 xvid NUMBER is a project to make gpl divx codecs sigma designs NUMBER is a company looking to put out hardware to playback amongst other things divx files problem is sigma is using xvids gpled code in ways not very gpl the results xvid stops work on thier code and ask the users to put preasure on sigma to honor the gpl some notes from other places from doomNUMBER NUMBER xvid development has been stopped the sigma designs realmagic mpeg NUMBER video codec contains wide portions of code taken from the xvid project soon after the initial release of the realmagic codec the xvid developers have contacted sigma and informed them about the gpl violation for those who don t know xvid is distributed under the gnu public license gpl which demands that if you modify a gpl program you have to release it under the gpl which in this case means that the source code of the sigma codec must be freely available sigma promised to replace the stolen code but the new version of the codec which was released this month only disguises the stolen code it was not actually removed sigma was once again contacted and asked to remove the offending code but until today nothing has happened therefore the xvid team is now turning to the public in the hope to receive wide public support in their efforts to convince sigma designs to respect the terms of the gpl and until the matter has been resolved xvid development will not continue that being said i hope all the forum members who saw their threads about the sigma codecs being closed will understand our motivation now internally we already knew what was going on but since the xvid authors first wanted to try and resolve this internally we respected their wishes and kept quiet about the matter at hand update sigma has issued a press release announcing the availability of the source code of their mpeg NUMBER codec and it s already up for download however not a word was lost about the xvid issue and the press release makes one think that the sigma codec was entirely developed by sigma so we might be hearing more about this update i found a gpl notice in some of the source code files but it also looks like sigma placed their own copyright lines there and xvid doesn t get any credit in the source either the gpl notice also collides with sigma s software licensing agreement that you have to sign before downloading codec or source on on the same issue divxnetworks said they d fully support xvid in this issue and apparently dxn s relationship with sigma didn t really work out either as sigma s xcard is not as divx compatible as it was advertised update first an update on the xvid situation the release of the sigma source code does not mean it s all over it s far from being over the license agreement which you have to agree to before you can download and install the codec is not compatible with the gpl furthermore it can now clearly be seen download the source code and have a look for yourself that the sigma codec is pretty much a copy of the xvid codec but all the copyright notices of the original developers have been removed and replaced this does not only violate the gpl but copyright laws you can t just take a program change a few lines and change the copyright statements you only have copyright protection for the parts you wrote on your own and related to this the sigma codec also contains code taken from the opendivx project the files were outfitted with NUMBER different copyright notices which is quite funny NUMBER URL NUMBER URL NUMBER URL URL 