[Arm-netbook] Allwinner's LGPL violation

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 9:23 PM, Lauri Kasanen <cand at gmx.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There's bit of a stink over Allwinner using LGPL'd code in their
> binary-only media lib, and then a few days later they try to conceal it
> by changing function names. Luke, what is your take on that?

 it reminds me of the illegal activities of a company that endeavoured
to claim ownership of samba, back in 1996.  they used perl scripts to
obfuscate the code, strip out all copyright messages, claim ownership
of the result and then tried to sell it for $USD 50,000 a shot.

 looking at what luc and oliver wrote, it doesn't appear that this was
*deliberate* policy of Allwinner: i know for a fact that Eva has taken
this up in the past with the Directors, but the Director's
instructions clearly do not appear to be "filtering down" to the
engineers.  i recall tom cubie's former manager in fact *deliberately*
violating the instructions given to him by the Directors, because he
genuinely believed that he was "protecting" allwinner by doing so.

 so... they have a lot to get sorted out.  i've sent another message
warning them and giving them some advice of people to speak to, but
honestly i think the best thing right now would be for some of the
Copyright holders to contact the SFLC and the Linux Foundation to at
least begin "Discussions With A Bit Of Clout".

l.