the issue and move on without complying to the source code request.  Key developer is rather upset with Cary Audio's massive screw up, their naive response and with their facebook updates promoting a product that violates GPL could mean you really need to install the emoji here.  I assume anyone selling the product while violating GPL could come back and bite them.

> Again, once again: your license to use MPD is terminated.  You have three options:
>
> 1. seek forgiveness from all MPD copyright holders to reinstate the
>    GPL
>
> 2. choose the GPLv3 instead which allows reinstating the licesen
>    without explicit forgiveness (beware of the other implications!)
>
> 3. stop using MPD at all

I'm guessing option 2 will require everything they do to be available for modifications and probably will require DRM hooks to be removed. 

I wonder if future versions of MPD will be GPLv3 only license, it less friendly for commercial products but would be more in tune with the open source community concerns with DRM.

[skunark]

I just read his archives of previous months, does seem like he is going through every vendor and checking for GPL compliance and he is expecting a link to download the source on the vendor website.

[skunark]

Looks like Cary Audio and musicpd main developer made up:
http://mailman.blarg.de/pipermail/mpd-devel/2018-March/000729.html

Based on the earlier email exchange, i'm rather curious how they settled their differences and I wonder if that extends to all the GPL developers for mpd?   With GPL'ed licensed software does a minor stakeholder have the same power as the majority stakeholder since it's a collective? ....We will probably never know why the change of heart.

Some of the comments in the email exchange are interesting though... 
http://mailman.blarg.de/pipermail/mpd-devel/2018-March/000728.html

I do agree with that statement and IMHO this might be worse than Lexicon repackaging an Oppo blu-ray player slapping on THX while still failing the certification ignoring the huge markup they applied.  Still probably not as shady as the $2k hdmi and $6k cat8 cable companies.