Call, Rumours, the EBT-Tool, Wap and more...

[diogocanilho]

second : eurobilltracker.eu is domainname that hase been connecting to a server in finland since april or something. and this is what it still is doing... no new site has been created !

is that true? What would have happened if I had entered www.eurobilltracker.eu in my browser in the evening of 24th of Dec.?

You would arrive @ eurobilltracker.com

[Dakkus]

But if I program a software for my company (which I wouldn't if the company is not paying me - my fault if I still do), that doesn't make me the owner of that software. Or does it? I am not an expert on these legal issues.

This only applies if you have signed an agreement in which you either:
1) agree to give all the copyrights to the Czar.
or
2) become an employer of the Czar, so that all work legislation applies and the Czar pays salary to the coder.

Neither of these is the case, so therefore the person who wrote the code, owns it. This can also be altered by defining a suitable licence to the code, but that hasn't been done to the Eurobilltracker code. Therefore, normal copyright laws apply.

Therefore, Avij and Nerzhul legally own all the changes applied since Giro stepped aside from EBT four years ago. This includes for example the advanced form for entering several notes at once.(I have edited the preceeding text to be tiny. See the end of this post for clarification)
Whatever words in the code have remained completely intact through all these years, belong to Giro. That is a clear minority, as the code has been quite thoroughly redesigned during the years.

Also, for a site that has always strongly stated it's non-profit, it should first have been mentioned long before the change that the Creator of the site wants to make the site commercial some day.
This should also have been told at the forum, as it is an extremely dramatic change to the nature of EBT. I and most of the other users (with some exceptions) do not accept the commercialization of the site they have so much helped thinking it is and always will be non-profit.

There have been four eurobilltracking sites (or five, if you count the current split in the number). I have chosen Eurobilltracker precisely because it's been owned by the Community and has been ruled democratically. For example of all meeting we have been able to vote for.
I was anyway always using address eurobt.eu for contacting EBT, so first I didn't even notice anything changed. I just entered notes just as always. (Giro only changed the com version to point at his new server, the other addresses EBT had, remained pointing to the old server owned by Avij)

The address eurobt.eu has been registered on:
Mon Apr 10 2006

The address eurobilltracker.eu has been registered on:
Fri Apr 7 2006

This information can be obtained by anybody from the system in address http://who.is by simply writing the addresses on the field. You can also see when addresses such as google.com and yahoo.com have been registered

Therefore, I wouldn't really argue something has changed on this page. The server is the same it always was. Also the address hasn't changed. The only difference is that now ONE of the old addresses point to a French server instead of the original one.
Avij and Nerzhul also didn't split anything. They just decided not to close eurobilltracker.eu after they noticed there were suddenly two Eurobilltrackers. And when it was clear they wouldn't be able to reunite the two sites right away, they decided to tell people that the original server can still be found using the other old addresses.

EDIT: Avij corrected me that the advanced form was actually coded by Giro. However, when squeezing the info from Avij, he did admit that he did write some small parts of the advanced form's code together with other forum users

[Dakkus]

A friend of mine got a nice thought:
What if the Red Cross suddenly decided to make money by selling the blood donated by all blood donors? Would you still donate your blood to Red Cross, or would you go donate your blood to some other, non-profit organization?

The blood does belong to Red Cross, after all, so they can do whatever they want to do with it. ..right?

[vinc17]

Well, if you donate a code to a website other than your own (e.g. EBT.com), that is some transfer of ownership to me.

Code wasn't donated; code can be donated only with a written agreement. At most some people have a license to use it. Also, you need to make a difference between the web site (the contents), the domain name (there have been at least two domain names for several months) and the server where the contents are hosted. This is quite complex...

But even if you are right, which you might be, my whole point was that mistakes were made on more than one side.

Probably. Giro made a good point concerning the GPL status of the code, but I don't know anything more.

[Dakkus]

Probably. Giro made a good point concerning the GPL status of the code, but I don't know anything more.

Eurobilltracker is NOT GPL.
Babel is GPL. Giro made a point concerning the GPL status of Babel's code.

And what's most impressive: he's wrong.
If a person or organization modifies the GPL-licenced code and then distributes the modified program to anyone, he must also give the sources of that program or a promise to give the sources.
If the person/organization does not distribute the program, they don't have to give the code to anybody. Avij and Nerzhul have NOT redistributed the modified version of Babel to absolutely anybody at all. Having the running version available for its users to use in internet does NOT legally count as redistribution. It would count only if the said program binary code itself was uploaded to the translators' computers - which hasn't happened.

Thus, if you install linux on your computer and edit its kernel a bit, you are not obliged to send the source back to the server. As long as your linux only runs on your own computers, you don't have to give the modified source to anyone.
Therefore, there is no legal obligation at all for Avij or Nerzhul to give the code to anybody. However, it is quite apparent that had somebody requested them for the code, they would have given it even though no law says they MUST do that.
And even if GPL-licenced modified code is distributed, the modifier is obliged to provide the source code only if the other person/organization specifically asks for it.

[vinc17]

Avij and Nerzhul have NOT redistributed the modified version of Babel to absolutely anybody at all.

Thanks for the clarification. I thought the (binary) code was on the server, so that all administrators of the server had access to the binary itself (and I thought from his message that Giro copied everything, including the tools to manage EBT).

And even if GPL-licenced modified code is distributed, the modifier is obliged to provide the source code only if the other person/organization specifically asks for it.

Yes.

[Dakkus]

Avij and Nerzhul have NOT redistributed the modified version of Babel to absolutely anybody at all.

Thanks for the clarification. I thought the (binary) code was on the server, so that all administrators of the server had access to the binary itself (and I thought from his message that Giro copied everything, including the tools to manage EBT).

And even if GPL-licenced modified code is distributed, the modifier is obliged to provide the source code only if the other person/organization specifically asks for it.

Yes.

Yes, all administrators had the access to the program. And likewise, nobody else did. And the administrators were precisely the ones who had made the changes, so that means the program wasn't distributed. Ok, Giro did indeed copy the program from their server, but since the program was copied without Avij's and Nerzhul's consent, it doesn't count as distribution. It could also be considered clear that Avij and Nerzhul were not trying to secretly distribute Babel to Giro's computer by using it on a server Giro could get it from by packaging it and sending it to his computer

Also this is quite noteworthy:
Babel (more precisely, Giro has named it PHPBabel), is coded in PHP. PHP is an interpreted language. That means the code is not turned into binary before running, but instead the code is read while running the program. Thus, whoever has it, already has the sources anyway!

[jenny&me]

And maybe it was a mistake from Giro to handle the issue in this way, but that didn't have to be followed by an even bigger mistake by Avij and Nerzhul. It is one thing to have a disagreement, it's whole other thing when you drag the whole community into it : which is exactly what Avij and Nerzhul did by creating the .eu and sending the email.

Avij and Nerzhul did not drag anybody to the .eu site, we followed them freely. They send the e-mail out but they didn't force us to insert note in the new site.

[Ord€p]

Avij and Nerzhul did not drag anybody to the .eu site, we followed them freely.

Exactly...

[zillionaire]

I don´t know if anyboby checked the las numbers but it is wide visible that there is a shift to the .eu domain:

notes (last days)
at .com we have: (http://en.eurobilltracker.com/notes/?command=8;tab=2)
2007-12-24: 33 547
2007-12-25: 29 274
2007-12-26: 18 141
Today (18:14h): 14 591

By the other hand at .eu we have: (http://www.eurobilltracker.eu/notes/?command=8;tab=2)
2007-12-24: 7 051
2007-12-25: 15 898
2007-12-26: 35 327
Today (18:14h): 38 661

[Dakkus]

I don´t know if anyboby checked the las numbers but it is wide visible that there is a shift to the .eu domain:

notes (last days)
at .com we have: (http://en.eurobilltracker.com/notes/?command=8;tab=2)
2007-12-24: 33 547
2007-12-25: 29 274
2007-12-26: 18 141
Today (18:14h): 14 591

By the other hand at .eu we have: (http://www.eurobilltracker.eu/notes/?command=8;tab=2)
2007-12-24: 7 051
2007-12-25: 15 898
2007-12-26: 35 327
Today (18:14h): 38 661

I think I will draw a graph of those for my own enjoyment once there are enough days to plot for it

[ErGo]

I don´t know if anyboby checked the las numbers but it is wide visible that there is a shift to the .eu domain:

I think you missed this post

Hi, to make a number based decision, here is a link to a hourly updated "competition" between .eu and .com

I hope, you take it not too serious, but numbers often spokes better than hopes

http://www.jostjahn.de/ebtfight.htm

It's indeed interesting!

[zillionaire]

I think you missed this post

Hi, to make a number based decision, here is a link to a hourly updated "competition" between .eu and .com

I hope, you take it not too serious, but numbers often spokes better than hopes

http://www.jostjahn.de/ebtfight.htm

It's indeed interesting!

Oops! In fact I did not found that post! Thanks

[Nro92]

I am not very good at these graphics, but here is one about the situation. And it is in Finnish and has one typo. However I hope that you understand.



EDIT:

I think you missed this post

And Dakkus said that he will create a graph after a few days.

[Dakkus]

@Nro92: Actually your graph was more interesting than I had originally thought. I think it will look clearer when it's from 18th to 31st or so. I'd also like to add a combined number, to clearly see what has happened to the total number of entered banknotes during all this.

And maybe also make some kind of graph showing the percentages of notes entered to eu and com in each of the 13 countries.