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Abit Violating The GPL?
petard writes: "I just learned about Abit's GNU/Linux distribution, Gentus. According to this discussion, it seems that Abit has not seen fit to release source code to their modifications of various GPL'd utilities. Even worse, it appears that they've slightly modified BP6Mon (from redseb at GoUPiL) and released it binary-only and under the "Abit License"! " Allright, everyone turn off the flames and concentrate on making sure that they are in fact distributing in binary-form-only GPLd code. We need a good contact point @abit to send a polite reminder. If you can't be polite, you won't help anything.
Anyway, the GPL only applies in the US. Taiwan, AFAIK, IANAL has NO intellectual property laws whatsoever, so in fact ABIT can do whatever they like and there is nothing (apart from sending in the marines) that the US can do about it.
Kind of interesting that. US law only applies in the US. Is that SO hard to understand ?
and don't even get me started on the unenforcability of the GPL/
Story looks pretty strait to me. I looked, and I see no source available, nor any mention of any source being available.
Heck, there isn't even a source rpm in sight for *anything* in their distro.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
To my knowledge, no loopholes where found, and you can freely get the source to CPhack and continue to develop and modify it to your hearts content.
;-P
I also find it funny that your taking the defence of 'People need to make money' when their distro is quite simply RH 6.1 with a few visual changes to some of the Gnome utilities to make it look more branded..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Err, to my knowledge, no one will buy their distro. They're distributing it with their motherboards..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I hardly know where to start with this one.
The GPL isn't a US law. It's a software license that applied to ABIT as soon as they distributed a copy on a CD with one of their motherboards.
ABIT sells motherboards to distributors in other countries. Those countries can certainly control the import of ABIT products.
This whole thing has nothing to do with the US or it's laws. Anyway, ABIT is certainly going to do the right thing here. They have made a killing selling to Linux users (among others) and they have no business reason to make money off the software. They are a hardware business.
I bought a BP6 yesterday and last night I was using the RPMs from the CD they provided to upgrade my RedHat 6.1 installation.
First off, I think its really slick that they include a Linux distribution with their motherboards. People should be really careful about how they talk to Abit about this -- don't flame them or attack them, but be polite about pointing out the issue.
I wanted to recompile their "extra" modules -- the stuff for monitoring system temperatures and stuff, to work with the 2.2.12 kernel that came with RH 6.1. Lack of source was annoying but I ended up just upgrading the kernel too, to the Abit version and everything works great.
I'm not convinced that they're really violating the GPL anyway. I don't get from the GPL that I have to distribute source to a package I'm distributing in binary form if that package consists of third party source code available elsewhere and thirty party source patches, also available elsewhere.
I didn't see anything in their distribution I couldn't get and compile from other places on the net. The only difference seemed to be that the configuration of the software, and the packaging made it convenient to install.
Does this really violate the GPL? Does anyone know of a specific package included in the distribution that consists of patches to GPL'd software where that source and patch aren't available elsewhere?
I think this is an overreaction...
The kernel source is on the CD -- its a completely stock RedHat 6.1 distribution with new kernel sources.
The kernel sources DO include their patches, and work fine.
If you got the RedHat 6.1 SRPMS, and added a few (freely available) patches to them, you'd have the Abit distribution...
So source is available for the whole thing.
So far everytime something like this has come up (with a company), the violator has begged off saying "We misunderstood the nature of the GPL" or something like that.
I for one have a hard time believing this. I first encountered the GPL when I was 17 years old, with zero experience with the legalese that licenses are written in. I had no trouble understanding the rights and restrictions carried by the GPL.
I just can't believe that any large corporation could possibly "misunderstand" the language of the GPL.
That leaves 2 possibilities: willful violation or just not bothering to read the damned thing. I can see the braindead types of technically clueless people who run corporations doing this: "Linux? Oh yeah, it's free! We can do whatever we want with it! Those moronic geeks, we'll make millions off of them!"
Maybe I'm just bitter...
--
Posted with Mozilla
That doesn't sound correct. Section 2b of the GPL reads:
The original question was:
Which to me clearly fits into this category and must be GPLed. This is why the LGPL exists, so that programs or libraries designed to be linked to (libraries, etcetera) can be linked to by commerical non-GPL software packages.
How far this goes is totally beyond me. If MS Office were to suddenly start calling ispell, I don't think it would apply. As for a hard technical definition of why it wouldn't... I don't know.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
And the evidence that makes this apparent is?
This Business Law in Taiwan page says
and this page on "Steps to Selling in Taiwan" (which appears to be on a US Air Force site - go figure) says:
and here's something that I infer is a translation of the copyright law itself.
You guys really take the cake. Here's an entire distribution full of modified GPL software, and you take a "let's be friendly" approach. Be accidentally includes some GPL'd debugging code, which wasn't even usable by applications, and the whole OSS community freaks out.
Abit is a huge company, that presumably has the resources (legal, QA, whatever) to check into this sort of thing. Be is a small company that's struggling to survive in a Microsoft-dominated world (you know, just like Linux was until a year or two ago). Did you mean to suggest that small companies are to be reamed at every opportunity, while large companies are to be given the benefit of the doubt?
- chrish
The source of the distribution is irrelevant if it is being distributed in the US where, coincidentally, US law does apply, and anyone who owns code on that distribution has every right to go after their American affiliate (if such a beast exists) or their American distributors for criminal and civil penalties under US copyright code.
The Gentus distribution is basically RedHat with a few tweaks and utils thrown in. So if you have, or can get RedHat-6.1 you have the gentus source code. The other utils are also available....
/usr/src/linux/.
From the Gentus Linux homepage tech support FAQs:
http://www.gentus.com/faq_a06.html
They do not have available for download a separate iso image for a source CD. That is because ALL the source is available elsewhere. I don't think this violates GPL. While they do not specifically supply all of the source for everything on their distro... they DO tell you where you can get it for next to nothing. All the tweaks they do to commonly available source is in
"Don't sweat the technique."
The ISO is mounted here - ftp://ftp.kando.hu/pub/CDROM-Images-mounted/gentus /gentus.iso/
The filesystem tree is a standard Red Hat CD, and RedHat/RPMs has only the binary RPMs. No Source.
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There are some message boards on the site, and one of the threads is about GPL issues. Someone from Abit has replied, and said:
t ml)
(http://www.gentus.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000214.h
==============
hi,
I am in no way representative of Abit on this subject of Gentus. However, your concern has being understood, and thanks for voicing your opinion.
I will try my best to pass on the message to the management.
regards,
Tim
---
1) /RedHat/RPMS contains only the binary installation RPMs. There may be one RPM named "kernel-source" but that's it.
2) Saying "oh, company B has the source, go get it from them" hardly seems like fulfilling the terms of the GPL. It's certainly against the spirit, if not the letter, of the license. Why is it Red Hat's responsibility to provide source for the Abit distro?
3) They have actually modified many of the packages, so pointing to Red Hat for source information is just plain wrong. The source for these packages is certainly not there.
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Well, that's a rather cynical point of view... I'd like to think that /. readers and editors learned a thing or two from the Be/Perens experience, and are handling this differently.
Just because Abit is huge doesn't mean that you shouldn't take the time to gather facts, and compose a thoughtful response.
---
If it's true, it doesn't surprise me. We will see many things like this happen in the future. Some people in the "corporate" world just want to take adventage in other's people work. Who knows how many commercial projects are now using parts of GPL'd code?
Like rats, for every single rat you see, there's ten more hiding.
Wow... this is great timing... I've just purchased an Abit BP6 board. I've been wondering if I should use the Gentus distrobution. It has optimized UDMA 66 IDE drivers, but by using it I get locked in to using that exact distro. Because no one has found the source, I can't upgrade my kernel. Apparently, Mandrake has built in support for the BP6's IDE controller. Also, the 2.3.99 kernel has support for it, too. There are patches for the 2.2.x kernels available @ http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedr ick/ to get the UDMA/66 IDE controller to work.
/and/ use their optimized drivers.
I really hope Abit releases the sources. It would be great to actually pick my distrobution
Nope. They don't have to include the source with their distribution at all. The non-commercial clause only 3c.
3b says they satisfy the requirement if they...
Accompany [the software distribution] with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of [the GPL] on a medium customarily used for software interchange....
So, if they didn't include an offer to supply the source, Abit broke the GPL. But, if they make the offer in the future, and attempt to make the offer to those who purchased it before, then I'd say that all would be well.
They can distribute whatever they want, so long as:
./prog --license;
- They allow people to _GET_ the source... you don't have to privide source with binaries.
- That they don't modify the license.
I'd be willing to guess that the executables they changed still has the GPL in them.
As for their license being attached. I'm willing to make a guess that its for their programs and not the GPL'd programs. Besides, I have never heard of anyone knowingly violate the GPL. Its usually some clueby lawyer thinking he's doing his job.
GPL may or may not be applicable in Taiwan; I have no idea.
However, if they expect to maintain any level of respect in this community, they shouldn't abuse and insult us in this manner.
Their intentions do seem to be to help this (greater Linux) community with their modifications, but their approach is a kind of anti-Robin Hood. They are a rich company stealing from the "poor" (aka non-profit) GPL coding community. Hopefully it is just a temporary breakdown in communications, after all, they are a Taiwanese company therefore not primarily English-literate.
(PS. I'm an ASUS user (P2L97-DS), so it's a technical non-issue for me.)
--The more you know, the less you know.
Quite a few folks here seem to think that if the source is available somewhere, a redistributer of (unmodified) GPL'd binaries doesn't need to supply or make available the source themselves.
This just isn't so. Read section 3, it's very explicit about that. Only non-commercial redistributers (ie, if I burn a copy of a RedHat CD for a friend) of unmodified binaries are allowed to make the offer of source from a third party -- and then only if that redistributer received such a written offer in the first place.
If the CD I'm copying also came with a CD full of source, and no written offer that the source was on some ftp site (regardless of whether the source really is there or not), then I have to burn a copy of that source CD for my friend too (no written offer, no third-party responsibility).
In effect, the GPL only allows source distribution, with the option of including a precompiled binary as a convenience. (I know, that's not the wording, but that's the effect.)
-- Alastair
... at least according to this FAQ. It appears that it is an ISO-only distribution, and that source code is available in /REDHAT/RPMS/. Whether it's the complete source to everything (doubtful), or just to the kernel, or just to the things they have modified, I don't know. Has anyone actually pulled down an ISO and burned a CD?
---
---
"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
On what grounds do you believe the GPL only applies in the U.S.?
The point isn't that the GPL only applies in the US, it's that there are (apparently) no IP laws in Taiwan. The GPL isn't a law, it's a license that lays out the terms you are allowed to distribute software under. All of it's enforcability comes from copyright law. In the absence of copyright law then the license is moot.
But the main point the originator of this subthread missed is that a company doing business in a country is bound by that country's laws throught the process of that business.
Hmmm... the community will not purchase Abit's products if they violate the GPL. Simply put - Abit needs to release the code or noone will buy there stuff. Also this may be an excellent time to do a court test of the GPL - contact Abit - get them to agree to release their code but hold off until the issue has gone to court. Have them put up only a token defense and get a precendent for the GPL set.
Abit - release your source - Many of the community, me included will NOT buy your products if you do not release your source code.
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
We all know that some really foolish people are going to take it upon themselves to flame abit. It always amazes me how people who don't have any right to flame do. I believe that maintainers (Or significant contributers) to a software project should be the people with the right and need to contact the offenders. Not some guy who happened to read a news article. I guess it's just mankinds want to cause change.
The story is straight, although possibly a bit premature, since there appears to be a possibility that someone cluefull at Gentus has realised the situation (see the last message on the discussion board page).
Ive already emailed Gentus, a few days ago. Their stance appears to be that supply their modified kernel as a source RPM, they are conforming to the GPL. The way is appears to me from the email Ive had is that someone is confusing supplying the kernel source with the distribution source.
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
As someone who's already raised the issue with Abit, it seems there's a bigmisunderstanding on Abit's part. NB: I have comments posted already on the Gentus discussion page mentioned
Ive already formally requested information on obtaining the source code from the two discussion forum moderators, as well as directly through Abit. Both the forum moderators appear to be of the opinion of the fact that since the Gentus ISO includes the Linux kernel source code, they conform to the GPL. I have not had a reply from Abit themselves.
I havent had a chance to check exactly what's in the kernel source RPM they mention, but from the sound of it, its the Hedricks IDE patches pre-applied to a stock kernel.
I was going to clarify further with Gentus, and re-explain the GPL to them before submitting this story to Slashdot, but it looks as though the story is out before Ive had a chance to get more info from Gentus
It would be nice if folk waited a bit longer and behaved rationally in the meantime, so that we can get a sensible answer, without the shit-slinging.
I'm still pursuing it the 'proper way', so can folks be nice, and just make tens of thousands of polite, formal requests for the source, instead of harassing them. Im sure it'll work better in the long term
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
Try sending it to johntsai@www.gentus.com and yakumo@www.gentus.com
snip from here -->
Dear Gentus,
I am writing to you to formally request information on obtaining the source code to the Gentus Linux distribution.
Since the entire distribution, including the kernel, utilities and other software, is derived from work released under the GPL, I believe I am entitled to request the availability of the source code for all the supplied software, not just the kernel. There appear to be several RPM's included in the Gentus distribution which are Abit-modified versions of previously GPL'd code. I am particularly interested in the source code for these modifications.
It also concerns me that at least one RPM appears to have been derived from a GPL'd product, but has had its license changed to an Abit-specific copyright. As you should be aware, changing the license of code derived from the GPL actually breached the GPL. I would thus also request you to clarify the situation with regard to AbitPermon and its derivation from BP6Mon.
Thank you
-- to herePax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
People keep speculating about this bold event, when the GPL will finally be tested in court. Which makes me think -- why wait?
I realize there are some potentially criminal issues here about collusion, and abuse of the legal system. But... it might be a really GOOD thing if some small company would violate the GPL in a deep and egregious fashion. The FSF and /. would politely ask them to stop, and they would refuse. So it goes to court, and the FSF fields a strong legal team. Unfortunately the small company can't afford a really hotshot lawyer. They do "their best" to defend a case, but in the end they lose.
Result: the GPL is affirmed to have legal standing in a US court decision, setting a precedent that holds weight for all future cases.
Thoughts?
Perhaps the source has been made available in the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet located in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door reading "Beware of the Leopard".
Yes, paradox is correct, the code has to be out there, somewhere and it is time for Molder and Skully to start searching for it. Maybe what they will find will amaze them or amuse them but it for sure will prove the point paradox tried to make.
On the other hand, who exactly will be suing Abit?
How is it done properly and who the plaintiffs are, who pays the money, etc?
Now that VA Linux and RH share value has gone down alot, will they support this cause? Or are there other ways?
anyone?
You can't handle the truth.
I reacently picked up a coppy of MaximumLinux magazine that included two distro disks. I was suprised to read the licence agrement in the back of the mgazine. It forbid the copying of the disks or any portion of them. In other words it forbids the redistrobution of the GPLed software on the disks, and if I change any of the GPLed source code I cannot distribute the changes. Smells like a violation to me.
It seems that an observing employee has already responded to the string, stating he'd get management on it. And one of the original coders has already threatened to sue. :)
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed