Whoa, I was looking around for ecuEdit and found this thread and this flame fest and then this gem of a quote which is simply not true:
epifan wrote:OMG! another "steal" word. Are you idiot? It cannot be stealed because enginuity xml defintion is not copyrighted. its FREE! "free" cannot be stealed!
Every single work is Copyrighted, whether it explicitly says so or not, including Enginuity and it's ECU definitions. If you have used code from Enginuity in ecuEdit, you are breaking the law.
Enginuity, while Open Source, is not "free". Enginuity is licensed under the GPL which guarantees certain rights, but does not guarantee that the software itself is free as in beer. So in fact, you could sell Enginuity or ecuEdit if licensed under the GPL, but that would also obligate you to distribute the source code used to build ecuEdit in accordance to the terms of the GPL. Assuming that Enginuity is public domain and free for all and any use because it is open source is incorrect.
The essence of the GPL is this: Any time you distribute a binary (whether or not you charge for that binary is up to you), you are then obligated to also distribute the source code which generates that binary either free or at a cost not unreasonable for shipping/handling. The license was written to ensure freedom - in case the persion distributing GPL software is not able or willing, anyone who receives a binary will be able to modify the software they receive as they should also receive the source in such form that they can recreate the binary they received if they wanted.
If you happen use any code or data from the Enginuity project, that makes you obligated to also license your software under the GPL thanks to Copyright law and the GPL. I hope you actually read the GPL before peeking at the code of Enginuity, otherwise you may have put your ecuEdit product at risk of litigation should someone find out you "borrowed" their code.
I suggest you actually read the license for software you install. You can learn more about Open Source (there are many Open Source licenses besides the GPL) and the GPL at
www.opensource.org and
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
I hope this clears up some common misconceptions about Copyright, Open Source and the GPL.
If Enginuity stole the defs directly from xmlwrite, we would have been done months ago. Yet there are tables and revisions supported by Enginuity defs that are not supported by xmlwrite, among other things like cel fixes which xmlwrite also doesn't have. Yet you recently updated your converter to convert the Enginuity CEL fixes for Ecuedit.
