XviD Development Stopped due to code stealing by Sigma Designs

[admin]

2002/08/22 - The XVID development team has made a unanimous decision to cease project development. We will return when Sigma Designs' stops infringing the copyrights of XVID authors. As some of you had already assumed, Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec software includes large amounts of XVID project code. Since Sigma Designs' refuses to comply with the terms of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) and moreover claims sole ownership of the REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec software, Sigma Designs' is violating the GNU General Public License and copyright law.

More on the Official XviD Site

[Leo_C]

Thats a real shame -

I was going to buy one of their snazzy mpeg-4 decoder boards...

But I don't feel so inclined anymore...

Lets hope it's all a big misunderstanding...?


Leo

edit:
link

Looks like they changed their minds? I hope so...

[admin]

It appears that Sigma Designs may be backing down, and are planning to do the right thing and release the source code for their MPEG-4 codec (since it uses GPLed code, the GPL says that its source code must be released as well).

Let hope for a speedy resolution of this problem, so XviD developement can resume again.

[admin]

And it seems that Sigma Design's Xcard is not DivX compatible after all, and they are not cooperating with DivX Networks either

[Batman]

Recently a slew of mpeg 4 codecs are in the work or have been released, xvid shows great promise. Its sad to see companies "stealing" from open source projects. Downloading movies, games, etc... is considered "brazen copyright theft" by movie studies and the like, with severe penalties. Sigma designs should also face the same treatment. I hope to see development on xvid resumed and Sigma do the right thing

[admin]

Sigma Designs explains why open-source code was used :

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/RMP4_video_codec.htm