Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee
I do not object to what Sawce did because he was merely mitigating the inexcusable, but I don't believe distributing the binary indiscriminately was the best approach - providing the tools to remove the alleged backdoors would have been sufficient.
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There is no real other solution short of me decompiling the plugin and distributing sourcecode. That is too much effort on my part that I am not willing to put forth.
Distributing tools to remove them would imply one of two methods:
I create a program where the user does exactly what I did, and manually NOPs the addresses for the bad instructions. There are very few people in this community that I would think would be capable of doing this, even if I were to give them the addresses of the bad stuff. Essentially I
did provide the tools for this (although I did not provide the DAT section modifier tool that I used a little for 3.0, as I see it just confusing people). Users can disassemble the plugin with
amxxdump and then they can NOP out the instructions with
amxxnop. The only thing they cannot do with these tools is change the cvar values / rebrand it.
OR I create a binary where the user clicks it, and it turns their bad version into a good version. In the end, it is the same effect as just handing out a patched version with the backdoors removed.
As for the license violation, I am also no lawyer, but derivative work of amxmodx (eg: plugins) are required to be under the GPL - the user has the right to modify / redistribute the program they receive with no obligation to the person they got the program from. (On a side note: version 3.0 uses hamsandwich, which is essentially violating my license, so it is personal!) The version I received was purchased by somebody. The person who purchased its name remained in the cvar field that I had to edit to keep their identity a secret.
As such, my interpretation of it is as follows (remember, I'm not a lawyer):
Somebody purchased the plugin from the original author - who did not fulfill their obligations to the license.
The person who purchased it was disgruntled with the author for whatever reason.
That person redistributed it to the community as a whole to do whatever they want with it. I would assume the plugin would still be bound to the GPL - however the person who purchased it has never received the source so they cannot be obligated to distribute it. It is still the original author's obligation.
As for the random original author name calling, I see no need for it and really wish people would stop.
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