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Former Linux developer Patrick McHardy dropped his Gnu General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) violation case against Geniatech in a German court this week. ZDNet explains why some consider this a big "win": People who find violations typically turn to organizations such as the Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), and the Software Freedom Law Center to approach violators. These organizations then try to convince violating companies to mend their ways and honor their GPLv2 legal requirements. Only as a last resort do they take companies to court to force them into compliance with the GPLv2. Patrick McHardy, however, after talking with SFC, dropped out from this diplomatic approach and has gone on his own way. Specifically, McHardy has been accused of seeking his own financial gain by approaching numerous companies in German courts. Geniatech claimed McHardy has sued companies for Linux GPLv2 violations in over 38 cases. In one, he'd requested a contractual penalty of €1.8 million. The company also claimed McHardy had already received over €2 million from his actions...

In July 2016, the Netfilter developers suspended him from the core team. They received numerous allegations that he had been shaking down companies. McHardy refused to discuss these issues with them, and he refused to sign off on the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement. In October 2017, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel maintainer for the stable branch, summed up the Linux kernel developers' position. Kroah-Hartman wrote: "McHardy has sought to enforce his copyright claims in secret and for large sums of money by threatening or engaging in litigation...."

Had McHardy continued on his way, companies would have been more reluctant to use Linux code in their products for fear that a single, unprincipled developer could sue them and demand payment for his copyrighted contributions... McHardy now has to bear all legal costs for both sides of the case. In other words, when McHardy was faced with serious and costly opposition for the first time, he waved a white flag rather than face near certain defeat in the courts.

As tablets and computer-phones flood the market, the headlines read: "The Personal Computer is Dying." But they are only half true: an artifact of the PC is dying, but the essence of the PC revolution is closer to realization than ever before, while also being closer to loss than ever before.

Certainly one way to define the Personal Computer stems from the era of the IBM PC: a gray box with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard (or a laptop). But the idea of the Personal Computer dates back quite a while — back to Alan Kay's Dynabook, the Lisp Machine, etc.

The Apple Knowledge Navigator provided a vision of personal computing far more dynamic than that dull gray box. Although still a pale comparison, tablet and phone platforms are beginning to look awfully similar.

The essence of those pre-PC Personal Computers was that of the user controlling the device. You control the data, you control the software; the Personal Computer is a uniquely personal artifact that the user adapts to his own working style. One consequence of this is that creating is as easy (perhaps easier) as consuming content. Another nice side effect is that your data remains private by virtue of local storage.

In many ways, then, a tablet or phone comes significantly closer to a personal computer than that dull gray box under your desk. For example, on Android, the screen ceases to be a place to throw icons and becomes a rich canvas of widgets. Additionally, my phone fits into my pocket and is always there. Ubiquitous cellular coverage gives me access to my data from most anywhere. The touchscreen and interface conventions make direct manipulation shine in a way you just can't get from a screen two feet away on a desk.

And, those are just superficial improvements over the desktop. Albeit tied to proprietary services, Google's voice search and Siri are inching closer to the dream of personal Intelligent Agents reminding us all that our mothers called us earlier today and want us to pick up the birthday cake for the surprise party With a few taps I can search basically all of my data, not to mention the collective knowledge of mankind.

But the software running on these devices has a dark side. Want to access your music collection the go? You have to get it from Google Play. Want to have lightweight instant messaging? You have to use GTalk. Or take ebook readers (certainly personal devices): that book you just downloaded to your Kindle is DRMed and stuck there! That intelligent agent? Apple records everything you bark at her and can take her away at a moment's notice.

Furthermore, the software on these devices is geared almost exclusively toward content consumption. You can listen to music all day long, but don't try multi-track recording. That ebook reader is great for reading, but you can't scratch notes in the margins of any of your books or sit down with one and scrawl out your latest manuscript. Clearly, some of this is from the youth of these new systems, but it is distressing to see them geared first toward consumption (the Newton, for example, was geared from the start as a device for creation).

The "cloud" as implemented by Amazon, Google, Apple, et al. is a distinct threat to the personal computer. Loss of control over our own data is perhaps the worst part of the cloud. We're easily seduced by genuinely useful features like access to our contacts and music from any device without having to manually sync anything. It's certainly more convenient to purchase a digital movie on Amazon Prime than to hunt down a DVD, and Netflix is definitely nicer for most people than cable television. But when you buy a movie on Amazon, you don't really own it.

Underlying many of these cloud services (especially media-related ones) is Digital Restrictions Management. Whether it be the files themselves or the protocol used to transmit data, DRM is used to control what you can do with your data, restricting even what programs you can use to interact with seemingly neutral files. Worse, networked DRM services can and have led to lost data when it is no longer profitable for the company to run the verification servers.

The only copying that DRM discourages effectively is the sneakernet. And, given that the sneakernet has existed since recordable media has existed, it doesn't seem like the sneakernet is really much of a threat to creative business. I might lend a friend a CD (or even let her copy a few files), but just as I don't unwrap that CD and torrent it through The Pirate Bay, I'm not going to download a movie from Amazon and do the same. There's really no incentive to do so, for most people — most people pirate because that's what you have to do to get the media you want, not because you have a compulsive desire to share things with your closest 10,000 friends.

In order to prevent what is effectively sharing between actual friends, pushers of DRM-infected data want us to completely cede control of our own data!

And they have made people accept it: Steam, Netflix, and Amazon Prime are wildly popular. All of those services are great ideas, but all of them treat you as if you were a criminal.

Worse yet, the spread of Software-as-a-Service is returning us to the bad old days: that powerful PC in your pocket is quickly becoming no more than a glorified terminal. The open peer-to-peer network is being subverted from an enabler of collaboration never before seen into yet another scheme to tether users to proprietary, centralized services. And, as SaaS expands, privacy recedes. No longer is it implicit that your documents are yours alone; now you write and store things using Google Docs and have no expectation of privacy (legally), despite expecting privacy. Amazon knows what you read; Netflix knows what you watch; Google knows what you visit.

Control over the programs you run, and more importantly can write, is key to a personal computer being personal. And it seems absurd that that right might be taken away, but behold: the iPhone and soon Mac Store are these mythical walled gardens. You have to subvert your device to gain real control! And the natural path for Apple is to restrict Macs similarly to iOS devices.

And so we are all-too-near an Orwellian nightmare where vendors dictate what we can do with and how we can use our own data.

But what about the hardware itself? It could be argued that a device isn't really personal for some set of people if they can't change all of the software. Here too we see some promise, and some pitfalls.

The shift to tablet and phone hardware has meant a shift from x86 machines running PC BIOS to thousands of ARM boards, each with its own peculiar way of being programmed. Things you take for granted on x86, like being able to even boot, require custom code. And let's not even begin talking about all of the DSPs and co-processors. Vendors aren't always forthcoming with documentation for their boards, and, even worse, those that do port Linux to their hardware often blatantly violate the GPL and do not distribute kernel sources. This restricts the utility of perfectly fine hardware: often to the detriment of the user and to the benefit of the manufacturer.

Anyone who finds they can't upgrade to the latest version of Android because their vendor won't support it, and the community cannot support it because of non-free drivers, knows what losing control over their hardware is like (RIP HTC Dream).

It might seem like a minor setback ("I guess I have to buy a new phone"), but the lack of specifications or support marginalizes alternative operating systems. There's Meego, Tizen, Open webOS, Firefox OS, SHR, etc., but experimenting with them on your device is a non-starter. Imagine if the x86 were so closed (something we may not have to only imagine much longer): it is doubtful that GNU/Linux or the multitude "alternative" OSes would exist (Atheos, Haiku, L4Linux, even the Hurd). Ever more closed hardware is putting us into a position where two or three companies will dictate everything about the computing experience going forward, with no room for freethinking tinkerers to revolutionize how we interact with our devices.

We are staring at a bleak future, and living in a bleak present in some ways. But there is hope for the battle to be won by the Personal Computer instead of the Terminal.

The Internet is not yet merely glorified cable television. Hypertext, email, instant messaging, trivial file transfer, etc. have revolutionized how mankind communicates (understatement of the decade). Once upon a time the dream was that everyone would be a first-class netizen: your IP was publicly routeable and with a bit of know-how you had a server. Instead, thanks to grossly asymmetric pipes and heavy NATing, it is rare for any individual to run their own servers. Instead we turn to Google, Amazon, et al and cede control over our data.

But now broadband connections are spreading fast (I've gone from 100Kbit/s to 2Mbit/s upstream in three years just with basic service), IPv6 is really here, and software is being written to challenge the centralized "cloud" model being pushed on us from above.

We've had a few victories already: SMTP is still in use, XMPP is the dominant chat protocol (and IRC refuses to die), RSS/Atom aggregation decentralizes news, and the core network protocols are developed in the open.

But Google still controls Android, and myriad services control your data. Part of this is because they have easy client and server interfaces; sure you could run gallery2 and Wordpress on your own server, but I can just snap a photo on my phone and it's up on Facebook 40 seconds later (well, if their app worked, it would be).

Luckily, there are people working on making easy to use "cloud" services. In particular, ownCloud. ownCloud provides a framework for hosting and syncing data between your devices and sharing data with others. The important part is not so much the central server, but the clients they are writing. Eventually, it should be possible to e.g. replace the Google contact/mail/calendar sync and Google Drive, while adding these features to the desktop. Integration in KDE is already underway.

Imagine, instead of being tied to Google you could move the central server to the hosting provider of your wish (or pack up your data and move it to greener pastures if you're not running your own). And, perhaps more subtle (but the real liberation): Your data would be freely movable between all operating systems (interesting that you have to go through hoops to sync your GMail contacts with anything else, and Abandon All Hope Ye who wants to share between an Apple device and anything else). Additionally, the server is designed to respect your privacy (you can e.g. only store encrypted data server-side).

On the hardware side, projects like Firefox OS are very important: having a "mobile" Free Software OS developed in the open might be essential when the dominant open platforms are developed monolithically by corporations with no interest in protecting user control of data.

And then for developing the next generation of devices, folks like Rhombus Tech are pushing for the development of interchangeable CPU boards for embedded devices, and the FSF is expanding their focus to include open hardware.

There are two serious threats that would undermine any resistance: IPv4 exhaustion and draconian content policing. The former issue is technical and likely to solve itself: in the long run multi-level NAT would be too costly, switching hardware will be replaced as it is obsoleted, etc. The latter is political and represents the most serious threat of all. If we cannot communicate freely and the pipes are owned by the very organizations whose business interests will be harmed... we've already seen how brazen the current IP regime can be, and it will take vigilance on the part of many to prevent them from having their way.

Where will we be in ten years? If Google, Amazon, Apple, and Old Media get their way, in a new dark age of computing. Certainly, you'll have a fancy tablet and access to infinite entertainment. But you will own nothing. Sharing data will be controlled by a chosen few entities, the programs you can run or write will be limited in the name of security, and privacy will be dead.

History shows that personal computing survived despite Apple and Microsoft in the 80s and 90s. So, I'm hopeful that other forces will win: the forces of Free Culture and Free Software. If they succeed (or are at least not crushed), the future is much brighter: most content will be available DRM-free, users will control their computing environments, and the egalitarian promise of the Internet will be realized (in no small part thanks to IPv6).

zycx writes "As Dieter Spaar has pointed out in a mailing list post on the OsmocomBB developer list, he has managed to get a first alpha version of TCH (Traffic Channel) code released, supporting the FR and EFR GSM codecs. What this means, in human readable language: He can actually make voice calls from a mobile phone that runs the Free Software OsmocomBB GSM stack on its baseband processor. This is a major milestone in the history of the project."

Simon80 writes "Harald Welte, known for his involvement in various open source communities, has pointed out the shortcomings of Netgear's open source router hype. Netgear's own astroturfed community site reveals that the router requires the use of binary-only kernel modules for the wireless and ethernet hardware, which is supplied by Broadcom. Also worth noting are the missing features in third-party firmware versions supplied by Netgear."

solevita writes "Harald Welte, who's been interviewed previously by Slashdot, has written on his blog about operating an Open Source GSM network at the recent HAR2009 conference. Photographs and a description of the setup, run under license of the Dutch regulatory authority, are provided; essentially the setup consisted of a pair of BTS' (Base Transceiver Stations) running at 100mW transmit power each and tied to a tree. In turn these provided access to the Base Station Controller (BSC), in this case a Linux server in a tent running OpenBSC. The system authenticated users with a token sent via SMS; in total 391 users subscribed to the service and were able to use their phones as if they were on any other network. Independent researchers are increasingly examining GSM networks and equipment, Welte's work proves that GSM is in the realm of the hackers now and that this realm of mobile networking could be set for a few surprises in the future."

solevita writes "Harald Welte, who's been interviewed previously by Slashdot, has written on his blog about operating an Open Source GSM network at the recent HAR2009 conference. Photographs and a description of the setup, run under license of the Dutch regulatory authority, are provided; essentially the setup consisted of a pair of BTS' (Base Transceiver Stations) running at 100mW transmit power each and tied to a tree. In turn these provided access to the Base Station Controller (BSC), in this case a Linux server in a tent running OpenBSC. The system authenticated users with a token sent via SMS; in total 391 users subscribed to the service and were able to use their phones as if they were on any other network. Independent researchers are increasingly examining GSM networks and equipment, Welte's work proves that GSM is in the realm of the hackers now and that this realm of mobile networking could be set for a few surprises in the future."

Glyn Moody writes "We now know that Microsoft's lawsuit isn't just against TomTom, but against Linux too: but what exactly is Microsoft hoping to achieve? Samba's Jeremy Allison has a fascinating theory: 'What people are missing about this is the either/or choice that Microsoft is giving Tom Tom. It isn't a case of cross-license and everything is ok. If Tom Tom or any other company cross licenses patents then by section 7 of GPLv2 (for the Linux kernel) they lose the rights to redistribute the kernel *at all*. Make no mistake, this is intended to force Tom Tom to violate the GPL, or change to Microsoft embedded software.' Maybe embedded Linux is starting to get too popular."

Earlier this month you asked Harald about VIA's open source strategy and his work with gpl-violations.org. Here are his well-thought-out, informative answers. 1) More interesting mobile developments? -- by radimvice
Your Wikipedia bio mentions that you left your position as Lead System Architect for the OpenMoko project in 2007 due to "internal friction and demotivation". What are your current thoughts on the OpenMoko platform, has it made significant improvements since your decision? What are the biggest hurdles it still needs to overcome before you would consider it a successful project? Are there any other upcoming mobile platforms that have you excited for the future of open source development on mobile phones, or is the industry/market perhaps still too premature for open-architecture Linux on the cell phone?

Harald:
Openmoko has made quite a number of improvements but at the same time has many internal problems to resolve. Only few of those are technical, and the least of them are software related.

The biggest hurdle I see is the creation of more competitive hardware, both from mechanical design as well as providing 3G / 3.5G cellular connectivity.

I am not too excited about other mobile platforms, since though some of them are Linux based, everyone expects them to be locked-down with signed bootloader/kernel images which completely circumvents the freedom to modify the code and run modified versions of it.

And yes, the traditional carrier-driven market is much too premature and stuck in their monopolistic and proprietary structures. But if they don't change at some point, I think the number of GSM phones sold independent of carriers will rise again. The subsidized-phone-sold-by-carrier-bundled-with-simcard model is extremely against an open market, fair competition and equal opportunities.

2) What's the situation with VIA drivers for Linux -- by glop
A friend just got a Wibrain b1 that came with Ubuntu. The drivers for all the VIA stuff are binary blobs which prevents him from upgrading the kernel. They also don't seem very reliable as he is seeing crashes.

Is there already Open Source drivers for that kind of hardware or is this part of your mission for VIA?

Harald:
I do not understand why there are any binary-only kernel drivers involved.

To the best of my knowledge, VIA does not have any binary-only drivers, and particularly not graphics related. The agpgart and DRI/DRM drivers are all GPL licensed open source. The chipset used in the Wibrain device is a unichrome based chipset, and those drivers are all part of the mainline kernel.

There are some other more recent VIA integrated graphics chipsets utilizing the Chrome9 graphics core. The DRI/DRM driver is not yet integrated into the mainline kernel, but it is available as GPL licensed source code from http://linux.via.com.tw/

Binary-only userspace drivers (like the 3D and TVout enabled Xorg driver as released by VIA) do not impose any restrictions on kernel updates, since the kernel ABI towards userspace is fixed.

3) v2 or v3 -- by larry bagina
Do you prefer the GPL version 2 or version 3?

Harald:
It's a hard question. I personally prefer GPLv2, but not for much rational reasons. Rather it's "the thing that I'm used to" and "the license that I've managed to enforce successfully". So it's like a proven, reliable and trustworthy legal tool.

On the other hand, v2 has some shortcomings. I like the fact that GPLv3 makes it explicit that you cannot use cryptographically signed code to circumvent the "freedom to run modified versions". In GPLv2 you can only argue for this by doing a license interpretation - i.e. not something that will have a certain outcome in court. If v2 was more explicit in this regard, we would not have seen the tivo-ization of products suhc as the Motorola Linux based phones on which you cannot change a single line of code. It is _sooooo_ much against the purpose, intention and spirit of the license. It hurts.

What I prefer about v2 is that there is a more explicit 'automatic termination' clause and no implicit way how an infringing entity can 'heal' their infringement within a certain deadline. The v3 part about this is creating an entirely new set of complexity for license enforcement which I believe is unjustified.

So for any new code that I write I usually put it under 'v3 only', unless it is a contribution to an existing v2-only project like the Linux kernel, or unless there are contractual obligations requiring the code to be v2-only.

I personally don't believe in the 'version X or any later version' idea, since I have a hard time to preemptively agree to something that neither I nor anyone else has ever seen.

4) VIA and Netbooks -- by Van Cutter Romney
My recent brush with VIA is when I bought a HP mini-note laptop which uses the VIA C7 processor. Unfortunately, I ended up picking the laptop with Windows Vista and I'm sorry to say that it is not the right operating system for this category of portable laptops. I am much more happier with Ubuntu loaded on the machine now.

My question to Mr. Welte is, how is VIA working with vendors like HP to promote Linux on this new and exciting range of netbooks that coming out?

Harald:
First of all: I can understand your pain, as I have bought the same vista-based HP mininote in order to illustrate the problems with VIA's old binary-driver strategy on Linux. Right now it is just impossible to install any mainline distribution on that system (or similar systems employing VIA's recent products), even if you're a very experienced Linux user, sysadmin or developer.

To the best of my knowledge, VIA is not promoting the use of any Operating System to their system integrators. It's rather the other way around, i.e. the system integrators / notebook manufacturers who want to create a Linux-based product ask or rather demand good Linux support from chip manufacturers like VIA.

5) Have you ever accused an innocent? -- by BitterOldGUy
From your Bio you started gpl-violations.org.

Have you ever accused anyone of violating the GPL and then found out that they didn't?

Harald:
No. The way we work at gpl-violations.org is to first do a test purchase and obtain evidence of the copyrigt (and GPL) violation. After that, we send a legal warning notice demanding the infringing entity to cease and desist from their doing.

6) 3D Support? More support than Unichrome series? -- by Svartalf
It's my understanding that VIA has recently provided a dump of new "cleaner" code to x.org that supports the Unichrome lineup more properly. (By the way, thanks...)

However, this doesn't help fully in the big-picture sense of things.

Right now, an Atom based netbook will have 3D capable of doing Compiz (I know, I've played with it on at least two differing eeePC models right now...) and some lower-end FOSS 3D games out of the box. With what has been given out so far, you still can't do this with VIA's offerings, which include the netbook designs and the EPIA boards. That, alone, isn't a good thing or selling point, really, for those designs right now. What is VIA planning to do in regards to fixing the 3D situation on the stuff that you have already released stuff for?

The aforementioned only talks to Unichrome/Unichrome Pro/Unichrome II. What's the story with the other Chrome lineup? Are we going to see FOSS support for those chips or are they even relevant going forward?

Harald:
I am sorry to say that there is no quick solution for FOSS support of Chrome9 products. It is one of the hottest topics of my work inside VIA, and everyone is trying their best to find a solution. I cannot disclose any details for the reasons for this difficulty, but any possible solution is likely going to take quite a significant amount of time.

For 3D FOSS support (Xorg/DRI/DRM/Mesa driver) for unichrome / unichrome pro the situation is much better and we will see that code disclosed at some not too distant point in the future.

Just think of what ATI has been going through some time ago. They were unable to release the source for their existing binary-only driver and had to start a new driver, which needs time.

7) S3 & Via -- by bill_mcgonigle
Can you illuminate the relationship between S3 and Via for us? I've tried in the past getting basic technical specs (e.g. textures per pass, triangle rates, pps, fill rates) on the video hardware that comes with Via boards. This kind of information is readily available from other manufacturers, and occasionally a whitepaper will show up from Via or S3 for a random chipset, but asking Via for this kind of information results in stacks of legal forms to be signed in duplicate, allegedly because of NDA's between Via and S3. Yet, S3 bills itself as "a VIA Technologies, Inc. joint venture company". Doing open source work, I've avoided the NDA entanglements, and ultimately went to ATI for video hardware because I could find specs reliably without 'buying one of each' (this was actually suggested to me). Mostly it's all very confusing for people who just want to develop stuff, and I wonder how this relationship affects the open source drivers and the stuff that's not currently available (3D, hardware media decoding) but is essential for some embedded work.

The related question would be does Via realize that we're out here and want to buy their hardware but are being forced to rule out Via due to secretiveness?

Harald:
I have just started working for VIA, so I am not as familiar with all of the corporate details, as you can imagine.

However, S3 Graphics is an entirely independent company and not a subsidiary of VIA. That basically means that VIA is holding some stock, but that's more or less all. They also promote their products together.

The S3 Graphics discrete GPU's are developed independently from the VIA integrated graphics, and they share no common hardware core or driver.

So since VIA has taken steps to become more supportive of Open Source and particularly Linux and Xorg, we will see improvement for the VIA integrated graphics products. This has no relationship to what S3 does for their products.

And I totally agree with your statement of VIAs [past] secretiveness and lack of open documentation and open source drivers is definitely hurting their ability to sell to the Linux based market, including the Linux based embedded market.

This is precisely why VIA is changing now, and has hired me as part of that process. Some of those changes are visible now, other changes will only be visible with future products. There is always a lead time involved in any R&D...

8) IP and moving forward with open-sourcing by TheModelEskimo
How much did IP (intellectual property) concerns weigh on the process of opening the driver code? We've been hearing from companies like nVidia that IP issues prevent them from opening their own code, so I'd be interested to hear just how it is that VIA were able to get to this point in the face of today's treacherous environment regarding IP.

Harald:
First of all, I dislike the use of 'IP', since it confuses trademarks, patents, copyright and other rights.

Yes, 3D graphics and video codecs are a minefield of patents. Those patents and the way their licensing works cause significant trouble and present legal risks for anyone involved with them.

So even if you assume the best case and assume that you can manage to build an open source solution that's still in compliance with the patent licenses, you will have to waste a lot of time on carefully analyzing the legal situation and possibly spend just as much time on it as on writing code.

This is why less contentious code like 2D drivers can usually be disclosed fairly quickly, and others cause quite a lot of headache :(

As far as copyright is concerned, to the best of my knowledge VIA wrote all parts of their drivers themselves and did not license parts of it from any other entity. This means they are the sole copyright holder and can therefore decide on whether to relicense existing code under a FOSS license.

9) Drivers Drivers Drivers (Score:5, Insightful by dan the person
VIA has a history of releasing chipsets packed full of great video acceleration, but no drivers to make use of that acceleration, sometimes there are even no windows drivers either.

Looking at the linux drivers for instance[1], there are big gaps, and it is disappointing to see no drivers to support the base MPEG4 acceleration let alone new features such as h.264 acceleration.

I have an EPIA SP8000E and the MPEG2 acceleration (XvMC) implemented by the openchrome drivers is awesome, such a shame more than that cannot be supported.

VIA has once again re-launched their linux drivers[2], and once again the support is very limited, only a small number of distributions, a small number of chipsets, and a small number of hardware features supported. Furthermore applications that can make use of these drivers features are almost non-existent

Wouldn't it be better to work with the the established driver teams such as openchrome, who have broad distribution support, broad chipset support, and are broadly supported by applications, to add the missing hardware support?

[1]http://wiki.openchrome.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=HardwareCaveats
[2]http://linux.via.com.tw

Harald:
The problem with hardware accelerated video playback is that the company creating a 'consumer product' sold to an 'end user' has to pay the royalties to the MPEG-LA.

So any chip maker like VIA is not required to pay the patent licensing royalties since they just produce an 'intermediate product' which somebody else can turn into a 'consumer product'.

This works fine in an environment where VIA makes chips and provides reference driver code under NDA to a system integrator, who then sells a bundle of software and hardware to an end user. In that case the system integrator either pays the royalties and can sell that product, or doesn't pay the royalties and can just sell the hardware without the proprietary software drivers and programs to actually make use of those hardware features.

Now imagine the open source situation for this. If VIA was suddenly selling chips as intermediate products, but also disclosing free player software to make use of that acceleration features? Would that then be a 'consumer product'? Who knows. But it would definitely be distributed to an 'end user' since it's available to anyone who wants to download it.

So if any independent free software or proprietary software program implements those codec acceleration features, they might violate the patents on those video codecs. Just in the same way mplayer, xine and other FOSS programs do not pay the per-installation/copy/download royalties for MPEG2/H.264/... playback products. Maybe you can call a sourcecode implementation just a 'reference implementation for scientific purpose', but that's open to legal interpretation and as far as I know there is no precedent in this area. But it is their decision on what legal risk they take.

It's the very same reason why distirbutions generally refrain from shipping that player software. Because there is significant indication that they would have to pay per-unit royalties. And with free software, you never know how many units there are, so you don't even know how much to pay - and you also have no revenue from things that you don't sell...

10) GPL Violations by PingXao
You have stated that your ability to pursue claims against those who violate the GPL is hampered by lack of resources. What amount and type of resources, in your estimate, would be required to pursue all such claims? I'm thinking in terms of everything from vetting the claims to see if they're warranted all the way through the hiring of legal representation to file and pursue lawsuits against the violators.

Harald:
The limited resources basically come down to a lack of 'trustworthy time' for actually doing technical analysis of an alleged infringement. Since I am in the end the person who is personally liable with everything I own, I have to trust such an analysis.

And in order to have that trust, I usually have to do it on my own. Over recent years, my 'second-in-command' at gpl-violations.org (Armijn Hemel) has started to do this kind of work and I trust him to be able to do it correctly.

However, if such a person makes a mistake, and I obtained a preliminary injunction banning a company from sales of their products which later gets overruled since there actually was no [sufficient] evidence for copyright infringement, then I'm liable for the loss of revenue to that company. Now if you think of the kind of consumer products and the quantities that they are sold, you can quickly imagine that it is prohibitive to get into that position.

There is no shortage on finding qualified legal representation to handle all those cases. Though at some point there is an issue where my personal liability is multiplied by the number of cases that run in parallel.

One way to address this problem is to over time get more engineers involved who can earn that level of trust. But it will likely take quite a lot of time to get there (possibly years). The other point is to incorporate the project to get myself out of the personal liability. We have some plans for that, but their implementation is again hampered by the limited amount of time that I can spend on the project.

I'm involved in way too many projects, and all of them are suffering desparately to get some more time and love by me. But I'm constantly thrashed and just only have a limited number of timeslices available. OpenPCD and librfid are the prime candidates for urgent need of time. The u-boot s3c24xx code and mainline submission of all the Linux kernel code that I wrote for Openmoko are other really important tasks that need to get done soon. Some other projects like ulogd and OpenEZX have managed to attract enough interest and involvement from other people so I have to worry less about them.

So that's why gpl-violations.org can only deal with a few cases. At the moment, we are doing up to 10 cases in parallel, and I expect we will probably get to something like 50-75 cases per year. But more would be too much.

-- Harald Welte http://laforge.gnumonks.org/

In this recent Slashdot post kernel hacker Harald Welte was characterized as "VIA's open source representative," but that is just one of many irons he has in the fire, as a glance at his Wikipedia bio will show. You can obviously ask Harald about many interesting things besides VIA's open source strategy — and before you ask about VIA, you ought to read the last few entries on his blog, at least one of which mentions VIA questions he can't answer. But VIA aside, there's plenty to ask Harald about. For example, he won an award from the FSF earlier this year for his work on gpl-violations.org. In any case, Harald is a powerful force for GNU/Linux and Free Software, and we appreciate him taking time out of his undoubtedly hectic schedule to answer your questions. (Usual Slashdot interview rules apply.)

billybob2 writes "VIA has released a 113,800 line open source graphics driver with full mode-setting support for CRT, LCD, and DVI devices along with 2D, X-Video, and cursor acceleration. Harald Welte, VIA's open source representative, states that the next step is to add 3D (see preview), TV-out, and hardware codec support while integrating this work with existing open source projects. VIA has pre-installed Linux on a significant portion of the company's latest products, including the EVEREX gPC2, 15.4" gBook, and CloudBook. It has also helped port the open source CoreBoot BIOS (previously LinuxBIOS) to several of its motherboards." VIA seems to be making good on the promise of its open source initiative announced last April.

l2718 writes "Yesterday we discussed Skype's appeal of a German court's ruling against them regarding a violation of the GPL. Harald Welte (the plaintiff) now reports in his blog that following oral argument, Skype decided to drop the appeal and accept the lower court ruling in Weite's favor. More details and analysis at Groklaw. Congratulations to Mr. Welte and GPL-violations.org!"

BrianWCarver writes "Despite earlier concerns reported on Slashdot that the GPL might be particularly difficult to enforce in Germany, that country's courts now hold the distinction of having enforced it twice. The first enforcement came in 2004 when Harald Welte of the netfilter/iptables core team sought to enjoin Sitecom from distributing its WL-122 router, which used netfilter's GPL'd code, without also providing the source code and a copy of the GPL, as that license requires. The Munich Court granted Welte a preliminary injunction and then upheld that injunction (Court's decision in English pdf) and now Sitecom provides the source code from their website. Welte, who also now runs gpl-violations.org to track GPL violations, and who personally handed over warning letters at Cebit to companies not in compliance with the GPL, reported on his blog today that he has obtained a new preliminary injunction enforcing the GPL, this time against Fortinet for distributing their firewall products (FortiGate and FortiWiFi) that include GPL'd code while Fortinet refuses to release the source. Congratulations again to Welte and his attorneys!"

Harald Welte writes "The netfilter/iptables project has just been granted a preliminary injunction against a GPL infringing WLAN AP Vendor. The project is trying to fight against the increasing number of products sold in violation of the GPL. Following a number of out-of-court settlements, this is the first case where a company refused to sign a letter to cease and desist. So we took the logical next step and applied for a preliminary injunction. The court reviewed the case and confirmed that Sitecom is in fact in violation of the GPL license terms."