Hi all!
First of all I want to thank to all beta testing staff for helping me to release version 3.0 of PNotes!
Today, while surfing on sites where PNotes is published, I've happened to find out its clone from previous version named NotesRobot, which is offered for sell at _http://www.railfox.com by $20. The guys simply got my source code and recompiled it without changes under different name. Even the help file stayed the same. The only difference is that clicking on "Show License" on About dialog does not bring up the GPL file.
AFAIK there is nothing to do, although I'm in a rage. It must be a side effect of GPL and open source paradigm.
I'd like to whack them in the face - but how to do that in virtual space? 
Or maybe I'm mistaking and there is still something to do?
Regards,
lamer
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Isn't the fact that he's violating the GPL punishable? He breaks the license to which he has agreed by using/installing your app. I assume legal steps can be taken against him but that probably will cost you a few bucks
Have you tried mailing him? You could threaten to take legal steps against him or something.
Anyhow it's a disgrace!
Optimism is a moral duty - Karl R. Popper
Email them threatening to sue. Demand any profits they've made by stealing your work.
Vintage!
This isnt a side effect of GPL at all or even of Open Source. It's a side effect of others completely disregarding the license agreement set forth in the GPL. The GPL specifically states that ALL derivative works must also remain GPL. An attempt to close the source is illegal. You can sue him and most likely profit from it. Start with an email threatening to sue, explain as many details as possible, point out that you are the author of the original code, list ALL things that remained the same and all differences. You'll get farther if it looks like you fully investigated the issue.
Edit: I just looked at NotesRobot and it is completely identical, sue the pants off the guy, ask for ALL profits he has made from the app.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
There are some organizations around that help with violations of the GPL. Try searching. I think the Free Software Foundation might be one.
MC
Take a look at http://gpl-violations.org/ - they should at least be able to help you with advice on how to proceed, and what option are open to you, seeing as how they specialise in exactly this sort of thing.
And good luck!
What a noob. You smack him hard.
Hey Patrick, shall we contact the author of the newest RegShot about his violation too?
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
Muah ha ha.
Its really your App. The best part is their advertising it as "fully portable". Well that's what it was designed to be so...
Thats bold!
I guess they hope you wont do anything because you think they're huge and you're small. But I'd ask the gpl-violation guys. Looks like they know what they do.
And...
...just whack them virtually!
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
GO FOR IT!
BTW, I think maxtor has done this as well- by putting disk tools inside of FreeDOS!
Think the need a good whacking to?
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
Explain this in more detail please. It sounds like your saying maxtor contributed to an open source project...that wouldn't be a violation at all.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
The made a disk checker, then put it inside of freedos and made it illegal to redistribute.
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
That is completely out of line! File a lawsuit and whack them. This is just depressing, seeing an OpenSource project's code being stolen and used on a commercia app. It's just disgusting.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
Thank you for support! It's very important to me in order not to fill gudgeon.
Well, as yet I've written a mail to license-violation@gpl-violations.org, hope they'll find a few minutes to take a glance on it. I also intend to write to these stinkers (although I'd prefer to finish a business with a couple of punches, not with keyboard). I can also write to some sites where they have advertised their "product": Download.com etc.
I'm not optimistic, though. If they were live somewhere in "legal place", but find them somewhere in China space...:(
don't lose faith.
You have a sourceforge top-5-ranking community sharing your anger and loving your App!
And I'm curious about how download.com will react.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Download.com should give a reasonable response, and take the product down. They like to be a respected place to download. Good luck with getting thru to the program thieves.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
Hey! we are a community, and this App, made by one person, is part of our community, at least I feel it that way, and I'm sure many of you too... so can we please stop telling Lamer what to do and/or to write, and start WE, all of us, as a community... filling inboxes and acting in Lamer's support?
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
I sent an e-mail to their sales and support. Any others I should know about?
me
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
wonder if they remove the link..
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis .." Friday Next -
"May The Schwartz be with You!" Yogurt the Yoda
on download.com. I'm amazed people actually download it.
[accidental dup post removed by mod Tim]
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
Page is 404 now. No mention of it on main page, either. Go team!
~Lurk~
Now, what about the other software on their site? - Does anybody recognize that as actually something else??
Hmmm...this "company" has shady written all over it.
The whois lookup of the domain show it's registered in the Netherlands. I downloaded and installed the FolderArmor app, and the help file prompts me to install the Chinese Simplified font. One of the exes included is was originally named something else and also has the Language tag as "Chinese (PRC)".
Cancer Survivors -- Remember the fight, celebrate the victory!
Help control the rugrat population -- have yourself spayed or neutered!
And when I traced the IP it came up the first time in Washington, D.C. and the second time in Huston, Texas.
I'm proud of the response you are getting from the group
I've used the WOT AddOn to rank the site as untrustworthy
If anyone has an account at McAfee SiteAdvisor they should post that the site steals.
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
It looks like NotesRobot was taken of their site. There's no trace of it anymore! Good work guys!
Optimism is a moral duty - Karl R. Popper
Guys, I'm proud to be in your company! It's one of the moments you understand that "you never walk alone" isn't just a line from song.
Unfortunately my poor English does not allow me to express all my thankfulness.
I have to share with you the message I've got from RailSoft in response to my enraged mail:
Hi Andrey I see the link http://sourceforge.net/projects/pnotes/, you are right, We have delete the software at our website, sorry again, pnotes is so cool. but we don't konw the software is GPL license. we only help others to buy the software. Thank you for your notice. www.railfox.com John XinIt's just amazing, isn't it? They simply wanted to help
But that's not all - he takes the audacity and sends one more mail:
Hope to my new version, ah? Well, at least it's nice to see that there is somebody whose English is worse than mine
BTW, I'm sure the rest soft on their site is the same "original development", but how to let real developers know? I've found out my program's clone by chance.
Anyway, thank you all very, very much!
it ended like that. And so quickly.
But if I want to help someone, I ask him first.
And you can thank Patrick for discovering your Program Lol.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Beyond all question!
is half the battle ...
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
what about their technically skilled developers? Maybe we should encourage them to add that mobile function and release it as an open source fork? There´s already an asian download site hosting notesrobot as a mirror but no downloads there shown. Might depend on the review. Perhaps there should follow some similiar reviews in order to have notesrobot removed from their download section
http://www.zdnetasia.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39043052,39380686s,00.htm
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis .." Friday Next -
"May The Schwartz be with You!" Yogurt the Yoda
Just added my review on ZDNetAsia (which is the second, the first is yours, isn't it?), let's see how "respectable" they are.
how did You know?
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis .." Friday Next -
"May The Schwartz be with You!" Yogurt the Yoda
They should be, they are run by the same people who run download.com.
cowsay Moo
cowthink 'Dude, why are you staring at me.'
Added my "rating".
~Lurk~
They write
but we don't know the software is GPL license
But if I download the latest version from Lamers sourceforge site (cool design btw!), it has a license.txt included.
Did they ignore it by default or is their english so limited that they can't read "GPL"???
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
where?
Insert original signature here with Greasemonkey Script.
Lamer posted.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Moreover, license.txt appears when user clicks on "Show License" button on "About" dialog.
Every source file is started from clear mention of GPL.
Robot notes is on many (MANNY) download sites. This is done usinf an XML in the PAD format. PAD starnd for Portable Application Description and is a standard way to publish information about an application to countless download sites. That sites poll your PAD file every now and then to update their sites with changed info -if any.
Portable in the name PAD has nothing to do of being the application being portable, just the information is portable and many software sites can read it.
For submitting software to many sites theres special tools. I made one called PAD-Publisher. Anyway, thats how the clone/rip of Pnotes was spread that fast to many sites, most of them still have the software listed. (And most now link to the removed page)
Does PNotes (and other apps from this site) also have PAD files available? (To spread the word of Portable Apps to 100s if not 1000s of download sites. Downside: many search results will turn up in Google as well...
I did the same... google, and then visit every page I found to leave "my comments"... but it's funny, some of the pages have an error so it is not possible to press the "submit" button, some others just have send me to a page saying "comments not available for this software" when I press Submit, and some others just say "thank you, your review will be reviewed and if approved posted in the next work day"...
And checking the Spanish websites now, hehehe
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report
Anybody knows how to contact download.com? There are nothing like "contact us", and the only way they offer for license violation issues to be reported - their post address.
"help center" at the bottom and then on "Email support" and select the service "CNET Download.com".
That should do it.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Thank you! I've opened ticket - let's wait.
Well, Download.com has removed the file (except CNET Asia). One more modest victory