Yep.. that's the GNU mascot.
The Modular Systems developers behind the GreenLife Emerald Viewer have terminated the rights of an another viewer to use their software as a basis for creating a derivative.
Emerald Viewer has rapidly become one of the Second Life grid’s most popular third-party viewers, and under its GNU General Public license 2.0, distributes the open source code to allow others to make alterations and improvements.
However, it has also served as the base code for making viewers with more darker motives behind them. As such, the Modular Systems developers have spotted an opening in that one of these viewers does not open source their code, and is therefore in violation of the GNU General Public license.
The particular section of the license which is stated as being violated is as follows:
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
By failing to provide the full open source code, the viewer in question has not complied with the GPLv2 license, and as a result, Modular Systems have revoked the rights for them to use Emerald Viewer’s source code for any future software releases.
As Modular Systems own the copyright to Emerald Viewer, they are now in a position to file copyright infringement notices and take legal action against the rogue viewer.
There’s a slight irony in an illicit Second Life viewer refusing to release its code in case a rival illicit viewer stole its copybot functions, which has now led to its source provider revoking their license to use its source.
There’s a technical term for that, I think..
It’s called Karma.
Clementine Ishtari on November 7, 2009
It’s a step in the right direction! Now if we could only get LL to pay more attention to the ways content theft occurs…
Scarp Godenot on November 7, 2009
Why can’t the lab disable logins by detecting the type of suspect viewer and stopping the login with a warning message such as “if you attempt to login again with this viewer, your account will be suspended.”?
Prad Prathivi on November 7, 2009
As far as I know, you can cloak a viewer to match another viewer’s identity, or simply not give it a viewer identity at all.
Thoria on November 7, 2009
Yep, an illicit viewer can simply lie that it is another viewer, even the official one. And, given they’re already about theft, why wouldn’t they?
Edward Vellhi on November 7, 2009
Simple solution: enable official viewer to return response encrypted by undocumented algorithm, program server to disallow any connection not returning the proper response. LL will eventually have to decide between supporting open viewers and protecting against content theft, but it’s certainly possible to do the latter at the expense of the former.
Balp Allen on November 9, 2009
Strange cant comment on Edward.
It not that simple, if you are to be able to log in with that viewer using the secret stuff the secret stuff has to be stored on the doing the log in. A user of this computer can easy study what there computer does and learn who the algorithm and key.
The4re is no possibility to give the users the key to log and at the same time try to restrict them you can only use this key if you don’t intent to copy stuff. When you let users in they can copy stuff. The only possibility is to make buying copies more attractive to most users that copying them.
I’m a firm believer this can be done, but it have to combine several actions. People have to know who made something, if you don’t know who made the original you can’t choose the right copy. Price have to be affordable, an item of freebie quality for 2000 lindens is just asking for people to copy. Availability, the customer have to find the legitimate vendor first.
Creators, “developers” and linden labs have to work on all these issues. Most viewer developers are also contents creators. Somehow a creative mind tend to be both. I hope Linden Labs have also send a DMCA notice to google about this site. Knowing LL legal they usually are slower and starts with a negotiation with the creator. This process have had some good results in the past. I don’t however think for a second the creator of neillife will ever follow copyright laws.
Prokofy Neva on November 7, 2009
Er, let me go you one further, dears.
There’s supreme irony in the new alts of these devs who release what they claim is a clean viewer, Emerald, banning one of their fellow script kiddies for making a copybot viewer that is closed, when they themselves were busy making copybot-enabled viewers themselves on their other accounts only months ago.
Again, read it in their own words, they themselves made v-life and continued to work on viewers like cryolife that sprang from Emeraldlife and *enabled and authorized and encouraged* the copybot function and also constantly intellectually justified it by telling everyone on forums that you can’t stop copyright theft except through lawyers.
So now they are following the kind of social policy we said should have been used on *Emerald developer* Discrete Dreamscape on the P-JIRA, where he posted the copybot code (!), that Rob Linden said was fine to leave out there for months. Today, Rob Linden has left the lab. Discrete Dreamscape is permabanned. And Fractured Crystal and the other new alts of Emerald are going through the motions of compliance by cooking up high-profile capers like this one and getting you to blog on it.
They are no more trustworthy now than they were when Discrete Dreamscape *who remains an Emerald developer* — hello! published the copybot on the JIRA and kept it there for 2 months.
Please, stop doing their bagwork for their Prad. Of course, now that you work for Rezzable, no accident, comrade.
TiredOfProk on November 23, 2009
Shut up Prokofy.
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Lizzie Lexington on November 8, 2009
Thanks for this post Prad, it really helped to clarify things for me.
Virtual Bob on November 29, 2009
… but will stop the developer from using their code when anyone can download and compile it?
Adric Antfarm on November 29, 2009
Prad?
Are you out there?
We would love to see a post from you.
Hope all is okay.
Article Submission on December 4, 2009
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ZOmMy on December 6, 2009
hi every one i had Emerald Viewer on my pc then i just installed a new windows then every time i install it it dose not open =/ it keep saying \” the application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect . reinstallin the application may fix this problem … and i already reinstalled it many times and still the same problem and then i installed the SL viewer and its workin so fine … can any one tell me what i should do or why its givin me this error ? =/
Teeth Whitening New York on March 4, 2010
Sadly copying software is very popular nowadays. There needs to be more motive to buy software as opposed to copying them.