[sldev] Continued GPL violations by Openlifegrid.com - Options?

[Boy Lane]

I would like to bring up an issue here that is ongoing for a while, it is not directly related to a technical problem but it directly affects code contributions and intellectual property. Or to say it in short it's a slap in the face of every single contributor to the SL viewer code.

Openlifegrid.com and it's owner Sakai Openlife (RL:Steve Sima) were repeatedly and by several people requested to provide the GPLed sources for the OLG viewer which is a fork of the official Linden viewer. Requests in their forum, via the Openlife contact form and via direct email are simply deleted or ignored. The only conclusion is that OLG intentional refuses to follow GPL licensing they accepted by using the Linden Lab licensed sources. 

This is now ongoing for months. One month back and under fire from outside Sakai finally opened a new website 3dxviewer.com which was meant to be used for all OL viewer related issues. A source code package, dated 22 Feb 2009 and containing sources in an older internal build 84 (about Jan 2009) were posted. This was outdated code at the time of posting. In the meantime OLG distributes binaries in build 160. As OLG changed the protocol, became incompatible to SL/Opensim and locked all other viewers out this is part of an attempt to use GPLed code and turn it into closed source. Knowledge, code contribution and expertise from both SL/3rd party viewers as well as the Opensim project are taken in by OLG and promoted as their own developments. Nothing at all is given back either to the viewer or the Opensim community and as a result OLG was removed from the Opensim project some time ago.

Linden Lab encouraged everyone to report viewer licensing violations as in here: http://www.massively.com/2009/02/21/linden-lab-invites-reports-of-viewer-license-violations. They were reported several times from several people. However I don't know if there will be any internal follow up or response from Linden Lab.

I would like to ask everybody here, including Linden's, what your opinion about this is, and what eventual follow up actions would make sense. That's not about being a GPL fascist as Henri likes to say, but I think OLG / Sakai went here a bit too far. It concerns everyone who works with the viewer. For more details you may want to have a look at http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/other-grids-virtual-worlds/26798-openlifegrid-continues-violate-gpl.html

Sorry for posting this here, but I think it is important for LL as well as all 3rd party viewer developers. 
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