Vidomi GPL Violation Case Resolved

Andy Tai writes: "The Vidomi GPL violation case, previously mentioned at slashdot as the "first legal test of the GPL", has been resolved without going to court. Vidomi has split their program into two programs and released the source code of the encoder, which links to other GPLed libraries, under the GPL. The FSF has approved the resulting arrangement as compliant with the GPL." See the original story.

Comments

While not a win for the GPL...

[Masem]

While this isn't a clear cut win for the GPL, it does at least show that the GPL has some guts, else why would Vidomi settle? If they felt that the GPL was meaningless, then they most likely would have fought this all the way through. So at least two companies (Microsoft and Vidomi) are taking the GPL seriously.

Can we learn a lesson from the Adobe debacle?

[Sanity]

So we learned with Adobe that opportunistic lawyers can sue people who infringe on trademarks, take a cut, and give the rest to the company they sued.

So, putting 2 and 2 together, why can't the GPL be enforced in the same way? The lawyers get a cut, and the GPL gets enforced without the FSF or anyone else spending a penny.

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Re:Wrong, Learn Your History

[Compuser]

Well, the FSF has a history of forgiving companies
and groups for initial mistakes with the GPL so long as they choose to become compliant. The latest one
was KDE/Qt debacle. The FSF seems to use its
leniency as a bargaining chip to bring people into
GPL compliance. IMHO, not a bad tactic.
That said, I am not seeing any indication of FSF
position in this case wrt past violations. They
may yet go to court, though I'd guess they have
better use for their money. OTOH, that press release
had "Open Source" all over it, so maybe RMS will
be pissed enough...

What about the other infringed projects?

[Carnage4Life]

The original author of VirutuaDub put up a page about Vidomi where he mentioned that SloMedia infringed seven projects (VirtualDub, FlaskMPEG, DVD2AVI, MPEG2DEC, AC3DEC, XingMP3, smart deinterlacer). Does the newly GPLed source cover all the infringing projects or just VirtuaDub.

Either way the VirtuaDub author seems just as pissed as most of the Slashdotter here about how they nver released the original source.

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Wrong, Learn Your History

[Carnage4Life]

The point of the GPL is to ensure that open-source programs remain open-source and freely modifiable.

Wrong. The point of the GPL is that users of software have complete and total freedom with the software they've been given not the next version or the one after but the version that was distributed to them.

I don't see why using it as a lever to get a company to release proprietary source code they never intended to open would do any good.

If the proprietary code is made up of seven different Free Software components then the users of the software are supposed to get the source for the software.

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Re:This is not good!

[MrGrendel]

No one can be forced to license their code under the GPL, even if they have violated the license. If a company violates the GPL, either deliberately or by misunderstanding the requirements, it is a copyright violation and should be handled as any other copyright violation. They really have two choices when it comes to resolving this: open up the violating code, or stop distributing it. They chose to take the second option and stop distributing the program in a manner that violates the GPL. Compliance has been enforced.

Really, now, people

[AaronStJ]

Vidomi has splited their program into two programs

This news makes me so happy, I shited my pants. The original GPL violation made me so agry I spited.

Discovering GPL violations

[FamousLongAgo]

Here is a question that has been nagging me - how is it possible to safeguard against closed-source developers stealing GPL'd code?

In cases like this, it's pretty easy to find out a violation took place. But what about a major closed-source project that uses pieces of GPL-d code? What if an embedded OS developer decided to use some Linux kernel code, without attribution, in a proprietary system? Would it be possible to detect the violation (looking for patterns in the binary, for example)?

Would it be possible to compel the company to show its source to a court in the event of a lawsuit?
The GPL may be enforceable, but that is cold comfort unless it is possible to detect and combat the use of stolen code.