Kagi, a popular payment processor for independent software developers, recently began selling a $5 Lion-compatibility patch for the discontinued-in-2008 VisualHub video converter that the original software’s developer says he didn’t authorize—and isn’t getting paid for. Kagi defends the move, arguing that it’s merely helping less tech-savvy paying customers that it says the developer abandoned.
TUAW also reports on this. Bottom line: Techspansion, the company behind VisualHub, isn’t associated with this updater and has asked customers not to use it. Under those circumstances, Kagi’s justification for continuing to offer it is questionable at best. Until this is resolved, caveat emptor.
Yeah, i got that email yesterday and i thought to myself: “now that can’t be right”
Not good for Kagi to do shady stuff like that, we used to trust them …
It’s been a while since I’ve used visual hub, but didn’t the developers open source it? Not that it’s related at all. Just surprised it’s been so long since it was discontinued, and no one has picked up the ball and ran with it.
It was open sourced, the closest offshoot is VideoMonkey
/thomas
Technically, VisualHub itself was never open sourced. Rather, a different application that used essentially all of VisualHub’s code was open sourced, but that’s just me being picky. That code is all available via the GPL (General Public License), which means that anyone can pick it up and work with it, though, as a condition of the GPL, they’re required to provide the source code of their additions to any paying customers.
Kagi’s installer was not based on that code, however, so any attempt for them to justify it on those grounds should be cut off before it starts. Instead, their installer is basically just a repackaging of a set of files that the developer has released for compatibility in the years since he stopped working on VisualHub regularly. They took those files, none of which are distributed under a license which permits redistribution, and used them for their own profit. It’s no different than if someone took articles from a local newspaper, rearranged them a bit to look nicer, and published their own newspaper for profit.