[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: plextor px-708uf: cannot get disk type



On Tue 27 January 2004 20:11, Thomas J Magliery PhD wrote:
>
> You might recall from my first emails that I was also getting
> this error from within xcdroast, which used the (same) authentic
> binary from your site.  I didn't realize that the command line
> used the RLH9 RPM installation of dvdrecord.  Sorry for the
> confusion.  Incidentally, do I correctly understand that the
> dvdrecord command no longer exists (or that cdrecord-ProDVD is
> the new dvdrecord)?  Or was dvdrecord just some Red Hat package
> of cdrecord-ProDVD?

Well, first there was cdrecord, which is GPL. Then DVD writers 
appeared, and someone adapted cdrecord to be able to record to his 
DVD drive, and called it dvdrecord. He didn't make very clear that 
this was a modified version of cdrecord (or at least not clear 
enough as far as Jörg's concerned) which according to Jörg violates 
section 2a of the GPL. Hence his calling it illegal.

In the mean time, Jörg published cdrecord-ProDVD under a proprietary 
license. cdrecord-ProDVD is better tested than dvdrecord, and it 
works with most if not all drives currently on the market, and not 
just the one or two that dvdrecord works with. cdrecord development 
was then suspended for a while, and Andy Polyakov made dvd+rw-tools 
(growisofs) which is mainly meant for DVD+ drives, and is open 
source under the GPL. It seems to work very well, and is 
well-supported.

So, in summary, and regardless of whether dvdrecord is illegal or 
not, you're probably better off using either cdrecord-ProDVD or 
dvd+rw-tools to write DVDs, since they're better on a technical 
level, and have good support.

(Note to Jörg and Andy: that was off the top of my head, if anything 
is inaccurate, please correct me)

Lourens
-- 
GPG public key: http://home.student.utwente.nl/l.e.veen/lourens.key



Reply to: