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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.
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.
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.
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