Let's separate the free software discussion from the open-source discussion. Yes, not having to pay for software is great. Open source software is great too. They're distinct ideas, though.
I went to a talk by Richard Stallman some years ago where he told an anecdote of a firm he went after for copyleft infringement. He bought their software which depended on a GPL library. He wrote them demanding the source code. He heard nothing for six months. Six months later, they returned his check with a note from their lawyer saying he was not a customer.
The talk he gave was at a meeting held by a local university, where he promoted the idea that GPL supports those of us who want to make a living as developers. A common scenario is that you work for a firm building software and they are your customer. You have only one customer, and you're going to give them your code. If you want a customer #2, then good luck getting them to pay you since it's open at that point. Anyway, that's a typical scenario.
The alternative for the firm in question was to release the source code. They decided they would rather not have Stallman as a paying customer. Real users weren't willing to put pressure on their vendor to release the source code because they liked the product. The story basically ended there.
I see a lot of similarities in this case. If at some point in time there was a version that had GPL, and when someone complained, Thomas Worth in good faith remedied the situation by removing GPL code, that should be satisfactory. To say it's not good enough sends a message to the world at large not to adopt MLV. It just seems like an extreme position to me.
My main concern here has nothing to do with the particulars of RawMagic, it puts into question the viability of developing any meaningful post-production workflow for the larger community. If Thomas Worth faces this amount of hostility, then we'll definitely never see MLV support in any of the nice post-production tools we all know and love.
Also, just because there once existed a copy of software called RawMagic in the universe that had GPL code, that anyone anywhere can demand to have it open is a pretty scary thought. In his case, it really doesn't seem like he intentionally set out to violate the license and abuse the thousands of hours of work you've contributed.
g3gg0, I really hope you reconsider your position. The Linux kernel, fair enough, GPL. Basically every library that programmers use enables programmers to charge for their time. I like the idea of ML code that runs in-camera to be GPL for the same reason I like Linux to be GPL. But the post workflow that's supposed to provide convenience for users should adopt a more flexible, programmer-friendly model.
What are the options for well-intentioned programmers who want to work for food? Let's say I wanted to work for a studio that just decided to use MLRAW on a crash cam for a small part of their production. If I were to tell them that I had to release any code I wrote for their in-house video management system as open source -- or in the extreme case, their whole platform, I would be out of a job for sure.
