The fact is, we have nothing to hide. Mr. Jim Kinney already proved
himself unable to cope with the fact that he made a serious mistake. I
doubt Escient can backup its bad tatics with good code.
Everything we are up to will be eventually GPLed. So Escient would be
able to use it too. Now, Mr. Kinney, think about what else will it do to
your company reputation to lurk GPL development efforts in search of
code and solutions your developers can not invent, instead of actively
helping the community.
Taking the hint from something I saw in /. today, we should really
discuss a license for the data we are about to gather, in order to
prevent more harming to the community.
cheers
Paulo
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freecddb-developer nospam at bigred.lcs.mit.edu
> [mailto:owner-freecddb-developer nospam at bigred.lcs.mit.edu]On Behalf Of Mike
> Oliphant
> Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 1999 3:42 PM
> To: cdindex nospam at freeamp.org; freecddb-developer nospam at bigred.lcs.mit.edu
> Subject: Responding to your CDDB Inquiries (fwd)
>
>
> Dear Jim,
>
> Since you, or someone who works for you, is reading this
> list, I thought
> I would just respond to you in this forum.
>
> I do not know if my request for information was "honorable",
> but it was
> certainly reasonable. I am the author of a cd-player that
> uses the CDDB
> protocol. You sent me a license agreement to sign. As I have stated
> previously, I simply want to know:
>
> a) Whether Escient is in a legal position to offer me a license on the
> ability to "CDDB-enable" my cd-player application, and if so, what
> justifies this legal position (copyright, patent, etc.)
>
> b) What copyright or patent will I be infringing if i do not sign this
> license, but retain CDDB features in my application.
>
>
> A clarification on both of these issues would be most helpful
> (required,
> actually, if you expect to see your license signed by anyone).
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Mike
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 13:23:05 -0500
> From: Jim Kinney <jk nospam at cddb.com>
> To: "'oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk'" <oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk>
> Cc: Andrew Stess <AStess nospam at escient.com>
> Subject: Responding to your CDDB Inquiries
>
> Mr. Oliphant:
>
> We would be happy to respond to your CDDB licensing questions if your
> intentions are honorable. Please note the following excerpt
> of an email
> that was authored by you.
>
> +++++++++++
> I didn't like the license, so I typed in some excerpts and sent
> them to slashdot (which resulted in this whole sequence of
> these events).
>
> You can get the pdf file at:
>
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~oliphant/grip/agreementv1.5.pdf
Feel free to do what you want with it, but please don't pass on this
URL.
+++++++++++
You certainly are entitled to express your views freely on Slashdot or
any
other newsgroups. My concern is that your current requests for
information
are not really intended to understand our licensing requirements, but
rather
are intended to gather "fuel for the fire" in your other efforts. If
your
requests are honorable in their intention, we will be happy to reply.
Best regards, jk
Jim Kinney
General Manager
CDDB, Inc., an Internet enterprise of Escient, Inc.
-------- My original messat ---------
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 15:22:03 +0000 (GMT)
From: Mike Oliphant <oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk>
To: Andrew Stess <andrew nospam at cddb.com>
Cc: Mike Oliphant <oliphant nospam at ling.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Licensing agreement 1.5 attached
On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Andrew Stess wrote:
> I can tell you that we are committed to keeping CDDB free for
developers
> and end users.
Thanks for the quick reply Andrew. I am still unclear on the issues I
asked you about, however. Before I sign the license agreement, I need to
know that Escient is actually in a position to grant me a license to use
the CDDB protocol, and that I am legally required to have such a
license.
Please do not get me wrong, here. I do not want to break the law by
infringing on copyrights or patents that Escient owns. I am just asking
for a clarification of what priviledges the license agreement grants
that
I do not have if I do not sign the license.
Best Regards,
Mike