Son of Adventures with the GPL
Dear Readers,
Last episode ended as Poingo-man stood on the precipice of a very important choice: to give up the secret code and fall in with the forces of the Open Source (motto: "May the Source be with you"), or to spring for some other method of converting to PDF while jealously guarding the source, in the interest of capitalism and self.
All sides presented negative arguments. If Poingo-man gave up the source, zillions of Open-Sourcers could turn out trillions of uncontrolled copies of Email-Printer with nary a nickle tickling Poingo-man's pocket.
Or, Poingo-man could keep Email-Printer private, but have the user separately download Ghostscript, as is done in some other similar apps. Within the GPL, but chintzy.
Or, Poingo-man could say he was going open source, but in reality put out faulty code which would prevent "unauthorized" dissemination. A sure way to bring down the wrath of the warlord GNU.
Or Poingo-man could actually pay retail to have a really smart developer create his own path to the holy PDF, but hey, that costs bucks. Anyone who develops and markets new software knows that the need for bucks is a swirling vacuum which would put Hoover to shame.
The golden revelation came from a conversation with Miles Jones, president of Artifex Software Inc. who oversees the commercial licensing of freely-available Ghostscript. I observed that there are different demographics would want the executable as opposed to the source. The Open Source dudes would probably never pay for Email-Printer anyway, whereas the "I need the function" folks would never take the time or effort to compile. Miles agreed, and he is a guy who should know.
Further. allowing the source to spread could create opportunities for the Open-Source folks to be exposed to other Poingo offerings, which are priced so competetively that even they might buy something, but further, the spread of the source could prompt a corporate deal which could actually be profitable.
So Poingo-man decided, purely for business reasons, to go open source with Poingo Email Printer. The source code is freely available at www.poingo.com. When you get there, feel free to have a look around.
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posted by poingo at 5:05 PM
11 Talk to me!
The problem is more than just Ghostscript. Email Printer contains multiple open-source projects within it's code, including PDFCreator and others. The main work being done within Email Printer is done by these open-source programs, which is the work of others; not by code developed by Poingo. Also in the binaries there are (as far as I've last checked) no acknowledgements of the work of others (which is required), and also the newly released source doesn't seem to acknowledge the original authorships either. By looking at the source it appears as if Poingo developed the entire product; but in fact it's the result of "borrowed" code. The copyrighted code from other projects can be used, but they have to coincide with the original author's license, which in this case is the GPL (the problem with the PDFCreator source is that it doesn't have the proper GPL copyrights in the source files). I've dealt with other situations like this before.
Another company (development was outsourced though) known as Maui X-Stream took a large open-source project known as PearPC, which is a Macintosh PowerPC system emulator, and bundled it up along with some other related projects, renamed everything, and claimed that the entire product was developed in-house by a single person in 4 months (which is physically impossible for a project on that scale). The product was recently killed, due to the massive amount of info proving the fraud, and also due to the PearPC project preparing to file a lawsuit against MXS. What the company won't let go of though is their main product known as the VX30 video codec, which currently seems to illegally contain over 7 open-source projects (the original authors that have responded to this have been pissed) - and are selling it starting at around $900/copy, going over $10,000 - and it mostly revolves around the Xvid codec (which is the main project they stole from). But this company had another product which was interesting (had to do with PDF files) - it was called PdfConv (converts PDF files to HTML), which turned out to be a direct copy of the VeryPDF company's PDF2HTML software, which is open-source. MXS eventually gave in to the pressure (after they were contacted by VeryPDF as far as I know) and released their source code - but they had stripped all of VeryPDF's copyrights, which is illegal. So since their source wasn't even valid, more complaints were filed, and they eventually pulled the product completely.
So a good comparison would be if a company took the now open-sourced Email Printer, stripped all acknowledgements from it, renamed it, and sold it without source code; claiming it as their own.
I'm already starting to wonder if other Poingo products contain copyrighted GPL code. What usually happens is that if one product contains stuff (like in the MXS case), others do too. Many people today like to harvest off of other people's work. Instead of just illegally taking from others (which is the socialist method, employed greatly by Microsoft), you should either abide by the rules or write new original code yourself.
-eventhorizon
zillions of Open-Sourcers could turn out trillions of uncontrolled copies of Email-Printer with nary a nickle tickling Poingo-man's pocket.
This is what poingo email printer is doing with PDFCreator and others. In effect using open source programs
to do all the work hidden by a corporate identity.
As far as the nickle tickling, the open programs that poingo uses are also not getting much of a penny drop.
As I said once before somewhere else. If you go to a diner and you
find a bug in the salad, most people will check underneath the hamburger bun, check the silverware to see how clean it is,
look at the water glass for particles. You might want to check these programs for yourself. Ghostscript is not the only open source app being used. Its not PDFCreator like. It is PDFcreator
and others.
Hi,
I am the founder and one of the main developers of PDFCreator and now want to participate in this conversation.
I ma not sure if you really see the whole scope of the GPL and everything.
If you have a commercial application under the Terms of the GPL, then you do not have to give the source to everyone, you only have to provide the source for customers who bought your program, I if get it right. So there won't be billions of blood-sucking OpenSource programmers stealing your code ;-)
But what is more important than that: I can proof that the Email-Printer is based on PDFCreator 0.6.1 and thus you have done what you are afraid of: Others profit from my/our work. Even our logos and Names are kept within the Setup.
There is nothing I could do about it, if you would keep Email-Printer under the terms of the GPL. If you didn't, then your product was a violation of the GPL.
I am happy to see, that with the Site update, the source has been made available and I will have a look at it. Though the terms of the GPL are very tight, I will not urge you to fulfill every detail of it precisely, as this can become quite a lot of work, but the main ideas behind it should be fulfilled, and that looks good at the moment.
regards,
Philip
Greetings Philip,
Thank you for jumping on the boat.
I wanted to put the source out so the open source boys could have their way with it and make sure it is valid. I am a functionality designer, not a coder, and I would not even know how to compile the source.
When it appears that the code is good, I will probably tuck it away for paying customers, but for now I will let it hang out. I appreciate your looking at it.
I have personally never seen PDF Creator, nor do I know its functionality other than that of creating PDFs. Do you sell it commercially at all? Does it create JPGs, do file naming or FTP? Does it automatically attach the PDF to a newly created email?
I spent about 14 months going back and forth with my coder editing every element of product design. I have retained the entire history of this development. Believe me, I have many, many hours into this project.
Thus I am surprised when people imply that Email-Printer is a copy of PDF Creator. If it is, then great minds must think alike :-).
As usual, it has been a pleasure communicating with you. Let me know if you find anything notable about the code.
Sincerely,
Mark Meshulam
Look at the source and you will see that it is pdf creator. The name is all over the code. From the folders to inside the source to the drivers. Even if you use a compare program it is the same same with onlt slight changes. That is comsdevs work. I have seen it with Maui x Stream.
Hi Mark,
Email Printer is not exactly a copy, it more is PDFCreator with enhanced features. (so to say... the FTP stuff)
Though it is obvious that it is based on PDFCreator, the folders in the source stil have our structure, the functions are the same and also the screen that appears if errors occur.
And if you have a look in this file: Poingo Email Printer\PDFCreator\PDFCreator\Languages\deutsch.ini
You will see, that it is a PDFCreator translation File made by me and Frank.
But we do not sell PDFCreator, it is a free Project (in the GPLed meaning of liberty and the meaning of does not cost a cent).
One more thing you should do with the source code: The notice that it is GPLed is fine, you only need to add a note that it is based on PDFCreator and where the unmodified source can be obtained.
Seen strictly, you would have to mark each change you made, but that is very much work, so a note at the top, that it is modified by you is ok.
regards,
Philip
Mark, do you know if Comsdev is the development group that made Email Printer? This is the reason I'm saying stuff in here, because me and others have dealt with Comsdev before, and they are a middle-eastern (Pakistani I think) group that profits entirely off of taking and modifying open-source projects, and selling them as products to people such as you to sell. If they did develop it, and you didn't really know what Email Printer contained, then you've been scammed by them (I've seen postings by them offering software development at very low prices). They were the developers behind CherryOS (which I mentioned before), which made literally thousands of people angry (info about the scam was widely publicised - primarily MXS's unbelievable claims about how one person supposedly developed it all in 4 months, which would mean that he would have to be far better than the best programmer in the world to do that). I was threatened with lawsuits from MXS simply for showing that it contained other people's work.
Also Comsdev programs usually have very strange filenames (which almost resemble viruses), have very badly written components, are usually written in Visual Basic 6, and usually are very sloppy with removing references to the original code (for example, the VX30 software has the Xvid copyright notices within the program file itself).
Open source developers are greatly encouraged to register federal copyrights for their software, since even though licenses such as the GPL, BSD, MIT, etc licenses are valid copyrights, there is no guaranteed federal protection (and so it becomes harder to confront an infringement case if it reaches the lawsuit level).
I've got a bunch of my own open-source projects (I live in west suburbs of Chicago), and my main one is Skyscraper (at http://www.tliquest.net/skyscraper), and is currently being rewritten from VB6 to C++.
Ryan Thoryk
Unix and Networking Specialist
ryan@tliquest.net
If in fact it is Comsdev that did the work on the email printer you might want to fully check the other programs that are on your site. To make sure they don't contain code such as the email printer.
(Anonymous) SORRY forgot to put my name.
Affirmative that Comsdev did my work. They did one other app for me, Outlook Image Editor. Feel free to dissect it.
I have downloaded PDF Creator and will check it out shortly. At some point I will ask Comsdev to post a statement. Should be interesting...
For one I know that the outlook image editor uses ghostscript
which can be seen in the install directory.
but I have not checked it out
completly.
I thought I'd put a couple of my cents into the fray.
Copyrights are really cheap to register. Just $30 processing fee or so to the Library of Congress. Also, copyrights are protected and enforcable immediately as soon as pencil touches paper (or any such equivalent.) It's just easier to wield a registered copyright, and you can also recover more damages.
I'd recommend to Poingo to not do ANY business with Comsdev in the future, and work at spreading the news that they supply encumbered source code (specifically, free and open source software) which exposes the companies doing business with them to liability.
Last, I don't know about attribution rights to the source code in GPL, so I don't want to really say anything about this and look stupid.
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