Globat (Licensing)

[B]

Okay... like many organizations, we have a web site. I don't actually work on it, but I do work on quite a few other web sites. So, I'm interested in how it's being run. I came across the photo gallery, which looked amazingly like Coppermine without the "Powered by Coppermine" footer. I looked at the source, and sure enough, the "Powered by Coppermine" line was commented out. Now, I haven't worked with Coppermine much, but I seemed to remember that the footer needed to stay intact. I talked to the lady in charge of the web site and got the name of our host, Globat.com. I then did some searching on this site (including the support forum), and most of the information I found stated that Globat had hacked the software (quite ineffectively) and removed the copyright without permission. I brought this to the attention of the designer, and she said she contacted Globat. They told her they would send her a document verifying that they were using the software legally.

My question is... have you (Coppermine team or anyone else) seen this document? It really bugs me that they would use your software in ways that blatantly violate the license. I don't know how they can justify it, but apparently, they think they can. Any information would be great. Thanks!

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[Joachim Müller]

We haven't seen such a document, as it simply can not exist. They don't have permission to remove the footer. We have tried to contact those jerks (Globat) before, but they didn't react. In fact I don't care too much: their effort is (as you already discovered) pretty lame - they might be able to fool newbie users, but experienced visitors like you will find realize pretty soon that they do something morally wrong. It's not a bright idea for a webhost to have the open source community as an enemy. Yet we won't sue them (basically because we can't, as it's a drawback of having no funds that you can't pay lawyers ). Anyway, I prefer to spend my time improving coppermine instead of fighting Globat.
So I suggest you tell everybody who wants to hear about it what you think about Globat and their poor attitude towards intelectual properties and giving credit where credit is due.
There are some other morons on the net who think it's cool to reomve the footer and try to make coppermine appear as their work. I'm not ready to argue with them all - as mentioned above, I have better things to do.

Thanks for your report anyway.

Joachim

[B]

Okay, that's what I thought. Thanks for the reply. I'm going to see what I can do to get their version off our site. As you said, it's morally wrong, and I don't think that's a good thing to have on our site. Unfortuntely, my hands are somewhat tied, as I'm not on the web team. Still, I'll see what I can do. Thanks again!

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[B]

Btw, kudos for using SMF. I love this software.

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