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GPL'd Code Finds New Home
The proof was in the pudding, so to speak. Or at least, the proof was in downloading and installing the Windows version, then running the strings command against their compiled binary. Lo and behold, some of the strings of text included such gems as "Visit the Everybuddy website at http://www.everybuddy.com". Now how did that get in there?
(You could go a step further and dissassemble the Windows executable, examining the flow of their code and comparing it to the Everybuddy code. But it seems to me that the reference to Everybuddy is sufficiently damning already.)
Someone at DSF Internet took a shortcut to developing their own interoperable instant messenger client, and ported the Everybuddy code instead of starting from scratch. This isn't a bad thing - it's the whole purpose of open source, duh - but since the code was licensed under the GPL, a price was demanded in return: the Windows source code should be made available. It wasn't, of course.
Both Slashdot and the developer contacted this company, which is based in New Delhi, India. They initially denied that there was any GPL'd code in their product, but when presented with the evidence, the story changed, and it now seems that they're going to take some action. The final outcome isn't known - perhaps they'll publish the Windows code, perhaps they'll rewrite the whole thing from scratch, perhaps they'll just edit out the Everybuddy references and recompile. <shrug>
This situation seemed to be one tailor-made for the GPL. Code existed for one platform, there was the desire but not the ability to port it to another, and someone else saw the same opportunity and the usefulness of the code base, and had the ability to port the code. In theory, this should have been a win-win: the company in India gets a fast-track to development, and the open source project gets a Windows port of their code. But there isn't much of an enforcement mechanism to make everyone play fair.
Are the developers of Everybuddy likely to file a suit in India for violations of their license agreement? My guess is, no. Protest march outside their offices? Brick through the window? Hire some guys named Guido, errr, Rajanav, to go and break some kneecaps? No, and no, and no. The only real enforcement mechanism is a sort of peer pressure or the threat of public exposure, and this may or may not be sufficiently persuasive.
Incidents like this are only going to increase. There's at least a few possible responses:
- Just ignore it. The objective is to get the code out there, that's working, and generally enough people will obey the rules that the GPL will be effective in its goals.
- Spaz out over it. Scour the web looking for possible GPL-infringers and mailbomb them into submission.
- Send email to slashdot. Preferably misspelled email with unique grammatical qualities.
- Send email to Richard Stallman. Don't use pine to send it.
- CowboyNeal.
Seriously, this is an open question which needs to have some thought put into it. I can imagine some possibilities - perhaps a sort of "GPL Insurance", where GPL'd projects can pay into a pot of money to be used for sending legal nasty-grams and other enforcement. But I'm not sure that that's really the right course of action. Fundamentally, enforcing the GPL would be an extraordinarily difficult task - it's very difficult to detect abuses in the first place, and then you face national borders and other obstacles. Perhaps it is better to not worry about it too much, to save the collective energy of the community for more important purposes, and to simply realize that there will be abuses.
Update: 01/02 01:02 PM by michael : About five minutes before this story went live, I heard back from Ben Rigas of Everybuddy that DSF Internet is going to do the Right Thing and post the source code to their messenger program. This is excellent news, and hopefully will result in a robust cross-platform instant messenger program. However, I think the point I made above still stands: there will be cases where persuasion doesn't work, and the community should have a plan for dealing with those (even if the plan is "do nothing").
Since then, they've taken the download down, and put up a message about "enhancements".
I wonder what kind of enhancements; the inclusion of source code, or the removal of distinguishing marks...
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You have almost no recourse if you have not registered the copyright on your software. It only costs a few bucks, and you have to disclose the first fifteen and last fifteen pages of your source code like that's any big deal. Once you have a registered copyright, you can sue the bastards for treble actual damages PLUS statutory damages.
-russ
p.s. been there, done that.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Caught red-handed, and now they're ready to cooperate. The ultimate noble gesture, sorta. The fact remains that these people(or someone in the company) tried to rip-off open source. What kind of punishment is it to let them get off with doing what they should have done in the first place?
I mean, really. Suppose the punishment for stealing was being forced to return the stolen goods, end of story, no ostricizing, no apology. Where's the accountability? Where's the programmer or manager who did this crawling around on his hands and knees with "Traitor" written all over his forehead? Where's the remorse? I don't want to see blood, but I do want the name of the responsible party made known to the community, maybe even for blacklisting at open-source shops.
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
"About five minutes before this story went live, I heard back from Ben Rigas of Everybuddy that DSF Internet is going to do the Right Thing and post the source code to their messenger program. This is excellent news, and hopefully will result in a robust cross-platform instant messenger program."
Absolutely fabulous! Do we get to party? Is there some sort of theme music that could convey the happiness? No offense, but Jabber is several years from being usable (will check out Jabber for BeOS when I go on vacation next week)... TiK r0xx0rz, but whoever designed the UI needs a spanking. A high quality non-AOL messaging client can only be a Good Thing.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Slashdotters: CowboyNeal! CowboyNeal! CowboyNeal!
DSF Internet: No, please! No more!
Slashdotters: We will say CowboyNeal to you again if you do not appease us.
DSF Internet: You are most gracious oh Slashdotters. What must we do?
Slashdotters: You must release the source for your instant messager or re-write your own without any GPLed code.
DSF Internet: Oh yes, gracious Slashdotters. It shall be done.
Slashdotters: And then you must take down the largest corporation in the world. With.....A HERRING!!!!
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
If companies take open source software and incorporate it into their products in violation of the license, that's quite difficult to detect. Even if it is detected, it takes a lot of legal muscle to actually prove (which involves getting the company to let someone look at their source code).
On the other hand, any claim of copyright or patent infringement can be easily supported by examining the source code of open source systems. In fact, since open source code is often indexed by search engines, just searching the web for a good combination of keywords can give companies quick hits on potentially infringing systems.
Of course, in theory, open source code should not be able to violate the copyright of proprietary source code: if it isn't published, it shouldn't be copyrightable, and if it's protected by trade secrets, it's the companny's problem to protect it. But I doubt that's going to work in practice. And it still leaves open source open to patent infringement claims.
Maybe it's time for the law to recognize and encourage free, open source software and create specific protections for it.
Actually, it was quite easy to prove a violation. The CEO basically admitted that they'd stolen the code (although he was just *full* of justifications). Could have gotten thousands of dollars if I'd known what I know now. Also helps to know a copyright lawyer, hehe.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Not just the authors of EveryBuddy should be ticked off, but the authors and contributors to every GPL/LGPL library USED by EveryBuddy. i.e. libyahoo, libfaim, etc.
...but organized protests might. I know email-campaigns can be less than effective, but in the crush of modern software design, companies large and small spend a lot of time defending themselves against potential "problems" which might affect both their customers and investors.
/.
Just the potential stink of a lawsuit will make many of these shops, large and small, come crawling back to the table. Like the public humiliation sentences of the eighteenth century, we have our modern versions of the pillory. Put up a web site with blatant violators of standards, code rip-off artists and...
Oh, right.
Regardless, isn't it fair play to rip them off in return? Put up their port, for free, under your name. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Put up the reason you did it too. That will bring them to your door, for good or ill. At least next time they'll be careful about ripping off code.
Seriously, if all you do is try to ignore them, you will be as successful as King Arthur was against the French in the Holy Grail movie. It just doesn't work. Call them out, it's the only way to deal with sneaks and bullies, believe me. Next time, win or lose, chances are you will not be bothered by them again. Probably the worst that will happen is a lot of shoving and a bloody nose.
exactly the problem. the developers should collaberate and work together and not try to make a competeing project. Why make two programs that do exactly the same thing?
What would registering get you except to possibly make it slightly easier to prove your case in court?
Do you submit a separate copyright application for every version? Every CVS nightly build?
Even if you haven't registered the copyright you still have a copyright and can sue just fine; I've known people who have done it.
I believe everybuddy supports multiple IM systems at the client level (ie, it connects to multiple services) whereas Jabber works at the server level. That is, you connect ONCE to the jabber server, and the Jabber service in turn connects to the different IM services (via "transports")
A subtle difference, but the idea is that by keeping everything at the server end, you don't have to update the clients every time an IM service changes its protocol.
There are other differences, of course (jabber uses XML to encode messages, etc) but just wanted to note there were some design differences.
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Are the developers of Everybuddy likely
to file a suit in India for violations of
their license agreement?
Would it have been hard to go after them just because this company's based outside the West? The same problem's happened before, except it was a Chinese company that time; Bruce Perens commented at the time:
On quite a separate point, the idea of a "GPL insurance" reminds me of RMS's idea for a "software tax", which would fund the development of free software... perhaps, in the end, it would need to be used both for attack and for defence.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
ending legal nasty-grams
Dont we all rage against Big Co. everytime they pull something like that - micheal; what are you thinking? Im not sure what should be done - but thats not it.
AFAIK, if you have a copyright in any signatory of the Berne convention on intellectual property then you have a copyright in all other signatories. I don't know who exactly is and isn't a signatory, but I get the impression it's most countries. Whether the copyright is actually enforced is another story....
IANAL, but I doubt anyone will ever be sued for "violating the GPL". Instead, people who violate the GPL will be sued for copyright infringement. The defendant will then have to argue
1) that the GPL is valid but flawed ("yes, I'm bound by the GPL, but I found this loophole")
or
2) code released under GPL is actually public domain, despite prominent copyright notices.
Can someone run the strings command on the other software provided by these nice folks? They have a lot of modules to their portal system, if we know they are using gpl'ed code in one module, what about the others?
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
Remember when warez was cool? The FSF has always been an apologist for warezing. They come oh so close to advocating piracy on their website, without actually crossing over that fine line of advocating breaking the law.
When IP is a burden to the left, they are willing to circumvent it via warez. When anti-IP is a burden to the right, they ware willing to circumvent it via GPL violation.
These types of incidents may or may not accelerate if the economy heads into a recession. On one hand, socialism is one of the answers people grope for when the economy heads south. Socialism tends to level the playing field. Thus, the more people below the economic mean, the greater mass appeal of socialism. In a bad economy, you might imagine that the GPL would fare better.
On the other hand, software is not rice or heating oil. The only people that really need software are people in the IT industry. Socialism's tendency to regress all players to the mean is actually bad news for these guys, because they were on top before. They were willing to bear the cost of socialism when they were flying high, but when times are tight they are going to look for ways to cut costs, and releasing code is a cost.
IANAEconomist, but this is all very interesting. I guess I'm somewhat of an "armchair economist". Another way to view the GPL is as a price ceiling of zero (the bit about selling free software trumpted by Free Software adovocates is utter bollix to an economist). Now, what would happen if the government set a price ceiling of zero on wheat? You can bet your sweet bippy there would be plenty of guys with trucks on the corner going psst--, hey buddy, wanna buy some? Same thing goes here. If the legitimate channel won't put out, the black market will.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
On the one hand, the original software is being offered "free of charge," which means that one could assume that "damages" are $0.
On the other hand, the GPL is an interesting license in that it does not necessarily prevent the authors of software from simultaneously licensing under some other arrangement.
How about this for an entertaining scenario:
That price (heh, heh!) being $50,000 USD payable to each author for the source license, plus $5,000 USD payable to each author for deployment of each binary copy of the software.
Thus, if the gentle folk in New Delhi (having been there recently, it is really just the "newer" part of Delhi :-)), in not making arrangements, they would start by oweing $50,000, trebled to $150K, plus a not inconsiderable sum based on the number of copies of the software sold :-).
The "each author" part would need to be more clearly nailed down; it would mean that the company making the mistake of "pirating" the Linux kernel would owe payments to (at recent count of /usr/src/linux/CREDITS) 293 people, thus making the penalties owing not too distant from $1B, and giving those 293 people a tidy sum of money :-).
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I am entirely for enforcement of the GPL. And I think that what this company did (if true) is reprehensible.
But what about the possibility that another course be taken which simply puts market pressure against the company instead of legal pressure? What I'm thinking is that the reason that this company had an oppurtunity is that the market was ready for everybuddy to run under winders but no one was doing it.
I've seen ports of a few GTK+ based programs, most notably nessus. Someone has ported GTK+ to winders, and that with cygwin apparently made the winders port of nessus quite easy. I would think it would also make a winders port of everybuddy equally easy because all of the basic stuff is there.
If that happened, then everybuddy running natively on winders would always be one step ahead of this theiving company's product. All the enhancements of an entire league of open source programs would be able to make everybuddy better and contain more features, and this company's product would always be trying to catch up with those features. Wouldn't it be better punishment to let the market ignore all their efforts? Or at the very least to make it so that whatever work they did is better spent by giving the work back to the open source project?
I don't have a clue about how easy it would be to port everybuddy to winders. But, doesn't this event necessitate it's being done? And if so, then would that fix the problem? And if so, is this a general course of action that could be taken to alleviate problems with GPL enforcement?
(Please remember before flaming and moderating me into oblivion that these are questions. If I knew the answers, I wouldn't have asked.)
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
It may be, for example, that the company (particularly if its Indian developers' grasp of English doesn't extend to legalese) doesn't properly understand the difference between GPLed code and public domain code. In the case that the company doesn't want to cooperate, the subsequent wrangling will go better if the FSF still has the "We'll go public with this" bargaining chip on their side.
I can see now what would happen if we took the "CowboyNeal" route:
Slashdot_user: *crackle* Unit leader, we are surveying the suspect app.
Unit_leader: Roger that, keep me informed.
Slashdot_user (a few minutes later): Uh oh. We have confirmation; GPL violation at 9:00. Repeat, we have confirmed GPL access violation.
Unit_leader: Shit. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this. All right. Switch to plan Taco, that's tango alpha charlie omega.
Slashdot_user: Switching to plan Taco. Now deploying the trolls. God rest the souls of those poor bastards for ever thinking they could defy the GPL.
"And real life has warts and smelly feet" -- Paul Jaquays, id Software
Maybe it went something like this, and the company really was ignorant.
Company: Write us a messenging program, oh wise coder, and we shall grant thee a bag of cash.
Coder: Tis a daunting task, requiring many brain cells and a case of Penguin Mints. Fret not, Company, for thy will be done.
[Coder steals GPL code, changes some stuff, and waits. 1 week later, Coder returns looking bloodied and beat.]
Coder: Dear Company, twas a fearsome and gruelling campaign. I toiled night and day. Bedsores nave grown on by buttocks. But, fear not! For I present to thee....the Program! While your bag of cash is not nearly enough to cover my pain and suffering, I am a most generous and loyal Programmer and will accept it, nonetheless.
Company: Oh programmer, you are wise and god-like! You have invented glorious and unique code! We adore and fear you! Have two bags of money.
Or, maybe not...
It would be nice if the update on this article was displayed along with the headline instead of buried at the bottom of the article. Sounds to me like this company wasn't being slimy, just incompetent and/or unaware. Here's how I see what happened:
1. DSF is contacted by Zealous Open Source Rep.
2. DSF manager does initial ass-covering by stating, "Of course we don't use other peoples code!" He says this because that's probably what he believes and has been told.
3. Zealous Open Source Rep. sees plot to overthrow the Open Source movement and provides DSF Manager with evidence of his company's wrongdoing.
4. DSF Manager actually goes to the basement and asks DSF developper if this is true.
5. DSF Developper hems and haws and finally admits that he was lazy and used GPLed code for something that was supposed to be developped internally.
6. DSF Manager fires DSF Developper.
7. DSF Manager admits to world that the code was copied and takes down the code.
8. DSF Manager gets ass chewed out by DSF CEO for nearly getting the company into a legal mess.
Folks, 99% of these kind of violations are not due to intentional slimyness, just incompetence and lack of knowledge. No right minded company would even run the risk of getting sued over this kind of thing. Even one in India.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
The GPL is quite clear on this. They released binaries, and thus are legally bound to release the source to anyone who asks for it, up to (I believe) two years later. Simply pulling the binaries was never a legal option.
Just a clarification, as the Slashdot story indicated that would be an option.
I don't agree with everything you said but I wish I had moderator points to mod you up.
The obvious rebuttal, of course, is that the FSF is forced to play under laws which they don't believe should exist. They believe in all code being free, including theirs. The IP-enforcement part of the GPL exists only because they live in a world where the laws don't agree with their beliefs in software being fundamentally free.
That being said, I think it would be very interesting to see the GPL actually going to court. Is the GPL a legally enforcable agreement? If so, what kinds of damages can you claim on a product that you don't make any money off giving away? Is the GPL just an agreement which people honor "on their honor" to not look bad and because of their principles or is it more than that?
Mmmm.. Donuts
Don't bother downloading that, unless you want to set your system clock back to November, 2000 -- it's a time-limited install image.
If you do, be sure to use a SneakEmail address to prevent spamming. *Jumps for Joy*
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CitizenC
Although the company has removed the 'messengerA2Z' client from thier web site, you can still get a copy here at ZDNet India, if anyone wants to check it out and see how it works (or download it now in case it goes away forever.)
Maybe GPL'd code needs something similar: not necessarily a backdoor but some easter egg that isn't easy to strip from the code but is sufficient enough that if someone did what this story talked about, it should be relatively easy to find a fingerprint of the source. "strings" works, but only if the GPL abuser forgets to check this, though I can think of several ways to hide snippets of strings in #define's throughout the code that look meaningly alone but can be incriminating when put together.
Mind you, it's not perfect, but this is where the GPL has a weakness -- without court order it's nearly impossible to prove that GPL code was used incorrectly. For all we know, Win2000 may be a wrapper around a linux kernel ( doubtful, of course), but the possibility is there.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Note that the Linux kernel is a somewhat pathological case in that it has a quite entirely huge number of independent contributors. Which has the implication that if someone takes the cavalier action of ignoring its license, they're not offending one person, but hundreds.
A more logical scenario is for a software package with somewhat fewer contributors.
Let's say GnuCash, where the major contributors amount to maybe a dozen people, some in a role of agent of the "Gnumatic" company. If someone grabbed the sources, and started selling a thinly veiled version, the license arrangement that I outlined might result in the "grabber" being assessed direct damages of maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, trebled to something under $1M. Plus something for the number of copies of the software sold :-).
That seems to me to be a not unreasonable sort of "damage" to have associated with misuse. It seems reasonable to me to have an "economic stick" associated with this in addition to the "legal stick."
A company may not wish to release their modified version under the GPL; it seems not unreasonable to me for them to be able to, for a significant price, do so.
If Intuit grabbed GnuCash code (not a likely thing to have happen, mind you), I don't think a judge would have any problem with imposing a judgement of a few million dollars.
It may appear to you that a $1B judgement for "ripping off" the Linux kernel seems high; I would suggest the rather contrary position that with the amount of money NASDAQ investors saw fit to drop into Linux-related enterprises in the last couple years that $1B is not necessarily the slightest bit outrageous.
Supposing Microsoft ripped off OS software from, oh, say, Digital Equipment Corporation, would you find it "outrageous" for there to be a settlement amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars of value? There are some entertaining theories out there surrounding just that sort of scenario that happen not to involve any legal judgements but rather some interesting "negotiated settlements."
In short, most projects wouldn't result in $Billion judgements, and for those that would, such large sums do not seem desparately ludicrous...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
most likely you're an idiot. what are you talking about? is it possible to copyright filenames? has microsoft copyritten the string "cdrom"? who knows.
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
The idea of the GPL is that nobody should run code that they don't have source code to. So if the NSA wants to rewrite Linux and only use it internally, they have the source code to their modifications, and it's find both legally and in the spirit of the GPL. But if they try to give it to the general public without source, then the public is being asked to run code for which they don't have the source, and that IS a GPL violation.
If you're genuinely curious about this, you might want to check out the various documents that the FSF has on their Web page, in particular the GNU Manifesto and the GPL itself.
My Web Page
The Free Software Foundation has a very respected attorney for dealing with violations of the GPL but it can only enforce the GPL if the copyright is held by the Free Software Foundation.
The authors of Everybuddy are very fortunate in this case that the infringers cooperated. What if they hadn't? What would you do? Sue in an Indian court?
Please see what to do if you think you see a violation of the GPL, LGPL, or GFDL and note what they say:
It may do no good to turn the copyright over to the FSF after releasing your code, if an earlier version of your code will serve the infringer's needs - they'll be infringing on your earlier license, not the FSF's later one that they didn't use. That's why you should attend to this right away.To make the Free Software Foundation the copyright holder of your package, please see the FSF's info on legal matters and how to apply the GPL license terms to your new programs.
I don't see it in the FSF's pages, but I read that when those folks cracked that censorware program and released it under GPL, that they thought they were off the hook after they settled with Mattel because the code was copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, so it wasn't their code to withdraw from circulation. But the problem was that they had not sent the FSF a legal written document transferring the copyright. I read in "Legal Care for Your Software" that copyright can only be transferred in writing, I think it may be insufficient to simply state the copyright holder in the source files if it is someone other than yourself.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
In many cases you could change the text to say "Copyright (c) 2000 Free Software Foundation. This program is free software; yadda yadda".
If you're program is a GUI program, it may not be too hard to obscure the generation of this text and show it in a message box.
One thing I suggest though is that if you do this, you split up the code that does it and distribute it all over your program, and include several independent ways it can be done with independent implementations.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
OK, so lets say DSF didn't cooperate with the Everybuddy people what exactly would they sue them for? See there ARE a couple of limitations on copyright lawsuits. If you sue someone for violating your license agreement you have to prove that by reproducing your copyrighted work the culprit was going to put your company out of business and rape your girlfriends. In the case of GPL projects, you can't really lose money as you're usually not even acknbowledged as an organization by the IRS. By letting your copyleft be handled by the FSF you can take legal action. How come? The FSF (IIRC) is filed as a non-profit and by violating their licensing agreements you're essencially commiting fraud. You're undermining their source of revenue (donations) by using their intelectual property in a competitive manner.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
We weren't really looking for this, we were notified by a competing company of DSF Internet that they were doing this. We looked in to it and found out that it was true, so we started talking to DSF, GNU, and Michael from slashdot. We wanted to wait until we had some closure, or a refusal to comply with the GPL before we posted this on slashdot. DSF was very responsive and they did the right thing by GPL'ing their messenger.
I am glad that things turned out the way they did, but all the points Michael makes are good ones. If DSF had refused to do the right thing, I don't know where this would have gone. We need to answer the question of 'what to do if this happens and the Bad Guys don't turn around and do the Right Thing?'
Thanks to everyone who helped us get this worked out, hopefully it will lead to a win32 version of everybuddy a lot sooner than we had planned before.
That's not the point. The US Federal court system will not enforce treble damages unless you have registered the work with the US Copyright Office.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
But it gives you something to wave at the judge and say "I was damaged to the tune of $50K".
Shrink-wrap licenses have nothing to do with the GPL. The code is copyrighted. Absent a license, you have no right to redistribute it. The GPL is the only thing that grants you that permission. If you refuse to agree, you have no permission.
A shrink-wrap license, on the other hand, claims that you have no right to use something you have purchased if you do not agree to the license. If you *really* didn't agree, why did they take your money?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
um...
LGPL can be used in proprietary software.
So no. You are wrong. Just the EveryBuddy programmers should be ticked off.
Boy am I getting tired of slashdotters who give out misinformation. Often it comes with profanity or insults. Check out this site, or anything in the relevant DMOZ category. In the U.S., you do automatically own the copyright on everything you write, but registration strengthens your legal options against pirates.
Find free books.
LGPL can be used in proprietary software.
Wrong!
LGPL libraries can be dynamically linked with proprietary software. So unless these other libraries were distributed as dll's, they violate the licenses of any LGPL'd libraries.
Not to mention many libraries are GPL'd anyway.
--
As the author of a free book, worries about this kind of abuse are one of the most common reactions I get when I talk to people who aren't familiar with free information. The crucial point is that the internet is the perfect tool for publicizing free information projects and giving people a place to check whether the thing they're paying for might really be available for free. In the case of books, people should know to check the IPL, On-Line Books Page, Andamooka, and the site immodestly listed in my sig. I'm not as familiar with the equivalents for software, but I imagine SourceForge would be a good starting point.
Find free books.
This download is only any good if you set your clock back to before 29th November 2000. After that date, it can't be installed.
Funny, according to our lawyers the LGPL/GPL allow us to link to the libraries in a "normal" fashion without either giving credit or providing source.
Since when does using a precompiled library make you responsible for distributing it and publishing source?
Just to throw a monkey-wrench into things...
We don't actually know that the terms of the GPL apply. This may be a copyright violation instead of a GPL violation, and the nasty thing is that there is no way for anyone on the outside to be able to tell the difference.
GPL is similar to click-through EULAs, in the sense that there is never any proof that the person who received the GPLed code has actually agreed to the license. It's a contract that no one ever really signs; it's just assumed to have happened. The difference between a typical EULA and GPL is that GPL grants additional rights (the right to redistribute) that the user would not otherwise have under copyright law. So when the user exercises those rights, it implies that they must have agreed to GPL, since the alternative is that they are committing a copyright violation.
But it's just an implication, and it's based on the assumption that violating IP is worse (and subjects the violator to more liability) than violating a contract. An interesting idea is that there may be countries where the laws are different, and IP violations are more tolerated than contract violations. In such a country, it may be in violator's interest to declare that they did not accept the GPL, and are therefore violating copyright instead of license.
Just something to think about, if there aren't enough cans of worms in your life.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Since when does using a precompiled library make you responsible for distributing it and publishing source?
RTFL. It specifically states that 'Linking a "work that uses the Library" with the Library creates an executable that is a derivative of the Library (because it contains portions of the Library), rather than a "work that uses the library". The executable is therefore covered by this License. Section 6 states terms for distribution of such executables.'
Since the library is combined with your executable either at run-time or compile-time, it is legally a derivative work, and subject to the terms of the license of the library.
Funny, according to our lawyers the LGPL/GPL allow us to link to the libraries in a "normal" fashion without either giving credit or providing source.
RTFL, I'm not going to do your work for you.
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