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BeOS Boo-Boo: Violating The GPL -- Updated
Bruce Perens writes "Be is violating the GPL on my software. While it's something they can easily fix, it's a good example of why people need to keep track of where the software they are using came from, and what license is applied to it. We've got the full story over on Technocrat.net." Updated 23:15GMT by timothy: Thanks to reader Eugenia Loli, who wrote: "Andrew
Kimpton from Be, was on the phone with Bruce Perens earlier, and Be is clearing up the issue once and for good! Please read the important update."
All the more to use BSD or like licensed code. Not necessarily because the code is better or worse or even because of the license itself, but to avoid the circus of misinformation, OS zealots, and publicity from OSS evangelists.
/., turning it into a trolling affair.
Heck, just the outcry from this is ridiculous. People make mistakes. (And you have to look no further than your own "favorite" OS linux and the number of its security holes...you ain't perfect.) Perens should have contacted Be directly, waited a bit, but no, he goes and blasts them on his own site,
They probably DO keep track of their software and made an accounting error. Heck, keeping software licenses straight is hard enough if you want to use a mix of programs out there.
If there is any reason not to use GPL'd software, and there are plenty, e.g. your company has no assets, you just created your own. The license is a tool for enforcement; instead, it's simply being abused by its own advocates. Welcome to the religion of the millenium--software licenses.
This is "informative"? The man asked a worthwhile question, and as best as I can tell Perens dodged it. Instead Perens jumped on problems that did not need to be attacked twice, and made a cop out excuse for his actions against Be. Sure, Perens has the right to his own intellectual property. The author did not deny this. But since when does the right to do a thing, equal the necessity (or the moral justification?) for a thing? The mere fact that you are legally (or even morally) entitled to act a certain way, does not mean your position is coherant!
It would be as if I am a black belt in Karate, and claimed I could kick anyones ass without any help. But when challenged, by a 90 pound novice weakling I call in for reinforcements. Sure, you may argue self-defence. You may even win in court. But this is not a defense for why you could not just use your fists.
The author made a very valid point. If the Open Source process itself is so superior, why does it depend on the rule of law (and/or, in this case, geek paranoia) to prevent its source from being coopted? If the open source zealots are to be believed, closed source has nothing additional to offer the consumer. If consumers aren't purchasing it en masse, then it isn't even really a violation of GPL. So why all the concern Bruce?
The most obvious explanation is that Open source does not live up to the hype. That it fundamentally lacks things that propietary software has. That propietary development can easily add value to the product for the consumer. Consequently, somewhere tucked in the back of the minds of open source developers is the belief that it need protection. This may or may not be reasonable. But it certainly cannot add up to Open Source being all things to all people at all times in the greatest way.
I think that his whole point, while not to embarass BeOS, is to make sure this is public. It is a good way to make sure that some of the open and not so open source companies know that there are people out there watching to make sure that the various opensource licenses are being kept. If he quietly went to them and they took care of it, which I am sure they will do, no one would know. This way, the changes can be made in a very non-adversarial way and set a precedent for other companies.
Says BeNews last week, Be Posts R5 GNU Sources. Including a link to the location with the updates.
>I don't see why Bruce had to draw attention to what he already believes is a simple, honest
>mistake. It would have been more professional to deal with it privately and only make it a
>community issue if Be ignored him or refused to fix the problem.
Because dealing with it quietly and professionally wouldn't generate nearly so many ad banner impressions for Andover and technocrat.net as making a big loud angry controversy out of it has... self-serving tabloid journalism at its finest.
Color me unimpressed, too.
--
On the other hand, if some company violated the copyrights on someone else's non-GPLed software they would find themselves in court. Why exactly should GPL software be any different?
Honestly, I don't see how getting a lot of angry email from Linux fanatics is too much of a price to pay for the theft of copyright material. This sort of screw-up would have cost Be Inc. big money if they had "borrowed" someone's proprietary code.
Bruce is certainly being much more calm about it than he needs to be. After all, it's not like Be Inc. is doing him a favor using his software. It's Bruce that has done all of the work, and now Be is doing precisely what Bruce was trying to prevent when he released the software under the GPL.
Linux fanatics are a picnic compared to intellectual property lawyers. Be should count themselves fortunate that Bruce is being as reasonable as he is. If he were an unscrupulous sort he could probably do Be Inc. some serious harm.
Guess you don't have that much Unix experience, then. I've seen this on SCO, Interactive, BSD/OS, SunOS, DG/UX and yes, Linux. Probably others, too, but my memory's a bit hazy... FWIW, SCO was by far the worst for this.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
People seem to be making two responses to what I wrote. I apologize if I'm not paraphrasing accurately:
/. zealots. If I sound like I have a grudge, it's about this: two companies who make products I use and love, Apple and Troll Tech, decided to try out an open source strategy while still allowing themselves the possibility to earn a living, not just hype. In both cases, instead of trying to address the weaknesses in their licenses in a friendly and cooperative way, Bruce Perens chose to be inflammatory. The result was FUD storms directed at both companies, that ignorant zealots still carry on long after the problems were fixed. (I've written some minor KDE apps and still get flame mails from GTK zealots who see my name and Qt on the same Freshmeat page.) I'd hate to see the same thing happen to Be over something this marginal.
If Be had done the same thing with proprietary software, they would have a had a harsher response.
First of all, I doubt that. In a a case like this, most companies would have had their lawyer send a letter. Still, even if it's true, it's irrelevant. Remember, the idea here isn't just to fight misuse of GPL software, it's to encourage companies to become comfortable with free software and the unfamiliar requirements it involves. To me, dealing this way with a subtle and unintended violation of the GPL is a strong disincentive for a company to write or redistribute free software.
This isn't a smear campaign. It's just getting the facts out. In fact, it makes Be look good!
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't Bruce Perens posting in 20 different places that he deliberately played this out to make the maximum amount of noise? Isn't he saying that he decided to do that before giving Be any chance to address the issue?
When I wrote "smear campaign" I wasn't referring to Bruce's words, but to the combined result of his provocation and the reactions of the knee-jerk
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Hm. Am I allowed to reverse engineer copyrighted code in order to find evidence of a copyright violation? :-)
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Yes, doing it in the aftermath might have been nicer, though. Maybe I screwed up.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
My copyright string is in the .o file, with my name in it.
Bruce Perens.
You might have that one backwards, actually.
Bruce Perens.
The question of whether or not disassembling someone else's code to look for an infringement is legal is an interesting one, though. I reject the analogy that it's like breaking into someone's home to look for stolen property. It's more like looking into the window of their car when they've parked it in front of your home.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I don't freeload music and I don't want other people to do that. What made you think I did?
I am sick of us having to chase these things down. Publicity is an effective tool for stopping that. At no time did I threaten to sue Be, and I knew I didn't have to, but I don't know the same thing about the next guy who comes along. I must actively enforce my copyright or the next fellow will have a big loophole to step through.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
No way would I have gotten Troll to change its license without the public outcry. They had no reason to do so except that the community didn't like it. The day they fixed their license I publicly endorsed it. Regarding Apple, that was even worse. ESR had gotten up on stage and endorsed it! That took major fire-fighting on my part to undo. And the most ironic thing about it is that even after Eric's endorsement, the Open Source Initiative board has still refused to certify the license even though I thought version 1.1, which addresses all of my criticism, was fine. So, Eric really should not have been up there endorsing version 1.0 .
I can only profess to be neutral regarding Be using GPL software. I'm not out to encourage them to use it as you think I should be, I'd just as well see their customers use an Open Source OS. Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
AFAIK, yes, that is OK. After all, what is it that you're getting when you buy a 2 CD set of binary only Debian or RedHat? The difference, (which I'm not sure that Be has pointed out) is that the GPL is littered all over linux disks - it'd be pretty difficult to NOT know that the software was GPL'd if you went looking for the software's license. And of course, they'll provide the source whenever you ask them to. Seems like we don't have much information with this. Anybody want to let us in as to whether or not Be has made the consumer aware that the software is GPL'd?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
This is GPL it involves me almost as much as it involves Bruce. I respect Bruce but he does not represent me. This is a G motherfucking Public Goddamn License.
I need to know. Face it; this is the best protection we have.
Not some Court, or Lawyer, But Shame Shame will be our best defense, as this becomes more common.
Closed source must allways be viewed with a jaundice eye, Corporations can't be Friends they are designed for one purpose to make money. They are not evil, but one must be wary of them.
Nice people don't steal, They are stealing from you, why play nice?
"Think of it as evolution in action."
GCC is fine and good, but it still isn't what I'd call an innovation. It's a compiler implementation - no matter what the quality is, it's still not innovative in the strict sense.
Innovation is doing something that nobody has done before, or at the least deviating widely from the norm in the implementation in such a way that is non-obvious to others working on similar projects. Whatever the very first compiler was would be considered innovative, but I don't really see GCC as being so itself.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
This is all good stuff, but is it innovative? It's not that commercial/proprietary companies didn't know the benefits of open standards, it's that they didn't care to use them (usually so that they can ensure lock-in).
This is almost the same thing as if an oil company developed a super-efficient electric car and then buried the research, only to have someone else do the same thing. It's not innovative the second time around, but it arguably helps people more.
That said, this is something that people should demand of commercial vendors. Open-standards, even with closed-source software, are very useful indeed. Just not terribly innovative.
Really, the only main innovation that open-source software has brought to the table that I can see is the open-source aspect. It's a good development for many uses, but it's not a (technological) innovation, really.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
How many times have most protocols been re-coded?
Great example! TCP/IP from Berkeley was released under the BSD license and almost nobody rewrote. Everyone took the BSD TCP/IP code and incorprated it into their products. Well, everyone except Linux and the HURD. You see, Stallman's GPL wouldn't let them use BSD code. And this is why Linux's TCP/IP stack is still one of the weaker ones in the industry. Further proof that the GPL is only a partial solution.
That's funny my computer has been turned off multiple times without the "proper" shutdown sequence and it has almost always worked perfectly.
"almost", hmm, "almost", thank you for proving my point. With every other Unix version (and Windows NT, since I am at it), I have never seen a drive consistancy check require manual intervention.
If you're not giving out the modifications in source or binary form, you're fine.
You'd only be in violation of the GPL if you were distributing your modifications and refused to make source availible.
DNA just wants to be free...
AAaah, see...that makes alot more sense. So if they put...oh i don't know....a readme in the FTP directory that sayed "The following software, blah blah and blah are GPLed, email gpl@beos.com for the source" they would be in the clear?
Also...and I'm being totally serious here, what part of the GPL says it can't be linked with proprietary componets? I can't seem to find that in the Terms of Use....
but isn't that the distributation, not the actual linking? Distrubition can be GPLed ( ie, source made available ) but what if you distrubite them sepeartly?
What is considered distrubition in the terms of the GPL?
And the most important question is..does any part of BeOS rely on this library? If you can just put in a disclaimer saying "this package require this GPLed package" can you not get away with a propritary license? Or is the disclaimer then being interpreted has making that GPLed package part of your program?
=-=- Keep in mind, I have NO idea what i'm talking about -=-=
SgtPepper
From http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html :
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.
---
What the hell are you talking about? I'm a big proponent of the GPL. I also agree that pirating copyrighted music is illegal. Heck, I even think it's immoral.
I also think that the recording industry ranks slightly below pond scum, but I still don't advocate theft.
So fine, that's your $0.02, but keep those pennies to yourself, and don't speak for me...
---
In most cases, as source is closed, that's not an issue. That aside, in most states, one can't sue unless one has demonstrated that one has *tried* to settle differences without a lawsuit and been unsuccessful.
In other words, there's the warning shot across the bow before the courts. Let's see a warning shot across the bow -- IN PRIVATE PLEASE -- before convicting someone in a court of public opinion.
_Deirdre
Well, Be *could* just GPL their other software. There'd be no change in functionality, and more software would be freed.
GPL is free as in speech but, just like commercial software, there is a "cost". For commercial products, the author wants money. Under GPL, the cost is that you must free your software. Some people think that's a good thing, and they release their software under the GPL. Some people don't want to pay this price. They're still free to link to it in these round-about ways, and they're also free to *not* use it.
Bruce happens to be someone that doesn't write software for a profit, but he wants more software to be free. Why should he make in convenient for Be to use his labor, with no compensation, and not follow his wishes? The GPL is his only defense if he wants his software to remain free. BSD and public domain are nice... if you don't care if your software remains free and don't mind people making millions off of your work.
> Can you explain what anyone gains from Be moving your code from one library to another?
Let's pretend that Be used commercial code and forgot to pay the cost of the license. Ask your question again:
"Can you explain what anyone gains from Be paying your license fee?"
In this case, the answer is simple: the author gains because he gets paid the license fee. The answer to your question is that Bruce gains because his software remains free. He would gain even more, and Be wouldn't have to work-around anything, if Be would free their software...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Your right. While I agree that a little 'community pressure' might be necessary to get a company in line, these Slashdot 400 message spasms are way more than is required.
I'm sure that months from now, long after Be has fixed the problem, people will be still be yelling that they will never use that horrible GPL-violating OS.
There's still people out there that believe that QT or Apple Darwin is not under an Open Source(tm) licence, long after those problems have been fixed. People still have bile for Corel after what was a minor and debatable mistake.
Once Bruce Perens has branded somone a infiltrator or an enemy, it's hard to get the word out that they are not. I think he should keep his warnings off of Slashdot and stick to more cozy and rational places like Technocrat or the Debian maillists.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I never said you do not have the right to protect your work. In fact, I said you did, if you did not notice. Nor did I say that you, or "all", Open Source advocates participate in piracy. I did, however, question your justification and reasoning for doing so. Although I admit I have not kept close tabs on your assertions lately, I'm quite sure have asserted Open Source to be "better", in so many words, in almost every category of interest. Thus, I still must persist: If Open Source is so superior, why do you feel compelled to use any and all means (e.g., "publicity") to stop it? Why would anyone pay more for less? And if people are doing this of their own volition, why should you care?
Heh, no such thing as bad publicity eh? Why don't you tell that to the Dow Corning, makers of sillicon breast implants? You know that there has not been one shred of evidence against silicon implants for causing these supposed conditions (in fact, they've done much the opposite)? Yet they can't sell them anymore, no matter how hard they try. Now, I'm not saying I particularly approve of ditses getting their breasts enlarged, but there are legitimate uses for these (e.g., breast cancer survivors), and the company serves a need. In fact, there are legitimate uses for silicon. It is actually one of the safest substances known for medical implants, yet any company that produces medical grade silicon is scared silly that a med tech company will ever use their product without their permission, such that they can be sued. So much so that they will actually go to court to stop you, simply because they can be sued....This might seem a little bit offtopic, but this was the result of bad publicity. The media effectively smeared them, triggering these law suits and what not. The bad press harmed not only the silicon breast implant makers, but also the hundreds of medical technology companies that would use silicon to improve safety and performance. So here is atleast one case of horribly bad publicity. There are many many more.
Furthermore, in this particular situation, we're talking Be getting smeared by, say, 80% of the slashdot community. Since no one else outside of slashdot or the "open source community" could particularly about such niggardly issues, how does Be benefit? It's not as if this made it into the frontpages of mainstream media, or ever will. At most, they benefit from awareness from slashdot readers. In reality, how many slashdot readers do you think don't already know about Be? At worst, they annoyed a large swath of geeks who are morally, or atleast theoretically, supportive of the "open source" movement. Even though in reality, only a small percentage of those who "support" Perens are actually convicted to what they say, this "publicity" has more potential to hurt Be than help them.
My sentiments exactly. Something tells me though that Perens had every intention of dodging my question. So I really doubt he'll have the courage to bite the bullet now. I mean, gasp, can you imagine admitting that open source has flaws? That might just be non-religious!
Boy 0 for 2 you are really bad at reading today. Yes, there is no question in the post I responded to. Perhaps you are confusing question with statement.
Political anarchy is the removal of a current government to replace it with a better one, and that still has nothing to do with pirating software as the previous poster indicated.
Finkployd
Not a good day for you, eh?
Considering I'm able to express myself without swearing and attacking, I'd say I'm having a better day than you.
I never denied that Bruce posted here, I said we don't know for sure since he posted on technocrat and it could have been picked up by slashdot editors. It's since been pointed out that a quote in the story is "we have more over at technocrat..." thus indicating that he DID submit it. So I was wrong, and I give you credit for doing a background check on my other threads.
As for the accuations, Perens claimes that he found his copyright string imbedded in the BEOS library binary file. Since he would be pretty much kicked out of the Linux community if he just made this up, I'm assuming he is telling the truth. It's easy enough to check if I had BEOS where I am now.
What part of this whole story did you think involved ME making the accuations, Bruce made them, I simply discussed them in my original post.
Any while we are on the topic of baseless accuations:
There not one single shred of evidence that the code in question is GPL code.
Care to prove that?
They have not committed any violations.
Do you have the evidence to back this up? Other have claimed that they DO have the evidence to the contrary.
Finkployd
Here is you post where you claim to ask me a question, in it's obscene, derogatory glory:
Perens is a whiner. There not one single shred of evidence that the code in question is GPL code.
If it is, all they have to do is make the source available, per that communist license that the bearded freak created. They are under no obligation to distribute as you or Perens see fit.
Now, you GNU freaks get upset when they don't follow your own little rules for using the license. They have not committed any violations.
Stop making up the rules as you go. that, of course, is the Stallman way. "Do what I say, until I change my mind, again" and of course G**/Linux, the most disgusting appropriation of others' work ever.
Please kindly point out what you felt was a question.
Finkployd
Note that the GNU Project recommends avoiding the term piracy since it implies that sharing copies is somehow illegitimate.
Yes, that's true. Perhaps that's because sharing copies of GNU software ISN'T illegitmate.
Finkployd
Before you attempt to lecture to me take a look at your first post and see who sounds more mature. You don't start with much credibility when you title you message "Attention dipshit..."
The whole basis of this huge thread is that I decided to believe Perens right off the bat, while you wanted for him to post evidence (which he actually didn't and even if he did it still could have been made up since neither of us have greped the file ourselves).
Perhaps we could have come to this understanding earlier had you have not started out like some vulgur young kid who thinks he knows everything.
Finkployd
Well, Bruce posted how he got the evidance, course even if he posts the greped file in question and shows you the copyright string, are you going to believe him? You made up your mind from the beginning that there is no evidence, while I made up my mind that I belive the people claiming there is evidence.
Finkployd
Hmm I asked you to point out where there was a question, and you seemed to (dare I say it) avoid doing that? Interesting
.o file, with my name in it.
But you are right, there was a question in the next post, I believe it went a little like this:
How do you know there is a violation?
I didn't answer this question? Try looking at the next post.
My asnwer was to cut the part of Bruce's story that explained how he found the violation.
Bruce also answered like this:
My copyright string is in the
Finkployd
I never made up my mind from the start.
What selective memory you have
There not one single shred of evidence that the code in question is GPL code.
They have not committed any violations.
Finkployd
One mistake everyone seems to be making is assuming that Bruce submitted this to slashdot. He may have just put it up on his page (which is read by a comparativly small group of people). Since there is no submission credit, I assume that Slashdot editors just happened to pick it up from Bruce's site.
but since they distribute the object. via FTP, they'd probably have to distribute the source that way too.
:)
Well, the way I read the GPL, they could theoretically make the source available only in hardcopy mailed upon request and still be GPL compliant.
Course, the way a mainframe systems programmer reads a license and the way a lawyer reads it are probably worlds apart.
Finkployd
No, it implies nothing of the sort. The quoted text is taken straight from Bruce's website. Hemos could very easily been surfing his page and come across the story himself. The point is, we don't know what happened.
Finkployd
the same people in this discussion, on the side of the GPL, are on the same side that believes that pirating music and software is part of their "free right"
Now THERE is a baseless generalization. Care to back that up in any way?
Finkployd
Blow me
Yeah, you're right. I missed that end line. Chalk it up to debugging JCL all day.
:)
Finkployd
Here's a free english lesson for you, if there is no question mark (?) then there is no question.
Nowhere in that offensive, rambling attack on everyone you could think of did I find a question.
Since you are asking one now, here goes:
(from the story)
Electric Fence program, a malloc() debugging tool, is also part of Be's libroot.so . Electric Fence is under the GPL, not the LGPL. That license would not allow it to be part of a library with proprietary components, although Be could distribute it in a separate library.
It turns out that not only is Electric Fence in Be's libroot.so, but Be is distributing it in object-code form, without source, as if it were one of their proprietary components.
I currently don't have the tools on my work computer to verify this for myself, so I'm going to take their word for it.
Next time you want to have a conversation with someone online, try acting civil and not like a whiny 5 year old that needs to sit in the corner.
Finkployd
The bruce perens writes could mean that he wrote it on this site, I've seen sorties picked up before that weren't submitted by anyone per se that started the same way.
However, I missed the "we've got the full story over at technocrat.org" part at the end, so you ARE right.
Sorry, that last line should have been in italics also, you made both statements in your forst post.
I must have read that as "they've got the whole story...". You're right.
Finkployd
You're seriously dodging the question. Your feelings on the matter is that Be is a threat to your software because they do not allow you to maintain/develop/support your IP if its closed source. If you're worried that they'll do a better job than you, then you are effectively stating that you believe closed source to be a better form of software development. If I'm wrong, then please tell me what your feelings on the matter are.
Bravo. States his point very well.
Be Inc violated a license to distribute copyrighted material. Bruce made an announcement about this. Where is the smearing? Be broke the law. Bruce is letting them simply fix the problem for the future and get away with distributing currently illegal stuff. Bruce did nothing but state the truth in a public setting.
Furthermore, bruce never advocated not using Be products, nor indicated that Be is evil, nor in any other way impaired Be's future business or reputation. Be was not materially injured in this (people who are going to use BeOS are not going to be extreme GNU types anyhow). Oh, and Be is responsible for the misdeeds of its employees in a commercial capacity, so by the one engineer in Be making this mistake, all of Be did, so this isn't misdirection of blame, either.
Where on earth is all this, you mistreated Be by revealing their mistakes before they could correct them. It would be nice to notify Be beforehand. It's hardly necessary and they don't suffer in any material way from not being notified first.
Besides, this isn't the first GPL violation that Be has done. You'd think that the first one would have sent them a message.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Well, this is kind of a dead givaway:
.c files (leaving the authors copyright notice intact at that.)
localhost% cd obj.i586.dyn
localhost% ls
ef_malloc.o ef_print.o malloc.o
ef_page.o efence.o mcheck.o
localhost% strings * | sort | uniq | more
Electric Fence 2.0.5 Copyright (C) 1987-1998 Bruce Perens.
If they reimplemented the functions, that was pretty nice of them to give credit to Bruce anyways. I'm sure this is an oversight on their part. I mean, why would you follow the GPL on dozens of packages and include many MB's of source on your FTP server, and then try and "steal" four
Be has a reponsibility to scrutinize the licenses of such code, not hope someone spots it and tells them [1]. you can bet that if a similar mistake occurred with a proprietary lib, heads would roll.
I'm not anti-Be, but everyone has to realize that it's *their* job to respect the GPL. this *is* the high road, compared to the standard corporate solution: a lawsuit.
[1]
IANAL, but AFAIK Copyright law does not have quite the same 'defense' requirement that Trademark law has. [A trademark must be defended or it may weaken or lapse]
Even if it did, Bruce would have even more reason to bring each infringement into the open. Since he might not catch every infringement, he could at least show he vigorously pursued the ones he caught
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Heck, Bruce is usually the first, and loudest, to mention GPL violations and clueless companies (remeber the stink about Corel). If he states, repeadedly, that it is probably just an honest mistake then I would generally believe him. Let's just make sure that Be fixes this little indescretion and not sweat it. I would hate for a nifty OS like Be to be drug through the mud if it isn't deserved.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
If your company is thinking about using MS source code? Well, think twice, because if you do anything that could be construed as a violation, even if it's clearly unintentional, it is going to be met with A HUGE LAWSUIT AND YOU WON'T GET A CHANCE TO ADDRESS IT AT ALL UNTIL YOU COUGH UP SERIOUS DOUGH!!!
It's three days later, but just in case you check your posts for replies...
GPL violation != MSEULA violation in ANY way
ALL licenses derive their legal autority from copyright law. Violate the GPL? Violate copyright law. Violate the MS EULA? Violate copyright law.
Just couldn't get through a story without mentioning MS could you?
Nope. Nor could I get through a discussion of the automobile industry without mentionaing Ford, GM, or Chrysler (now Daimler-Chrysler). It's really hard to discuss industry issues without mentioning industry leaders. Industry leaders also make good examples, as most people are familiar with them. Would you know what I was talking about if I mentioned 21COS's EULA? I doubt you've ever heard of the company, let alone read their EULA.
1. That's outside the Terms and Conditions, so it's not real clear that would have any actual legal force if the rest of the T&C had been followed to the letter.
:-(
2. "Incorporating your program into proprietary programs" has not been clearly defined within the License. It is conceivable that a court of law would rule that dynamic linking is not incorporating a GPL program into a proprietary program.
That, of course, would depend on who would have the better (read: better-paid) lawyers, assuming a case ever went to trial
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Wow. Criticizing Bruce Perens about failing to advocate the GPL properly.
FascDot, you have *balls*...
Okay, slow down now. There he is. Up ahead. Roll down the window. Get ready. NOW!
BSD RULEZ GPL SUX WE R 3L33T D00DZ
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If this is true, BeOS should be totally GPL-ed as well.
Wrong. Wishes that the entire world be GPL does not make it so. No license is binding upon third parties. Period.
Go back and reread the GPL. Then go read up a bit on copyright law. Then bone up on common law. Then on contract law.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yes. It covers distribution. You are free, I believe, to release a non-working version of a product that requires the user to go get a library themselves in order to make it work.
Seems to me they posted sources for all the GNU components of libroot.so, but not for their own proprietary components. The problem is, this brings them into violation of the GPL.
Though the spirit of the GPL is alive and well here, and they are using a single library instead of dozens of separate libraries.. it's really just packaging....
but..
the GPL states that a work based on a GPL'd work must be GPL. This means libroot.so, in it's entirety must be GPL, or not be distributed, or use no GPL code. Period.
For an OS developed by a relatively small company like BE, it sure is fast and stable. I've had it boot in 11 seconds on my pentium III 500 (correctly recognizing my voodoo 3 and turtle beach montego as well as my network card). All I had to tweak was the display resolution since it did not automatically recognize my pnp monitor.
The main issues with BEOS right now are lack of software and poor hardware support (luckily no problems for me though), otherwise it has everything I would like in an OS. If there would be a usable web browser on it I might consider using it on a more regular basis. Also I'd like to see proper Java support on it. My impression is that Java could run really well on this OS due to thread friendly nature of BEOS.
Jilles
We all make mistakes. We all write buggy software. The bugfix should have been private, but was not.
Did you ever consider that websites are dynamic?
/. and changed his website AFTER some of the people (like myself) commented on the article on /..
Bruce worked it out with Be AFTER the appearance on technocrat &
You can even see his comment about it here for yourself. You will also see that the previous poster was incorrectly saying that Bruce signed a release. He hasn't signed anything yet.
Breace
I read the piece Bruce posted on technocrat.net, then read through the thread here (At a score of 3. Only so many hours in the day.). And there was quite a bit of heat being sent at Bruce. So I went and re-read the original piece. As far as I can tell, Bruce is simply saying "Look, Be made a mistake. They're fixing that mistake. But here's a real-world example of why it's important to know your licenses." That's all. Here's a violation that happened by accident. Luckily, everyone's being sensible, and fixing this reasonably.
This really has nothing to do with GPL, or Open Source. It has to do with licensing.
If MS had done this, all you Linux zealots would be strutting around, stroking yourselves and saying, "See, MS is evil!!!!"
You people are just plain funny.
I doubt it. The BeOS kernel isn't exactly large and it is an entirely different beast than the stuff that uses GPLd code. You have to remember that most GPLd stuff is in the POSIX libraries, (like libroot.so and maybe the C and C++ libraries.) All the other stuff is nothing like POSIX (okay, the Net stuff is for now, but not for long.) and thus a lot of the GPLd libraries would be hard to implement. Does that mean that there's not any GPLd code anywhere else in the system? Probably not, but I doubt it is in the kernel. It is:
A) Fairly small.
B) Not subject to the numberous linking of different propriotory and LGPLd object files like libroot is. Since libroot has so many different object files, some propriotory, and some LGPL, it is very understandable that something under the GPL would escape detection like that.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Oh come on. The last time was in the bootloader somewhere, and that was back in the DR releases. Both cases were also fairly minor points, in this one it was a confusion between the GPL and the LGPL.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Actually there are currently 2 ports of Java2 to BeOS. One is coming from Be themselves in close cooperation with Sun, and one is coming from an independant group based on Kaffe called BeKaffe.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Hello, what is this vehemance against the BSD license? I doubt the BSD license people think that nobody is going to rip of them. I think they know that and the point of placing something under the BSD license is to let people use it in propriotory projects. If they wanted to "protect" their code, they'd use the GPL, or (heaven forbid) come up with their own license?!!!!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You're forgetting Donald's ethernet drivers which they grabbed a while ago too and incorporated into their kernel. This makes three times that they've done it, THAT WE KNOW ABOUT.
As someone else pointed out. Nobody forced them to use Bruce's code, Donald's code, or the bootloader code. The very fact that the public's been so permissive is what's surprising.
I'll be adding my two pennies, if anyone is interested.
First, Be inc. always tried to comply with the GPL by publishing the source of the GPLed software they used. I have a BeOS 4.5.2 CD on my shellf, and the sources are there, in gzipped packets.
Second, I think Bruce handled this issue in a relatively nice manner, but NOT completely unpeccable. Be is a small company that gives credit to the OSS by using some and giving some other back to the community. As I understand, a BeOS engineer called almost immediately (in less than 6 hours?) to clarify the issue. Could not Bruce wait and then post a story with a title "Be involuntarily violates GPL, problem alrady solved"
Third, do you realize how bad this is for the GPL? Big companies (like Nokia, for example) were unwilling to use GPL-ed software anyway, giving BSD much bigger a chance, exactly because of this kind of potential incidents. Now the management will have confirmed their fears: "If we use GPL, we put ourselves to risk of lawsuits". Companies like Nokia are a very sweet cake for several interest grops (and their lawyers) that are waiting for an opportunity to sue, no matter how frivolous the lawsuit may be. It's all about money. I can tell you, Nokia is avoiding GPL like poison, and this story won't make them use it, either. BSD, on the other hand, seems to be welcome.
I am NOT against the GPL, not at all. But I think handling this matter more gracefully could only benefit GPL.
Sigged!
If I ever wrote any software that I was going to release under a free license (my bigest program to date is about 20k of data summarization in Perl), I would release it under the artistic license or a BSD style license. I don't really dislike the GPL, but I dislike RMS, and his communistic attitudes, and if I released something under the GPL, people may interpret that as agreeing with his politics, rather than just choosing a licensing method.
I find it somewhat ironic that the GPL is not covered by the GPL. You can see Stallman's opposition to real freedom in the fact that he won't allow licenses based on the GPL with modifications.
--Kevin
Hey, Bruce (are you listening?), you seem to be the best GPL evangelist around. Have you considered writing such a document? You could leave many questions unanswered, like "dunno, this is a grey area, ask RMS...":) Even so such a faq would be of great help.
Alright, now you are just babbling here bud
Have you ever even DONE software development? I wonder.
First im not qualified to speak about Be's resources but I will tell you about what really happens with software.
Ideally you want someone upper level to audit and check for things like this. realistically it cannot always happen.
Some of the time tasks get assigned to maybe one or two people and VERY little peer review will happen and htey will say there work is completed it gets packaged into a final binary distro.. BAM. Insta GPL Violation.
Dont just say because be has resources mistakes cannot happen. Replace Be with microsoft.
Don't be stupid. Bruce has every right. Microsoft made the mistake not him. Microsoft has so much resources that this simple mistake should not have taken place at all. This make me wonder how many other GPL codes they have stolen...
Bah Bah Bah.. What was that? a backdoor in a MS product? They have resources no? Why is there a security backdoor? Why are there facetious strings embedded in one of my dll's?
Bah bah bah
Jeremy
Grtz, Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Beyond copyright embeding it is also common practice to place "markers" in code, and other items. Srings of inert random numbers , intentional harmless bugs, etc. If these bit show up elsewhere, you know they've been copyed. This isn't restricted to software. Some of the "correct" answers in the game Trivial Pursuit are intentionally wrong. If these same answers show up in a knock off it becomes pretty evident that they just ripped off TP's questions and answers. The original GI Joe has his thumbnail on the wrong side of his thumbs. There are all sorts of inventive ways to tag items as to source of origin that won't be obvious to the copy artist, but will stand out like a, well, thumb with it's nail on backwards.
GPL, LGPL, MPL, QPL, BSD, ... Too confuse, I need 10 lawyers to build a shareware on Linux ? And they are not agree. be carefull.
Since you don't have access to the source, you really don't know, do you?
Is there actually any proof that I missed that says conclusively whether they've violated the license or reimplemented code?
The crucial point is that Licensing is Important. You fail to read the license at significant peril. That's even true for BSD-like licenses.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
This is the second time that BE has been caught violatng the GPL "by accient". I suspect that if debian went throgh the whole BEOS and audited it with a decompiler they wold find a few more violatons. It's not that BE is evil or even particularly careless. It's just that it's damnd hard to keep track of which license governs hich pice of software. especialy when you borow so heavly from the GNU/Linux codebase.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The library can't be linked with proprietary components. That's the first problem. The distribution of the .o files, and the library itself, didn't come with the requisite written notice about the source being available. So, yes, if they put the notice there, they'd be legal, but since they distribute the object. via FTP, they'd probably have to distribute the source that way too.
Bruce Perens.
Um, what innovations of the open-source community?
Seriously, this is 100% not a troll. From what I've seen, the open-source community usually seems content with reimplementing features from other operating systems (often superior to the software they are copying).
But innovation? Not really. People throw that term around far too loosely. Seriously - What major open-source innovation has Be capitalized on?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I theory eventually linux will surpass BSD in this area. Bigger user base and more competent developers with the source code and developers who will listen will always equal a better product.
This assumes that Linux's developers are more competent. But let's compare TCP/IP stacks of say, FreeBSD and Linux. Well, FreeBSD blows Linux out of the water. Let's compare virtual memory. FreeBSD virtual memory is simply incredible which why big sites run FreeBSD. NetBSD's new UVM is quite interesting and I wish I had time to look into it further. Linux's VM contains nothing insightful or even intelligent. Let's look at the file systems. Traditional Unix file systems included in the BSDs and SVR4s are rock solid. Are you using EXT2FS? I hope someone doesn't pull the plug on you, it probably won't come back.
Be is distributing it in object-code form, without source, as if it were one of their proprietary components.
:) ), isn't this allowed under the GPL as long as you make the source AVAILABLE? Now of course if they don't mention that it contains GPLed software and the GPLed parts are, by rights, available in the original source form, then they might be violating the GPL. And yes, it might be breaking the spirit of the GPL, but is it breaking the letter?
Correct me if i'm wrong ( and I'm sure someone will
Just a thought. Other then that, i do hope BeOS rectifies what you view as a mistake, since has the authour of said software it should be your choice on how it's used. ( then again some will argue that the GPL takes that away, *sigh* let the holy wars commence )
SgtPepper
You will note, if you look that every single other item in the gnu/r5 tree (see? they knew and they were acting clued) has source. I looked quickly, but it does seem that this was an oversight.
It certainly didn't need to be shouted this loudly. Did Bruce actually contact them privately first or did he just yell to the media?
A single omission does not a clueless company make.
No one screamed this loud when Linuxcare's Bootable Business Card was distributed without source (this omission was corrected, but there was a period of several weeks when it was an issue). When I handed one to RMS, he was polite but firm about it (as he should be), but he didn't post it to a web page and submit it to Slashdot.
_Deirdre
Before the flames attacking the GPL and how hard it makes life on software engineers come out in full force, let me remind everyone something.
Nobody put a gun to BE's collective head and forced them to use the code that Bruce had writen. They activly went out on the net (I'm assuming) and found it. When someone allows you to use their work under a license, you have a (moral and legal) obligation to read and follow their license agreement. If you don't like the GPL, don't use GPLed code, it's that simple, folks.
BEOS decided to use someone else's GLPed code in their program, didn't follow the rules, and is being called on it. I'm sure they will comply and this will be settled quickly.
Finkployd
One assumption everyone is making is that Bruce submitted this to slashdot. I'm assuming he put it up on his little page, and slashdot picked it up and made it into a story.
We really don't know what happened behind the scenes, Bruce may have e-mail BE, then started a thread on his site to let people know what was going on.
Finkployd
I'm not saying the issue should be kept hidden, I just thing Bruce missed the chance to take the high road on this one. I don't know all the details, but it seems like this is catching Be off guard.
I'm sure Bruce would even be willing to post their reply right on the same page with his message.
Exactly. Bruce and Be could have worked out the details and posted a message together stating the issues and the resolutions. That way we would have people saying "Bruce and Be are cool people." Instead, we have people jumping up and down shouting "Look what Be did! GPL violation! KILL! KILL! KILL!"
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I think you get the idea.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Another testament to the fact that moderators don't have a clue. I cut-and-pasted the text in my reply directly from the article just to see how it would get moderated, and look at the results:
Moderation Totals:Redundant=3, Informative=2, Total=5.
What does this imply?
2 out of 5 moderators don't read the articles
3 out of 5 moderators do read the articles
Those statistics might not be so disturbing if they only applied to people replying to the article, but these are the people who are actually moderating others' replies? That's pitiful.
Whose fault is that? The people who make Slashdot suck. (I'll give you a hint, it's not CmdrTaco or Hemos).
Geesh, Bruce, if you set out to deter people from reusing/leveraging your software (which is the point of free software, after all) you could scarcely have done a better job...
Sony:hardware::Microsoft:software
CompactFlash: IBM Microdrive, Flash, Ether, Modem, etc.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Actually, the GPL is a public license. So the issue is not just between the author and the violator or the license, but also with the public as well.
I think keeping GPL issues as a public forum is a good thing. That way, people remain aware of the issues involved in their rights under the license, and companies are less likely to get away with not observing it.
If Be wants to post a reply, they are free to do so on the Net. I'm sure Bruce would even be willing to post their reply right on the same page with his message.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
I have one foot in each field you mention (programer by day, musician by night), and I have to say you couldn't be more right.
A mason respects a solid foundry. A pilot respects a well built plane. Each person respects the work done by others in a related field, but may lack an apreciation for things they don't understand.
Some programers may view music as a series of acoustical waves combined in such a way as to elicit an emotion. Some musicians may view programs as a bunch of buttons on a screen combined in such a way as to get a task done. While both are technicly correct, each fails to see the art in the other, and thus, they lack the respect that prevents copying.
___
It's nice to see companies (like Be) using free software as part of their commercial product. Why? Because something that is implemented by free software is, by definition, not implementing a proprietary API. If Microsoft chose to use glibc 2.1 for the next Windows release (which is possible as glibc is LGPL), wouldn't that be good for everyone? MS would finally have a decent CRT (slam), and programmers would have an OPEN, PORTABLE API for programming on Windows. Everyone wins. Same thing for Be.
:)
While I don't particularly like either Windows or BeOS, I do prefer Be as a company. They provide POSIX interfaces, and complete documentation for all their systems (and the source for components that are GPL/LGPL, unless they make a mistake as in this story). And one of their API functions is is_computer_on_fire(). Gotta love that.
Then what example needs to be made? All you seem to have done is whip slashdot into a frenzy that I'm sure will cause more than a few hate mails to arrive in someones inbox at BE. This company would need to be made an example of if they refused to do anything about their violations. Instead you have treated them like children, going and shouting to the rest of the class, "Hey guys hey guys Johnny isn't playing fair!!". This story should NOT have come out the way it did.
-Marc
Flame all you want....I'll Post more
Okay this is a very serious issue and I hate to ignore the issue at hand. Bruce if you are out there I admire ya a lot.. But I think you thrive on this sort of thing. Finding any little irksome problem and capitalizing on it etc. I understand this is a avenue of letting us all know about it but why not give Be a chance before you subject them to this type of crowd next time? Hmmn?
Companies who use the goodwill and other benefits of the GPL need to be self-policing. Be does a pretty good job, but some things were missing. By publicizing this, Bruce Perens has provided incentive to other companies to make sure to follow their own license. GPL violations can usually be easily fixed, but any company using the GPL is in the best position to find its own violations. The public does not have time to audit each and every business, so publicizing GPL violations when they occur should lead to better adherence by all. Harsh to Be but better for all. And Be should come out a winner, too. The next article on /. (on this topic) will be about how Be responded in a timely manner and fixed its gpl problems.
...but you don't want to get your company in this position unnecessarily. Be is going to be a lot more careful about this now, and your company should, too...
The first paragraph of the Bruce Perens' article sums it up:
Be has already contacted me and promised to fix this problem. But I'd like people to be aware of it because it points out what can go wrong when you use other people's software without checking the licenses.
Plus this clip from the last paragraph:
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Revealed that the library in question actually contained the string "Bruce Perens is a weenie!"
- My password is slashdot
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
It is fundamentally inconsistent of the Open Source community to claim that:
a) Open source is the best. That it always more bug free than closed source. That it is more innovative than closed source. That it provides better support. etc. etc. etc.
b) Closed source (propietary software) freeloading of Open Source code represents a large and significant threat to the movement.
If Open Source is so great, why worry about propietary efforts? If a company comes along and merely extends Open source software, why should this be a great concern to Open Source advocates? If these advocates are to be believed, there is no way that propietary extension could be better (ultimately). What rational person would pay money for an inferior value? [By value I mean, not only how the software in and of itself performs, but its support, and the extent to which moving to or from it actually benefits the user in real life] So why worry?
It would seem to me that these people, who want to assert both "A" and "B", are either blind followers or they understand on some level that propietary software offers some significant benefit over and above what that same open source effort offers. Bruce Perens is particularly aggregigious here in my opinion. In some ways, I can respect RMS more here (even though I have the least in common with him). I've never heard him purport Open source per se to be the best thing since sliced bread. His objections to propietary software is based on "moral grounds", so he can object to propietary freeloading relatively consistently. This is simply not true of the vast remainder of the Open Source camp.
While it is Perens' right try to stop Be from "freeloading," I think he is wrong. I question his motives. I question his thought process, and I question this slashdot public opinion, which is best described as an avalanche. Furthermore, it seems to me that many (but not all, I realize) Open source zealots want to have their copyrights and burn them too. They want the right to freeload music, but don't want software companies to freeload from them....
I believe Open Source offers some significant advantages to propietary software, but is not black and white. When I see anyone painting with such broadstrokes, I'll question them. If I get flamed, and modded down to -43423 so be it, such is the price for honesty.
Lord Stallman, I await thy orders on when to begin the BEos inquisition. I have several hundrd GNU warriors armed and ready. We have secured yaks to carry us into battle.
Know this, O' Lord Stallman, ye who hath given the world this wondrous tool called GPL, know that we will lay our lives down to protect the integrity of Copyleft. For what kind of man would live in a world where Copyleft was not protected. Show me such a man and I will show you that the Earth is round !!!
Hark, my warriors. Let us rejoice in what we are about to do. May the next battle take us to the BSD infidels. I would love nothing more than to excise that Devil Theo from this world and send him and his fellow savages to Hades !!!
It's a warning to others to be more careful.
The warning I would take away from this is:
So your company is thinking about using the GPL, or GPL'd software? Well, think twice, because if you do anything that could be construed as a violation, even if it's clearly unintentional, it is going to be met with a public smear campaign without first giving you a chance to address it.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
There is some software already going to the CD-presser and the retail channel, and I asked their attorney to write a release that will let them continue to distribute that. I will sign it.
I would not have put this in the public eye except that it's something that people have to be more careful about - be sure you know whose software you are using and what license it has - you ignore that at your peril. Thus, I publicized this example.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bingo. A lot of the Be folk are just as much friends of open source as anyone. The choice to work at a proprietary OS company is something that I *can* understand, even if Bruce and RMS can't. Be's offices have a vitality and energy (not to mention a whole bunch of old hardware) that I haven't seen often.
I don't see why Bruce had to draw attention to what he already believes is a simple, honest mistake. It would have been more professional to deal with it privately and only make it a community issue if Be ignored him or refused to fix the problem.
I agree. I doubt they would have ignored him or refused to fix the problem, but I'd be willing to bet that they may re-engineer it not to use his code.
_Deirdre
To sum up:
1) Be made mistake.
2) You found the mistake and
a) posted it on your news site
b) posted it on another news site known for it's hasty reactions
c) THEN contacted BeOS to get more information
3) Someone questioned whether you ought to contact Be
4) You claimed you "made it clear" that you had contacted Be
5) When someone notes that you didn't "make it clear" you admit you hadn't mentioned that when you posted the story
I think the REAL point here is that you haven't read the Advocacy-HOWTO.
Free Software is about love (i.e. sharing) or, at worst, tough love (I'll play nice with you if you play nice with me). All you've done is instill fear in current and future GPL users. They'll be careful all right--careful to avoid the GPL.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Wouldn't it have been better to work this out with Be in private and then post it on the net?
You have every right to protect your rights, and I encourage you to do so, but you don't have to knock Be down to do it. Both of you could have come out looking better if this was resolved before it was common public knowledge.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Now, Free Be has had 700,000+ downloads, many of them Linux users who are trying the OS for the first time, and some inconsistencies come to light. So as the OSS zelaots preach: "With many eyes, all bugs are shallow."
I imagine that Bruce is correct: this was likely unintentional. I also imagine that there may be more instances of this withing Be's libs. I mean, iut is a versatile, Posix compliant OS, so there could be a number of other apps being used in the same way.
I guess a more thorough audit of what actually is included in BeOS may be necessary, at least by someone who knows what to look for. I'm sure that whatever conflicts arise could be corrected in short order, but I'd hate to see my fave OS get caught up in licensing hell.
--sugarman--
I've just spoken with Bruce Perens, and acknowledged that we at Be have indeed 'boo-booed' with our use of Electric Fence in libroot.so.
We're working to remove Electric Fence from libroot.so and to place it in a statically linked library that can be linked against when-ever needed (typically for debugging). We'll then also distribute the full-source to the static library.
Our plan is to complete this by the end of the week and to update the downloadable package from free.be.com and also to include the updates in future revisions of BeOS Pro.
Andrew Kimpton
Be Inc.
...wouldn't community relations have been better served by a private email to the Be engineers?
As has happened in similar cases (I'm thinking Corel's gafs), Be will probably recieve a LOT of angry/nasty/rude email from some of the more fanatic GPL/Linux advocates.
I don't see why Bruce had to draw attention to what he already believes is a simple, honest mistake. It would have been more professional to deal with it privately and only make it a community issue if Be ignored him or refused to fix the problem.
Dana