[Koying]

@Wolly Could you take contact with me privately at koying_at_kodi_dot_tv ?

It would be nice to find an agreeable middle-ground between strict GPL and protecting your business assets, so as to satisfy both parties, rather than pretty much sterile finger-pointing.

[noggin]

I contacted hdmkv because I knew he's not sure if Vidon is a GPL violator, just because you opened a such thread and discuss this thing endless with your wrong points of views, so people who don't really know GPL will think you might right, so he tagged Vidon the GPL violator. BUT you also don't have any useful evidence to support your topic, you just guessing. They were misguided.

Well if we are all just guessing, why don't you properly confirm that you aren't breaking GPL (and thus copyright) by demonstrating how your external player works?

Just saying you use an external player, when your github xbmc fork doesn't confirm it, and doesn't build properly because elements needed to build it are only available to download from a server that is not available to us, is not good enough.

Code:

wget http://10.10.2.201:9003/develop/vidon.xbmc/android/gotham/lib.tgz

in https://github.com/vidonme/xbmc/blob/hel...akefile.in is the offending bit of code. It appears within the Kodi make file, a library tarball is being downloaded from a private server. This file is not available to the public, and is not available to the GPL authors of Kodi. This is not a system library. It is not part of the Linux kernel. This appears to be the crux of the issue. Without the contents of the lib.tgz file downloaded from the private server, it is not possible to build your fork. This is an issue.

[stefansaraev]

@wrxtasy,
Yes, Vidon now is the only company that allowed by Amlogic to develop "XBMC" on S905.

* stefansaraev speechless

[Soli]

You are most certainly correct, but, afaik, "GPL violation" is well-known language shortcut for what you describe, in the FOSS world, and is not mistaken for a "protect software law".

I know, and I mostly agree. That's why I wrote "not being a smartass"
My intention was not to argue semantics but to make it a little bit clearer what we really are discussing. (might not be obvious to all)

Are Vidon violatiing copyright laws?
a) Hmm let's see, are they expressly obeying the license as section 4 states? No.
b) Are there "Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program" leading to their rights being revoked? Yes.
Then they are violationg copyright laws and are subject to be sued by copyright holders.

How do we prove copyright violation? Simple, we ask for the source. If source is denied then of course they are violating the copyright laws by section 4 of the GPL license. If we get the source (as we allegedly have) it's easy to check how their closed source player is called from within Kodi and determine if they are expressly obeying the license. (In this case we can simply just look at the apk, to ses if their "external player" is in fact an external program)

Speaking freely: C'mon, if they were obeying the license they would have provided hard proof of that ages ago, instead of messing around in this wormhole of a thread.

[droidelec]

@wrxtasy,
Yes, Vidon now is the only company that allowed by Amlogic to develop "XBMC" on S905.

After this statement, it is really hard to believe that anything You write here so far is truth

[Soli]

@Wolly Could you take contact with me privately at koying_at_kodi_dot_tv ?

It would be nice to find an agreeable middle-ground between strict GPL and protecting your business assets, so as to satisfy both parties, rather than pretty much sterile finger-pointing.

Wish it was that easy. Unfortunately you can't speak for all copyright holders without getting explicit permission from each and everyone.. If not, you would technically become complicit to breaking copyright laws if you were to make a "deal" with Vidon.

If by "middle ground" you mean, how to make Vidon's "external player" comply within the GPL license while keeping as much of the functionality, then of course you are welcome

[wrxtasy]

... it's easy to check how their closed source player is called from within Kodi and determine if they are expressly obeying the license. (In this case we can simply just look at the apk, to ses if their external player is an external program)

I've had a look last night at the VidOn xbmcapp-hd-audio.apk that I have and these interesting files pop up in the lib/armeabi-v7a directory compared to the kodi-14.2-Helix-armeabi-v7a.apk

Code:

lib3DMode.so
libbdjvm.so
libCedarX-vidonme.so
libCedarX-vidonme4.so
libdvdnav-vidonme.so
libvdmplayer.so
libvidonutils.so
libxbmc.so

There is an extra assets/lib directory that contains some Java stuff like xmlparser.jar

EDIT: Filename corrections...

[Soli]

Since all *.so files are dynamically linked libraries, their source code must be available. As for the jar file, I strongly doubt xmlparser.jar is their external player

[Koying]

@Wolly Could you take contact with me privately at koying_at_kodi_dot_tv ?

It would be nice to find an agreeable middle-ground between strict GPL and protecting your business assets, so as to satisfy both parties, rather than pretty much sterile finger-pointing.

Wish it was that easy. Unfortunately you can't speak for all copyright holders without getting explicit permission from each and everyone.. If not, you would technically become complicit to breaking copyright laws if you were to make a "deal" with Vidon.

If by "middle ground" you mean, how to make Vidon's "external player" comply within the GPL license while keeping as much of the functionality, then of course you are welcome

Well, I'm a pragmatic (edging cynical) guy. We can continue discussing for ages without anything happening from either sides. And I very, very much doubt any Kodi devs, past or present, will sue a China-based company for copyright violation. It's to be assessed if there is even a case based on chinese laws. As a reminder, DVDFab (VidOn's parent company) was sued and condemned in the US for breaking BD copy protection, and just retreated to China.
VidOn will continue to have the "GPL violator" label, and Kodi users will get nothing from them.

Or we can try to find a middle-ground, and maybe get something beneficial for everyone (proper 3D BD ISO demuxing, for example. I honestly don't care about the rest of their features). I'd personally be very happy with this, already, and call me an accomplice if you want

[wrxtasy]

And just when I was getting the hang of being a Sherlock Holmes type as well and doing some educational investigations.
I was about to go out and buy one of those Duck Hunting caps as well !

3D BD ISO demuxing (if it works) would be beneficial to the whole Kodi community I would think.

[noggin]

3D BD ISO demuxing (if it works) would be beneficial to the whole Kodi community I would think.

As would HD Audio bitstreaming?

[wrxtasy]

3D BD ISO demuxing (if it works) would be beneficial to the whole Kodi community I would think.

As would HD Audio bitstreaming?

On S8xx devices ?
Koying has it nearly sorted for AMLogic S905's I believe.

[Soli]

Well, I'm a pragmatic (edging cynical) guy. We can continue discussing for ages without anything happening from either sides. And I very, very much doubt any Kodi devs, past or present, will sue a China-based company for copyright violation. It's to be assessed if there is even a case based on chinese laws. As a reminder, DVDFab (VidOn's parent company) was sued and condemned in the US for breaking BD copy protection, and just retreated to China.
VidOn will continue to have the "GPL violator" label, and Kodi users will get nothing from them.

Or we can try to find a middle-ground, and maybe get something beneficial for everyone (proper 3D BD ISO demuxing, for example. I honestly don't care about the rest of their features). I'd personally be very happy with this, already, and call me an accomplice if you want

I understand you perfectly, but c'mon it just doesn't work that way. And it can't work that way. It would seem (but I'm sure you're not, just a figure of speech) you are ready to throw away pretty much all open source principles that Kodi is based on just for a feature that *you* want.

They can't just "donate" a few lines of code and be home free. This scenario is not happening: "No, we are not to be labeled "GPL Violators" anymore (even though we still violate the GPL). Since we made a deal with Koying, we are free to f*** up the GPL" *tribal dance*

The reason that scenario is not happening is that they perfectly understand the GPL license (of course they do, although they try very hard to not understand) and know that they wouldn't be home free by making a deal with you and only you

[Koying]

As would HD Audio bitstreaming?

That just depend on willingness from Amlogic to deliver.
HD audio works on Minix U1 (S905) from Kodi with firmware patches from Amlogic and limited Kodi changes. I have no idea whether those patches are exclusive to Minix or will make their way into the AML SDK.

It's no black magic to implement hd audio with a copy of the aml sdk. Just that it involves calling low-level, non-public c++ api's that could break anytime (libstagefright style, for those who understand ), and quite big changes on the Kodi android audio part.
Not something that would ever be included in Kodi anyway, nor that I'd personally take the hassle to do.

[Koying]

I understand you perfectly, but c'mon it just doesn't work that way. And it can't work that way. It would seem (but I'm sure you're not, just a figure of speech) you are ready to throw away pretty much all open source principles that Kodi is based on just for a feature that *you* want.

Mmm... Sounds very cynical indeed, put that way.
Oh well, just continue to do finger pointing, then. I'm so sure much will get out of it