41–50 of 80 posts
I wonder if there are any SEO people out there, doing pro-bono (is that even the right term?) work for open source projects like this? It should be possible to fight back (or, as was discussed/suggested before, search engines are just broken).
How can you say "intellectual" property and GPL in the same sentence? That's fucked up, seriously. The whole point of the GPL is to help erode the copyright system and make it unnecessary. Of course this situation is not specific to VLC, other open source products are affected by this scourge and there’s not much we can do about it. They have the money to buy adwords, we don’t. Sadly, as a non-profit organization we…
You understand very little about GPL. GPL is very strongly linked to source code copyright and source code modification. It isn't BSD or MIT.
> I don't think it's tAnd judging by the domain names, you failed to pick up on that marketing. They have some key domain names; downloadvlcplayer.net, vlcdownload.org, vlc-media-player-blog.com. Those domain names should have been bought up a while ago.
With what money?
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Replying to self since we are at the max depth. So, from the perspective of a business analyst, you are saying that Google has no incentive to ensure the quality of their search results because they don't receive any additional money from the people who use it? That sounds like very short-term thinking to me, and Google is a famously long-term thinking company. OT your line of reasoning reminds me of Excite when they…
No, of course they do, but only so you'll come back and can be shown more ads. And "incentive" is quite literal: ads are Google's main (only?) revenue stream. If they don't get eyeballs, they have no inventory of product to sell to their real customers. Look, I'm not saying this is good or bad. But it is what it is.
So distributing copy of VLC with lots of malware added but still conforming with the GPL is okay?
Yes, this is ok, as long as VLC copyright is concerned. However: - Claiming that you are the original Author is not OK, because of copyright laws. - Adding restrictions on the usage of the software is not OK, because of the GPL. - As the VLC installer is GPL, the modified installers must be GPL'd too. - Shipping VLC commercially means shipping all the source code of all external libraries, which they usually don't. (…
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We speak here about US law, not arbitrary country, because that where Google is based. They can solve the problem of checking reports on US copyright violations with Adwords.
Google also does business and has employees and servers in many other countries. Why should they not enforce the laws of those countries too?
I'm increasingly delighted by DuckDuckGo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is ok, as long as VLC copyright is concerned. However: - Claiming that you are the original Author is not OK, because of copyright laws. - Adding restrictions on the usage of the software is not OK, because of the GPL. - As the VLC installer is GPL, the modified installers must be GPL'd too. - Shipping VLC commercially means shipping all the source code of all external libraries, which they usually don't. (…
Which of those would be okay in a copyright-less world? Which ones are morally/ethically bad (without copyright law)?
Ethically, I would say that the biggest issue is to claim money for a work you haven't done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is ok, as long as VLC copyright is concerned. However: - Claiming that you are the original Author is not OK, because of copyright laws. - Adding restrictions on the usage of the software is not OK, because of the GPL. - As the VLC installer is GPL, the modified installers must be GPL'd too. - Shipping VLC commercially means shipping all the source code of all external libraries, which they usually don't. (…
Which of those would be okay in a copyright-less world? Which ones are morally/ethically bad (without copyright law)?
I think everyone is already assuming that the above practices are morally and ethically bad. The problem is how to prevent them from happening, which most likely involves using the law.
I wonder if there are any SEO people out there, doing pro-bono (is that even the right term?) work for open source projects like this? It should be possible to fight back (or, as was discussed/suggested before, search engines are just broken).
They can create their own versions of those spam sites that offer the genuine product. That's what I would do, and they should have bought up some of those domain names earlier. The URL gives a lot of hints and definitely helps SEO.
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OK, this line of reasoning is all over the place. All it does is expose that you know close to nothing about how Google works. There are in fact, many hundreds of engineers whose sole incentive (e.g. promotions and salary adjustments) and purpose in their job is to make sure that your search results are good. These engineers are /not/ the engineers that are in charge of designing or running the systems that sell ads.…
Oh, I feel no sense of being wronged at all, this is not emotion speaking, it's cool-headed business analysis. There's no such thing as free, someone always pays, and if you think you are getting something for free, that only means that someone else is paying for it for you, and perhaps they want something in return. You can understand this and adjust your expectations accordingly, or you can get upset without really…