cdrtools vs cdrkit: flogging the dead horse

[Jason Crain]

On Wed, January 14, 2009 7:08 am, Odysseus Flappington wrote:
>> The reason it's not in non-free (i.e. multiverse, in Ubuntu), is that
>> distributing it is currently believed to be a contravention of the
>> copyright interests of the owners of the elements licensed under the
>> GPL. When we believe that something is a violation of civil law to
>
> I'm not really taking sides here since I don't have enough
> information, but out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say
> "contravention of the copyright interests of the owners of the
> elements licensed under the GPL."?
>
> Do you  mean that the actual code which has been released under the
> GPL contravenes the interests of the copyright holders? Perhaps the
> copyright to some technology re DVD structures is stopping it from
> being distributed? Similar to what libdvdcss2 provides to play
> encrypted dvds and for the same reason isn't in the repos but need to
> be installed using an awkward script?
>
> Or, do you mean that there is an issue how the GPL'd code is being
> distributed, or who owns it?
>
> How come other applications can implement the technology to burn dvds
> without legal issues, like k3b or brasero, but cdrtools can't?

It means that Schilling is a disagreeable person and does not approve of
the ways cdrecord has been modified.  He eventually changed the licensing
to prevent certain modifications, so there was a fork.