[mythtv-users] Another commercial MythTV box

[Dewey Smolka]

> 
> > > If I buy one of these devices and then use it in my home, that appears
> > > to me to be non-commercial use. As far as zap2it.com is concerned it
> > > places no greater load than if i brewed my own mythbox.
> > >
> > > IMHO commercial use would be, say, downloading information from
> > > zap2it.com and re-selling it.
> >
> > Your HO is flat out 100% wrong.
> 
> Explain? Actually I was only commenting on the previous poster's post,
> and he referred to the "commercial" use. How is it commercial use for me to access the service?

Nobody is talking about you accessing the service. The commercial part
comes when a company sells Myth boxes with a promise of program data
without monthly fees. It's not exactly copying and reselling
labs.zap2it data, but it's pretty close.

A PVR is pretty much worthless without program data (note, this is
only about the TV recording capabilities of Myth, not the
music/video/weather/etc features). If I start selling Myth boxes (or
worse, closed and rebranded Myth boxes) with the understanding, either
implicit or explicit, that the program data is free, then I am
defrauding the customer because I have no control over the data and
cannot gurantee its availability, and violating the agreement with
zap2it because I don't have the right to use their data for commercial
purposes.

It's not about reselling zap2it's free service, which would get you
hot water very quickly. It's about using zap2it's free service as a
selling point for a decidedly commercial venture -- selling hardware
that runs MythTV (or a closed, rebranded MythTV that violates the
GPL).

That is why your HO is 100% wrong.

We here are very fortunate to have zap2it provide listings for us for
free -- without program data there would be far fewer people using
Myth, and far less development at a much slower pace. We would like to
continue to recieve zap2it data, and therefore do not like it when
people do things that threaten this service (let alone when they try
to rip the GPL out of Myth).

We are also very fortunate to have a commercial venture called LxM
which provides listings and other value-added services for MythTV for
a very reasonable price, and which respects the open foundation upon
which MythTV was built, as well as expressly giving back to the
further development of the project.

The moral of the story is that if you sell Myth boxes, it is a
commercial venture. If it is a commercial venture the seller cannot
give away zap2it's data, but can and should steer the customer to LxM,
which also provides data. This also means that the commercial venture
contributes back to community at least indirectly through LxM
subscriptions, and hopefully directly, since anyone selling them
surely has some ideas how to improve Myth and the time to do so,
especially because working with Myth would be a full-time job.

Get it?