Tracking GPL Violators 316
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week, open source developer Harald Welte made headlines when he personally served warning letters to 13 technology companies for alleged GPL violations. Now in a ZDNet interview, Welte explains the challenges behind tracking down these violators and how he persuades them to comply."
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Who are the lawyers that will litigate this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even the big companies that donate to big OSS projects aren't going to donate $$$ to litigate specific GPL violations.
The cost of litigation (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The cost of litigation (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, he's eventually going to get bored, get sick, get too involved in his day job, die, whatever. Having the whole GPL licensing system depend on the voluntary efforts of one individual strikes me as a fragile setup.
Re:Who are the lawyers that will litigate this? (Score:5, Informative)
And in german civil law, the loser pays. Or to be more exact: At the beginning of the process the demands of both parties are put on file (this is the so called Streitwert, the value of the suit), and at the end the resulting awarded damages are compared with the initial demands. The money you have to pay is depending on how much of your own demands got awared to you, and how much you have to pay to the other party. The cost of the suit is determined from the Streitwert (and the cost involves also the payments to the lawyers of both sides), and you pay the cost relatively to your payment to the other side.
This makes it rather risky to pull an SCO in a german court. If any SCO demands 1 billion Euros in a german court, the Streitwert will be at 1 billion Euros. And if SCO in the end gets awarded 10 Mio Euros, SCO would get 1% of the initial demand, so SCO had to pay 99% of the cost of the lawsuit. (In fact it's a little more complicated, this is Germany after all.)
But back to Harald Welte. He doesn't claim financial damage, so the Streitwert is rather low. He normally starts with an injunction requesting the other party to comply to the GPL and release the code in question or to stop infringing on his Urheberrecht (his Author's right to iptables/netfilter code according to the Berne convention), which amounts to stop selling the software or firmware.
A reseller then has to stop selling the product in question, because resellers almost never do have the source code. But they then can either sue the OEM for damages because of lost business or try to get the source code from the OEM and then open it to the public (or at least to the own customers). According to the GPL this heals the infringment. In the end it's the most easy thing for a reseller to press his OEM for the source code than to stop selling a product and even try to get all already sold stock back and destroy it. Only the company Sitecom tried to strike down the Injunction in question and lost in court, which uphelt the injunction. This was a 100% win for Harald, so 100% of the cost of this suit was paid for by Sitecom.
Re:When I saw this story (Score:3, Insightful)
2.) In general, people copying songs aren't trying to make money at it, while people abusing GPLed software are.
3.) This guy isn't going after individual infringers, unless a corporation is now considered and individual. RIAA is going after individuals who are copying songs for individual use, this guy is going after corporations violating the GPL to make mon
Here are your options (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here are your options (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here are your options (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Here are your options (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Here are your options (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Here are your options (Score:2)
Re:Here are your options (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California
Re:Here are your options (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here are your options (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here are your options (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Here are your options (Score:2)
Not everyone wants the BSD license.
Re:Here are your options (Score:2)
Re:Here are your options (Score:2)
Re:Here are your options (Score:3, Informative)
Correct me if I'm wrong
Ok :) There are two types of BSD license, one with the advertising clause and one without. The vast majority of BSD licensed code is under the no advertising clause license, because the advertising clause was rescinded by the Director of the Office of Technology Licensing of the University of California on July 22 1999.
All that the official BSD license requests you do these days is the following:
Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? There are several reasons:
1. I relicense the same source code commercially. This means companies pay for commercial licenses which do not have any GPL-like requirements. This is of course my right since I'm the author. It provides some nice income. Not possible with BSD licenses.
2. Other free software developers are given a competitive advantage when they use my GPL'd code. Commercial developers can choose to pay if they want to escape the GPL license. When I used BSD licenses, I was actually giving a competitive advantage to those who reused my source code in commercial products.
The GPL is a weapon, of course, and no-one likes being at the receiving end. But for any developer who has spent years (decades, even) writing open source, it's an excellent and far-sighted choice.
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:2)
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are wanting to use the code in a traditional commercial closed source sense then the GPL is no good so you may very well be prepared to pay for use.
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:3, Funny)
I'm undergoing serious training to straighten out my back caused in part to single strap backpackage.
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:5, Informative)
In theory, you are correct. In practice, your point is meaningless. Nobody would pay, because the BSD license already gives everything a commercial developer would want. Nobody pays for what they already have.
Re:Good reasons for chosing GPL over BSD (Score:4, Insightful)
"Despite his claims to the contrary, there is NOTHING in teh BSD license to stop hiom from relicensing his code and selling it commercially. "
Umm, except for common sense, which you seem to be missing?
Why would someone pay him for unecumbered code, when they could simply take the BSD licensed version for free.
His approach, which is very smart in fact, means that they are paying him for the cost of not having to fulfull GPL obligations (not only that, but also they are probably reducing their indemnification risks).
"Gets modified by the community"? (Score:3, Informative)
First, the community is free to take and modify our software under the GPL.
Second, we accept patches and changes to the software but under condition that the copyright is transferred to us. If the authors do not want to do this, that's fine. If they agree, we take over the work and maintain it and it becomes part of the "official" package.
Lastly, this situation is extremely rare. The community mainly consists of users, some who provide feedback on problems, a very few who provide e
Re:Here are your options (Score:2)
Works For Me (tm).
I really, really hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me they did..
Re:I really, really hope (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I really, really hope (Score:3, Informative)
You can charge anything you like for GPL software - sveasoft are in compliance with the GPL. Their source code is downloadable from their website for their customers (who are then theoretically free to pass it on).
Re:I really, really hope (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I really, really hope (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I really, really hope (Score:3, Interesting)
They only have to provide source to those that that they distribute binaries to. They don't distribute binaries of current versions to non-subscribers.
If you are a subscriber (FFS it's only $20!) you can download the source and do what you like with it.
Just call the BSA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just call the BSA (Score:4, Funny)
MorphOS (Score:5, Interesting)
ixemul, libnix, gcc, binutils and other things and when asking for the source codes then you get a reply telling you that the sources got lost. But still the stuff is being worked on and put in the binary release of their OS.
Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
MorphOS Developer Connection Terms Of Use
1 Content copyright
Files and data you get access to within the MorphOS Developer Connection (MDC) may not be copied or spread in any way without prior written permission from Genesi Luxembourg S.à.r.l (Genesi). No part of this website may be copied. Forum entries may not be quoted or copied outside of this website unless you are the sole author of the entry you quote.
on the developers license for morhpos
So i would
Re:Mod parent up (Score:2)
Re:MorphOS (Score:2, Interesting)
This in itself isn't odd, but I also found amigans to be the most blatant copyright infringers, who despite all the
Re:MorphOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Was that Iconian? If so, I beta tested for you long ago. Sorry to hear you didn't get much for it - it was a great tool.
Anyway, I know the feeling. I spent about six years of my life on fMSX Amiga, which was free (both speech and beer). I didn't formally license it (I was young and naive at the time), but I did put some restrictions on the source: I wanted to be properly credited, and I didn't want the completely disfunctional Colecovision support enabled because it just didn't work yet. Neither of these seem particularly unfair to me, and anyway, it was (and still is, for at least the next 80 years) _my_ source.
The result: there were four different "Colecovision emulators" around that were direct rip-offs of my source code. I don't know what I hated more: the ones that replaced my name with their own, claiming all rights to the work, or the ones that left my copyright notice intact, somehow making it seem I had released the utterly non-functioning software.
Anyway, I made a grand total of not even 20 euro's with fMSX Amiga, so don't feel too bad about it. As for the Amiga community, it turned unbelievably poisonous at some point. I'm not surprised if there are GPL-related problems now.
Re:MorphOS (Score:2)
It is legal to use it (Score:4, Insightful)
Does a 24 hour DoS count? (Score:2, Funny)
GPL violation trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, both discussions are about copyright. But they are also more fundamentally about fair use.
The GPL is based on the author's copyright and a very generous fair use license that promotes shared investment in the work. When a company takes GPL'd work and resells derived works without respecting the author's copyright, they are taking someone's work and reselling it without respecting the original author's rights.
Now to file sharing. Yes, this is also about copyright and fair use. However, it is rarely about restricting access to a work, it is about broadening that access.
The moral debate is simple: all technology, all creative work, all artistic creation and invention is the result of a continuous cultural stream that stretches back to the origins of our species. Every single creative act is a pebble placed on a mountain built by our ancestors.
Slashdotters tend to understand this intuitively. We don't like patents because they claim ownership of something we know to belong to us all. We don't like GPL violators because they take common property and resell it under false pretenses. We don't like DRM because it takes common property and fences it off. We tolerate file sharing and defend those who do it because we know that the alternative is cultural sterility, decay, and evetually extinction.
There is no contradiction here. Anyone who takes sacks of pebbles from the mountain and says "these are now mine" is a simple rogue, legalised or not, and we all know it.
Extinction! (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that copying the latest crap from Hollywood/Universal Music is *contributing* to the decline.
; )
PS Extinction is surely hyperbole no?
Re:Extinction! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not. Many cultural artifacts: languages, forms of art, even technologies have gone extinct because they were unable to spread. Culture is like an organism, it's evolved together with our genome, and it can go extinct just in the same way.
Re:Extinction! (Score:3, Insightful)
PS Extinction is surely hyperbole no?
Not really. Entire branches of expression have been driven to extinction (or at least legal limbo and extreme obscurity) by restrictive copyright laws.
For example, look at the amazing breadth of derivative works based on recent and current books, movies and songs, which build on the ideas that the original works have generated and let us examine them from angles which the original authors may not have considered, and from hundreds of fresh and different viewpoints
Re:Extinction! (Score:2)
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Superficially, that looks like a great argument. However, you forgot something important: fundamental rights of freedom and choice, because in both cases, the theft is ignoring the original choice and intentions of the copyright holder. You simply optioned for some so called "public good" at the expense of the creative individual, but really, your "public good" is just your own justification to suggest that music/software theft is acceptable.
Really: if you don't like copyright restrictions on works, choose alternatives, don't steal and then try to use a "robin hood" style argument to justify "public good". If you were stealing essential foodstuffs from wealthy to feed the poor, I could understand. However, music/software are not essential foodstuffs, and even if they were, there are plenty of free/share versions you can use without resorting to theft.
Bluntly: you don't need to steal music/software any more: there are a lot of free/share alternatives, and, the more you use those alternatives, the greater the critical mass, and the more they will grow and expand.
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2, Insightful)
I've always been of the opinion that the wealth of material that's fallen out of copyright or was made publicly available to begin with is the ideal use for file sharing networks.
I also feel the copyright period should be reduced - 10 to 15 years is more than sufficient to recoup on an investment, and even when it's in the public domain, it's not as if a publish can't continue to publish... people like 'convenience products' - box sets with collected works and additional content still continue
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all a matter of mindset, and you're not listening
He is basically arguing that some things fundamentally belong to everyone/no-one, and that no-one has any rights to them. There are countless of examples of this I'm sure you'd agree to; the air being most prevailant of these I'd guess.
Wether or not you think music / intellectual property / business method-
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
You (and the couple of others that responded to me) are not listening either.
You moved onto the philosophical debate about "property" and "ownership" and whether intellectual property and music/software does have these properties. This is a good debate to have.
However, if you pay attention: we are in a free society where not everyone agrees to your view about property. The IP system, and copyright, allows individuals to make the choice either way. It's obvious that some other people have chosen to protect their property, and some have given it away (GPL). The most important thing for you is to respect their choice, not trample all over their choice and their rights to satisfy your own view of how things should work.
Back to the OP: social arguments about whether something should be free or not are good arguments: but they come before the point at which someone decides to apply GPL or other rights restrictions. Once they do decide to apply their choice of licensing, you should, as a mature and civil person, accept their choice. Otherwise, quite simply, you (or a large enterprise) are trampling over those rights for your (or the enterprise) benefit, against the wishes of the licensor.
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
You're basically right in that respect. But for your system to work, you need mature and civil persons doing it.
And libertarians already showed us that individual convenience takes priority over civility, and a system that doesn't address that will most likely fail.
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, nothing like little word-games only intended to jam communications...
As for the actual debate, there are legitimate gripes regarding the constant expansion of copyright in areas where their actual usefulness is in doubt.
Regarding music for instance, it would be very interesting to see what would happen if copyright collapsed - my guess is we would only see a modest decline in customer satisfaction, if any.
With regards to computer games, advanced proprietary software and
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
How can something that you just synthesized - produced where it didn't exist before - be theft? You must mean that producing something, and then not giving it to someone for free is what you consider theft. So, how do you rate labor? Is not laboring for someone for free also theft? If that's the case, than not agreeing to be your slave is the same as stealing from you. Your concept makes everyone a slave to everyone else, all the time, and if they don't like being a slave, then they are a thief.
You'll be a lot more pursuasive if you actually use words in a meaningful way. Defining the limits by which you're willing to spread around that which you have created is not "limiting other people's right to intellect."
From M-W [m-w.com]:
Intellect - a: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will: the capacity for knowledge b: the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed
That's a good definition of the word. Your intellect is your capacity for intelligence. My not entertaining you for free with my music or movie does not limit your intellect. Limited intellect is as limited intellect does (and argues).
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:4, Informative)
Because we're not talking about the same thing. If fact, if you look at the hostorical (well, obviously fictional) Robin Hood, and step back for a moment: what was he an outlaw from? He was cast outside a brutal, feudal system run by parasitic thugs that used violence to make slaves of the local peasants. "Stealing" the product of those peasants, from whom it was stolen, not purchased, is a lot different than stealing movies and music and given it teenagers too lazy to mow lawns so they can afford to pay for their own witless entertainment.
The right to copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
Defining an asset as "property" is a compromise for those cases where it is less evil than the alternatives.
There is no other moral justification for claiming ownership of something. No natural law that says "this land,
Re:The right to copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Then copyright provides you with a way to do this: license your code under a "free-if-I-fail-to-maintain-it" license. There's nothing stopping you doing this.
"Property rights should, morally, be tied to stewardship. Take care of something, and we the people grant you the right to "own" it."
If you want to change the default law to make this happen, then you need to convince the rest of society that it's a good model. They don't get convinced that it's a good model if you're not respecting their rights and plundering their goods.
Re:The right to copyright (Score:2)
Somehow, I suspect that the concept of property predates agriculture. It probably originated about the same time that someone discovered that this sharp stick is better at poking things than that one. Heck, all carnivores
Re:The right to copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't even have to theorise on this. Study any pre-agricultural society and you will remark that there is an almost total lack of (a) personal property and (b) privacy. Tools are made as needed and discarded when blunt.
Why? Non-agricultural societies are almost always migratory (since they have to move to follow their food). Migration means walking and as any traveller knows, "property" just means extra weight to carry and lose.
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some "pebbles" that simply would not be added to your metaphorical mountain if their creators/innovators didn't have some expectation of being able to earn a living while producing them. Most creative types don't say to themselves, "I'm about to invest a couple-plus years of my life writing Cryptonomicon... but I'd better keep sucking up to my boss at the IHOP because my cultural history tells me I shouldn't expect a paycheck from book royalties, ever."
There is a contradiction in your message. People create under a legal framework upon which they base their expectations of interaction with other people. If they want to GPL their work, great. That defines a certain expected course of events and options. If they want to limit the distribution of their years of work to those people that are willing pay for entertainment, and thus stop waiting tables at IHOP (I know, Neal did not wait tables at IHOP), then that choice is also well supported under law. The problem we have is that people confuse the technical ability to avoid paying for someone's labor of years with the right to do so. Those authors/artists/developers that do indeed want a broader audience for their work do not necessarily mean that they want that to happen without expecting that audience to realize that the work has value, and to pay for it.
Your cultural stack of pebbles wouldn't exist without the daily work of creative people who continually add to it and also need to pay the rent. Culture is not some fixed pie to be divided up for free. It's the result of people's daily work, creativity, and commerce, and it thrives best when the most creative people available know that they can make a living doing what they do best. We all benefit, and paying an artist a few cents for their song is just fine. If you don't like that approach, then that means you don't like the artist for having made the choice to profit from their labors. And if you have any intellectual honesty, you'll decide you don't want to hear that artist's music anyway (since you can't stand the idea of them having decided to earn a living by selling, rather than giving away, their life's work).
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
Yes, of course people expect to be rewarded for their effort. That is so evident I did not feel it was necessary to say. "Reward" does not need to be strictly financial but whether it's status, reputation, groupies, or cars, something has to get us out of bed in the morning. Of course.
But it's the relationships between "reward" and "ownership" and "creation" that are under debate here.
Personally I'd love to see all music (for instance) sold along th
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
Adjust for inflation, both cultural and financial. Financial, in the sense that an artist that makes, say, $200,000 over the life of an album's sales is hardly making "huge" sums of money. Cultural inflation: the "artists" who make truly huge sums of money are way more than just singers, etc. They are cultural icons (for better or worse - gag me with a Britney), and are the loose equivalent o
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
Obviously you are not a writer. Most of them do have to keep their day jobs. You shouldn't expect a paycheck from book royalties, because you probably aren't going to get one any time soon, and if you ever do, it's not going to be very much
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
Which is exactly my point! I cited Neal Stephenson specifically because, as a supremely creative writer and all around cool guy, he still only makes (by his own description) a middle class income. If he couldn't bank on that income, he couldn't even begin to put in the uninterrupted creative hours that it takes to produce recent treasures like The Baroque Cycle. His work would be wildly inferior if he also had to wait tables, or crunch i
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole twisted idea of trying to disassociate ownership from original works is a very selfish position.
Those pebbles that came off the mountain only did so because someone put the effort into doing so. If you want their pebbles you can meet their requirements or go get your own. You however do not have a right to take their pebbles just because you might have/could have/would have done it. Anyone who wants to take the effort/work of others without compensation is just a selfish bastard.
Re:In other words... (Score:2)
It's not selfish if you are the ceator of the original work, and you disassociate ownership so that you can give it away for everyone to use; or, it's not selfish, if our entire social model is one where there is no individual ownership in the first place (the first part of the sentence assumes there is ownership in the first place).
However, while these are nice points, they are simply not the reali
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2, Insightful)
From the formal point of view, violating any license is the same and should be treated the same way.
However, the GPL violators are (partially) basing their business on an illegal activity while file-sharers just trying to get something for free.
It's like shoplifting vs. selling loads of stolen goods. Both are the same crime but the damage is orders of magnitude different. That's why people tend to defend filesharers. (And no infringment isn'
Re:GPL violation trolls (Score:2)
The nominal code is "illegal copying is theft", but the real code is, I believe, "culture wants to be free".
Illegal copying is a violation of someone's rights, yes. No debate about that. But throttling a culture is a violation of many more people's rights, I believe. Stallman's great vision w
Did you know... (Score:2, Interesting)
Easier way. (Score:4, Funny)
Avoidance and respect as alternatives to coercion (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if you use the public domain, how do you prevent people from abusing your work? By naming them when they take work without credit, by avoiding them and refusing to cooperate with them in any way, by expressing respect for people who share work freely and who give proper credit, and by gently trying to convince others to do so.
Many companies which ignore the GPL don't understand the benefits open sharing of their code contributions would give them. It's important for us to communicate better how an open source development model helps everyone (an open code contribution may inspire others to contribute more, to fix bugs, and so on; it is much easier to maintain over version upgrades when it's in the main tree). The problem with the GPL is that it's not a tool of communication. We have focused too much on forcing people to do the right thing, instead of convincing them of the benefits of our approach.
We also need a generally accepted registry for public domain works so that it is provable who the first creator of a work is (that's also necessary as a defense to make sure other people don't claim copyright and sue people for using a work that's in the public domain).
I do value the copyleft effect of the GPL. I think its significance is overestimated, but it does have value. In spite of the arguments above, I think it is of enormous importance that we avoid a split between the copyleft and the non-copyleft camps. In the larger scheme of things, these differences of opinion are minor, and what is important is that we all support the goal of free content. So while I don't approve of the means in this case (GPL enforcement), I do approve of the end (more free content). Still, I ask you to consider putting your code in the public domain.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Avoidance and respect as alternatives to coerci (Score:3, Insightful)
That's never going to work.
Scenario: you write a successive UNIX derivative, and it is put into the public domain, then installed into a successful embedded product that is so
Re:Avoidance and respect as alternatives to coerci (Score:2)
"You complain, try to shame, etc. "
Perhaps that's what you would do. Perhaps there those of us who are above that.
RTFP you AC: the upper poster (UP) said that's what _he_ would do as a "viable" model for avoiding copyright laws. I completely disagree with the UP.
Re:Avoidance and respect as alternatives to coerci (Score:5, Insightful)
The best response is: "No, we don't. We use the public domain. So there."
No, a much better response is: "Reasonable copyright laws, with durations and scope that actually maximize the public good, serve our purposes as copyright owners just as well as laws that are insanely restrictive and have uselessly long terms. GPL software authors would be perfectly happy with copyrights that lasted 28 years, or even less."
As for the argument that we should simply allow everyone to choose whether or not they want to share their changes to their code, rather than "enforcing" it through the GPL... either you're naive or a Microsoft et al shill.
There's nothing morally wrong, or inferior, about using the GPL, any more than there's something wrong with wanting to be paid for your work. Following your line of thought, you should also donate your physical labor to the public good as well, right? And, more specifically, donate your labor to your employer and then argue that you've donated it to the public good.
Developers use the GPL because they hope to get paid for their work. Not paid in currency, typically, and the payment isn't guaranteed by any means, but they do want to be paid by receiving improvements to their own work. The logic is: "I want to write X because I need X, but I don't have the time or resources to create it all by myself. Perhaps if I write half of it, producing something useful but not really complete, and publish the code under the GPL, others will contibute their time to help me complete it. And perhaps they'll even help me make a better X than I would have even if I had time."
Of course, you can do the same thing with public domain code, but if you use the public domain you run a much greater risk of not seeing any of the improvements.
The notion that you can successfully shame people into sharing is simply naive. In particular, it doesn't work well if the non-sharer has a large advertising budget and you do not.
Re:Avoidance and respect as alternatives to coerci (Score:3, Insightful)
The coertion in the GPL is only to be used against the sharks who don't adhere to the rules and would damage the open, common pool.
Also I don't agree with GP assertion that public
GNU GPL for documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
From the ZDNet article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is he sure about that? First time I have heard this as a requirement.
all the best,
drew
http://zbcw.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:From the ZDNet article... (Score:2)
Question.... (Score:3, Informative)
Enforcement (Score:2)
Has it actually stood up as being of any relevance?
No, not an anti GPL troll here, im really curious if we have yet to PROVE it has legal weight behind it.
Was hoping the SCO/IBM thing would do it, but that apparently has fizzled out..
Re:tracking duplicates. tracking dupllicates (Score:5, Informative)
Re:tracking duplicates. tracking dupllicates (Score:2)
I have several products released under the GPL at my website [palacecommunity.com]
Re:how? (Score:2)
Re:Are you sure he's not a GPL troll? (Score:5, Informative)
If you can't be bothered here are some relevant points:
What gives you the legal right to pursue the GPL violations? Most of the violations we're seeing are happening in the embedded market. They are running the Linux kernel and I have copyright on parts of the Linux kernel. In the cases that went to court, it was me as an individual copyright holder [against the company in question].
Some people have criticised the GPL for being business-unfriendly, what do you think? I totally disagree.
And, for the BSD fans in this thread:
How do you think the GPL compares with other licenses? It's a philosophical question. The BSD licence allows you to integrate and modify without giving back modifications, while GPL expects you to give back modifications. These are two philosophies of how you develop software. Which you chose depends on the project, for example, if you have a new standard and want it to spread quickly, it's better to use the BSD licence, rather than the GPL.
You sir, seem to be more of a troll than he does (and quite possibly an insensitive clod too)
Re:Are you sure he's not a GPL troll? (Score:3, Informative)
Not at all - you're mistaking it with the LGPL. GPL explicitly states that you *cannot* do this.
Re:Starts to sound like RIAA and MPAA and APB (Score:5, Informative)
Q: Why is it important to stop people from violating the GPL?
Welte: You can use all the code out there for free, but if you do modifications you have to give them back to the community -- it's a fairness thing. If we allowed violations to become common, the system would be out of equilibrium. This would result in fewer contributions and it would have a large negative impact on the motivation of developers.
Reflecting this argument back on the file-sharing issue does not work, incidentally. American (Pop) Idol proves, if nothing else, that there are a lot of people willing to do just about anything for a shot to record professionally. Artists make little from their album sales; they make shit-tons from touring. The lion's share of album sales goes to the record company, which then spends it on ads telling you you're depriving the artists when you download music.
The music industry is never going to collapse just because songs are traded online; they'll just turn the screws harder on the artists who get them paid. Disillusioning the small percentage of OSS advocates who actually code by allowing their ideology to be violated is an entirely different story.
Re:Starts to sound like RIAA and MPAA and APB (Score:2)
Of course, but they are never going to die if you continue to steal their rights and give them an excuse to toughen laws, file law suits and invade your rights. And artists will be continually attracted to them because they offer big money, not just from album sales (even if they are dwindling from file sharing) but big advertising clout, access to large scale resources, and so on.
By stealing music with file sharing, you'r
Re:Starts to sound like RIAA and MPAA and APB (Score:2)
That's not entirely true. You're free to modify GPLed code to your heart's content and never release the modifications, as long as you never distribute the resulting binaries. It is redistribution of the modified binaries that forces you to distribute your modifications in source form, not merely making the modifications.
Re:GPL Predators (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be making the assumption that the BSD license should be more like the GPL, when it fact it was designed to be its own unique thing and done rather well for itself and code released under it. Nothing about the BSD license says that a company cannot take BSD licensed code and use it however they want, including in a proprietary, commercial product. Part of the intent of the BSD license was to let persons/groups/etc do just that!
You also go with the "nyeh, we need protection for those who do not want or ask for it". If someone wanted to restrict the ability of a company to release their code, they would release it under a license
The GPL is a "Share and enjoy" style of license and persons who release code under it know what they are doing (or shouldn't be releasing code) while BSD is simply a "give credit where credit is due" style of license.
Re:What happens if... (Score:2, Informative)
If the version has been released elsewhere, then the thief probably does have the right to make copies and redistribute them under the GPL, but if he is imprisoned for stealing the CD he may have to wait until his release before doing so.
If the version in question is unpublished and considered by a company to be its trade secret, then publishing it may be a violation of trade secret law, depending on other circumstances. The GPL does not change that. If the company tried to relea
Re:What happens if... (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like this is allowed. You are allowed to do anything you want to the source, including not distributing any new copies. The fact that you "stopped distributing new copies" before even a single one was distributed seems to fit. You certainly have not violated the GPL, as it is your copyright and it is impossible to violate your own copyright, and the GPL only grants extra methods of violating a