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Is UnitedLinux Violating The GPL?
mmayberry writes "NewsForge has posted an article, UnitedLinux might not be very GPL-friendly. With a closed beta that includes an NDA, UL may be on the verge of angering a large part of their target market. You'd think that the likes of Suse, Turbo, SCO, and Conectiva would get the point by now..."
Leave your knee-jerk reactions at home for now, people. The FSF is on the case. Don't get all up in arms unless the FSF determines there is an actual problem.
:-)
On the other hand, this Register story paints the upper brass at UL as clueless retards. But the Register always does that.
The GPL is enforced through private enforcement. Basically, someone who holds the copyright on GPL software sues for violation of the license. So Linus could sue in this case. The FSF could sue because, presumably, UL will be shipping gcc, glibc, and/or bash.
who is going to prosecute them?
The FSF asks that authors of GPL software tranfer the copyright to the FSF, so that the FSF can take action against violators.
From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html
So what happens when the GPL is violated? With software for which the Free Software Foundation holds the copyright (either because we wrote the programs in the first place, or because free software authors have assigned us the copyright, in order to take advantage of our expertise in protecting their software's freedom), the first step is a report, usually received by email to . We ask the reporters of violations to help us establish necessary facts, and then we conduct whatever further investigation is required.
Many Linux distributions first see light of day as closed betas. For example, the Xandros betas have been available to only a small number of people, all of whom have signed NDAs.
As I see it, a closed beta is not a public release, and therefore not violating the GPL in any way.
In these situations, making the full source available would not help anybody (1. slower development due to extra hassle, 2. most code is available from original sources anyway, 3. modified code will be in a state of unstable flux). At the point of full release, well, that's a different matter.
The GPL gives you the right to distribute the source and binary to anyone YOU choose, and does not allow anyone to restrict you from doing so.
If the NDA does not permit them to use the GPL redistribution clause, then they were not provided with the software under the terms of the GPL and hence UnitedLinux was distributed illegally, in violation of copyright law.
You actually have to actually be a company and they have to actually be employees. You can't just pretend you are a company. That is a sham and trying to pull that in front of a judge would not be wise.
They can't even be "contractors", because the GPL forbids you to distribute to people with additional conditions, which your contract would impose.
It is you who are incorrect.
The only way you can release GPL code under an NDA is if you are the origional author of every single line of the code. Otherwise the origional author can invoke the GPL death penalty, removing all your rights to whatever code they wrote, and thus invalidating your NDA.
Since UL obviously isn't the origional author of all, most, or likely even a significant amount, of the code in their distro, their NDA can probably be shot down quite easily.
Do you give the source code for GPL programs to everyone who works for you? Doubt it.
If you have the employees install the software themselves you are legally required to provide them with source if they request it. If you are installing it and they are merely using it, then you aren't distributing it and there is no requirement for you to provide source.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
> SuSE are not exactly huge supporters of the GPL, what with a non-Free installer and configuration tools.
But they are heavy contributors in two of the largest free software projects in XFree86 (through Keith Packard, etc) and KDE (Waldo Bastian, Kurt Granroth, etc..) Of course, XFree86 is X11-licensed, and only parts of KDE are GPL, but the point is that SuSE makes many contributions to free software (The GPL doesn't matter here because SuSE doesn't release their installer under a X11 or BSD license either)
> Wasn't Ransom Love bashing the GPL a few years ago, while at Caldera and saying that the BSD license is better?
He said that the GPL was bad for buisness, but good for development. I wouldn't doubt that most other CEO's or CFO's would agree with him.
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