Cdrtools

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The correct title of this article is cdrtools. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

cdrtools

Developer:	Jörg Schilling
Latest release:	2.01.01a15 / 2006-09-18
OS:	Cross-platform
Use:	CD/DVD-writing
License:	CDDL, GPL
Website:	cdrtools at berlios.de

cdrtools (formerly known as cdrecord) is a collection of open source computer programs that are the standard burning tool for most non-Microsoft operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD. The collection includes many features for CD and DVD authoring such as:

support for creation of audio, data, and mixed (audio and data) CDs.
support for burning CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW, both single and dual layer DVDs.
support for several different burning modes, such as Track-At-Once and Disc-At-Once.

cdrtools was created by Jörg Schilling under a GPL license. Later, due to problems with discographics, the licensing was changed and that caused many forks to arise, among them dvdrtools. The most important parts of the package are cdrecord, a console-based burning program; cdda2wav, a CD audio ripper; and mkisofs, a CD image creator. Because these tools don't include any GUI interface, many graphical front-ends have been created (see below).

1 Licensing controversy
2 Forks
3 Software depending on cdrtools
4 External links

[edit] Licensing controversy

In recent versions, starting with 2.01.01a03, parts of cdrtools have been relicensed under CDDL, while other parts are still licensed under GPL. In the opinion of several distributors, this change makes it impossible to legally distribute cdrtools binaries since the requirements of the GPL and CDDL conflict. As a result, Debian and Red Hat dropped the incompatibly-licensed versions of cdrtools from their distributions. A group of Debian developers have created a fork of cdrtools named cdrkit, and has invited Red Hat to join the development. Gentoo Linux plans to cease distribution of cdrtools binaries in their live CDs and install images as well. [1]