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Castle Technology UK Ripping off Kernel Code?
Jonathan Riddell writes "`It would appear that Castle Technology Limited, UK, have taken some of the Linux 2.5 code, and incorporated it into their own product, "RISC OS", which is distributed in binary ROM form built into machines they sell. This code is linked with other proprietary code.' Full details from Russell King on lkml."
Pretty popular thing to do. IntegrityMessenger.com stole Psi's code (psi.sourceforge.net) not too long ago. All you have to do is run 'strings' on the binary and you can still see word Psi in there.
Who would be the initiator of such a lawsuit?
Being a relatively non-hardcore geek, I wonder how it is possible to actually prove that GPL'd code was used?
Once compiled and linked and what-know-I, the source would be rather obscure, and after all, other products seem to do the same tasks, yet not using GPL code..
Please enlighten me!
- rnger
Here is a question... Most OSS, and this kernel, specifically, is created by the contibutions of many individuals. So, who in the world can file a lawsuit over matters like this?
Would it be the many individuals? (They're probably not that rich) Would it be some benefactor, like Mitch Kapor/FSF? (He's rich, but has to pick his battles) Or perhaps a money hungry lawyer working for a fat contingency... Who files the lawsuit and pays the fees?
Have cases like this gone to court in the past?
I have a question, perhaps it does not pertain to this situation... but where do you draw the line about code being stolen?
For example, if lets say I stole a simple 3 line chunk of code that converts a date from one format to another, and threw it in my multi-thousand line project (which is all original except for those 3 lines), would it really be breaking the GPL? I understand that it of course technically is.. but at what point would the 'borrowing' of code be of such basic elements that really, there is no other way to solve a particular problem?
Sure my above example sucks (it's friday afternoon, brains already gone)... but what amount of code warrants a "you're stealing you son of a b*tch" title, and what warrants a "meh... it's not rocket science, hell, there's no other way to do it, even if he hadn't looked at the code, this is the logical solution anyone with half a brain would come to..."...???
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Actually, what's much more important than any money involved is that a case like this could provide a precedent that would prove that the GPL is legally enforceable - something that has not occurred to date, AFAIK. For this reason it might be a good thing if Castle is (a) guilty and (b) obstinate about it and Linus sues. (I just love the thought of Microsoft quivering.) It would have to be appealed a level or two for the precedent to be strong and widely binding.
Even more ironic is that they are a "Christian Messenging Service". What happened to thou shall not steal...
IIRC, RMS has actually been anticipating for a serious GPL breach to rear its head, so it can provide an actual legal acid test of the GPL. I don't believe any organization/company has ever gone to court over GPL violations. Winning any courtroom legal victory would be a huge boon to for the GPL, as it would demonstrate it's legal resiliance. IANAL, of course.
make world, not war
Acorn Computers is the daddy of all UK computing. While the rest of the geeky kids were using Ti's the UK kids were hacking away on BBC Micros.
:
:
I still have mine here.
The ARM processor is one of the best CPUs in existence.
how ironic that on on this page
http://www.castle.uk.co/castle/rpcalt.htm
the fish in the picture is clearly too big for the inadequate bowl.
They might find that their GPL rip-off is equally dead in the water.
It's a sad day all round. Time to flush them down the toilet.
whoring
if anyone lives nearby maybe they could pop in on Monday and get the sourcecode
Castle Technology Ltd
Ore Trading Estate
Woodbridge Road
Framlingham
Suffolk
IP13 9LL UK
Sales Telephone Line: 01728 723 200
Lines Open: Monday-Friday 9:00-5:00
Sales Fax Line: 01728 727 427
Lines Open: 24hrs every day
Support Line: 01728 727 424
Lines Open: Monday-Friday 9:00-12:00
Email: sales@castle.uk.co
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Hah, I remember that. Before someone complained to them, they had even copied the text from Jabber.org's website word for word, and called the messenger it their own proprietary messaging protocol (patent pending!), when all it was just a stolen jabber client and the default jabber server. What a bunch of losers.
Should anything actually happen. Which I whole-heartily agree that something should happen. Maybe even the bigger distributions and users could actually back up Linus and other writers (i.e. redhat, mandrake, debian, IBM, sgi etc). After all they have a vested interest in the continuing development of code to support marketed products, which can only decline if people feel ripped off and there enthusiasm declines. And then such companies i) have loss of profits, ii) have to put money back into the funding they have tryed to save on by using linux. The main reasoning here, is without decent backing you lose, just because you can't fund any action.
--+> Life, is there any?
Actually, I'd prefer that they be forced to open source their code instead. Have you looked into RiscOS? It fits into something like a 4meg (yes four megabyte) rom, boots in two seconds, and screams on any old piece of junk processor. I can only imagine how it would run on my AthlonXP. A tad faster than Mandrake no doubt.
It looks to me like Castle Technologies just happens to sell machines which have RISC OS on them. One of many companies in the UK.
Wouldn't the company in violation be RISCOS Ltd?
I believe the FSF's stance on this is, the later that the first GPL case goes to court, the better. The thinking is that there is the potential of the judges (and the media, and the public in general) becoming more tech savvy as time goes on; as well as the hope that traditional copyright laws will be adapted to software issues more fully by then.
sic transit gloria mundi
I would add that another reason for many developers is the knowledge that the code they contribute will remain covered under the GPL and not go towards lining the pockets of a closed-source company. Otherwise they'd use the BSD license, right?
So a GPL copyright violation also robs Linux of a portion of its' users goodwill to develop. Wonder if that would persuade in court...
Wah!
If that were Microsoft that released an operating system that used significant chunks of the Linux kernel, there would already be a paypal donation site already set up to fund the legal battle to get them to comply with the GPL.
Copyright violations by individuals at home for private use are quite debatable...a company violating a copyright in order to make a profit is not debatable in the least...it is PRECISELY in the spirit of copyright and why it was invented in the first place.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I'm wondering who's responsible for suing for GPL infringements... the copyright holders are numerous and it's doubtful they'd all have enough money to fight that kind of legal battle with any kind of big software company. It seems so odd to imagine the EFF suing for a copyright infringement. FSF maybe?
My Blog
Well IANAL but I expect each one of the copyright holders for the code could individually seek damages for the infringement. Alternatively they could probably all work together on a single suit.
2 .html 3 .html
That is why the poster to lkml mentioned the sections since all the copyright holders of those sections are affected.
As to comments that have or are going to be made regarding the GPL getting its day in court, the reason that this has not happened already is not because the GPL is weak, but because it is strong.
Much murmuring...to the supposed effect that the absence of judicial enforcement, in US or other courts, somehow demonstrates that there is something wrong with the GPL, that its unusual policy goal is implemented in a technically indefensible way, or that the Free Software Foundation, which authors the license, is afraid of testing it in court. Precisely the reverse is true. We do not find ourselves taking the GPL to court because no one has yet been willing to risk contesting it with us there.
Eben Moglen
In fact he has written two papers on the specific issue of GPL enforcement.
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-1
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-1
My expectation is that this company will buckle as soon as their lawyers get a look at the GPL in detail and what their developers/management did. The fact that the company actually took steps to hide their infringement is also going to look very bad in court. They are only making it worse for themselves. They should do themselves a favour and work out an agreement with the kernel developers before they really get burned.
They could have adapted code from netBSD's PCI and IO subsystem and integrated it in their binary only roms in total legality.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
Like others have said.. violations of the GPL have to be fought. If you fail to enforce the license then it soon becomes meaningless and you loose the ability to enforce it later.
Having an enforceable GPL is important. Many of the programmers who choose to use the GPL license or work on GPL licensed code would be lost if GPL turned out to be un-enforceable.
Personally I have no interest in spending a few hundred hours working with a group of programmers writing code only to see a company come around, grab it up, change a few things and perhaps change the output to a proprietary format. Then they start selling it and it becomes very popular but they keep the code to themselves.
Wouldn't that be great? Now not only are they making money off our original effort, but we can't even take advantage of the new product without paying. Heck, we can't even make our original program use their file format without risking breaking the law (DMCA.)
So even though we did nearly all the work we all would have to pay someone else in order to be compatible with the version that "everybody else" was using.
With GPL (if it is enforceable,) the company would have to release their changes back as GPL as well. Now we don't have to worry about suddenly needing to pay for what we worked on and gave to the world as free.
As far as wasting time fighting instead of coding goes... that is exactly why a lot of GPL programmers have assigned copyright of their software to third parties like the FSF.
Huh? That question doesn't make sense. Violating standard copyright law is the entire legal mechanism the GPL operates by. Duplicating the code is illegal, but the copyright holder has agreed to give copying permission to anyone who obeys the GPL.
Like the GPL says:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
A theoretical "test" of the GPL might find that the license text is all correct and legal. Or, maybe a court would declare the license invalid. This could mean that every user of Linux and other GPL software is in violation of copyright (until the authors work up another way to give out permission). That would be a major news story, and is why people get excited when the possibility of a "test" arises.
You don't understand this - these are no PCs you can run Windows on.
:-) Even the most obscure Linux port probably has four full-time-equivalent developers.
No, it's you who doesn't understand. What makes you think I'd want to run Windows on it? I'm sure the operating system overhead is lower than for Windows, but probably not enough to make up for a four-fold reduction in cycles.
RISC_OS
Heh, 4 full time developers?
So it's another proprietary desktop operating system, but one that only runs on slow expensive machines, has an infinitesimal marketshare and development community, isn't unix-compatible, and has a graphic design stuck in the early 90s? I should care why?
Any few of those I could put up with (free/non-unix/marginal, or proprietary/gorgeous) but the combination is pretty damning.
I'm happy to admit that if I'd gone to school in the UK, I'd probably feel all nostalgic and want to buy one. But I didn't and I don't. And I especially don't want to support the kind of rat-bastardry discussed in the original story.
If Castle Technology Limited were an US company, CTL would just countersue Russell King for circumventing ROM BIOS 'protection'. As a result, Linux is screwed and CTL lives happily ever after. Nobody will care about GPL anymore because someone can screw the system with this low down dirty trick.
Don't believe it won't happened in UK, because EUCD is going to pass in there pretty soon.
The Free Software Foundation makes every effort to make sure a GPL violation case never makes it to court all the way to the point of doing nothing for long periods of time. There was a case where the Dell/Red Hat alliance violating the GPL since Feburary 2002. When I notified the FSF about it in July of 2002, I was asked not to go public with this GPL violation that spanned an entire GNU/Linux distribution worth of packages. When I confirmed the violation was continuing in October of 2002, they still sat on the same request to do nothing. It was not until around December that the companies got around to honoring the written word of the license and they still have not truely honored the spirit of GPL.
" ...but who cares? People who license their code under the BSD License don't waste time and energy investigating these types of issues. Instead, they keep coding. "
;)
I care. That doesn't mean I want to mod you down either. It just proves that people don't understand the spirit of the GPL. Why it exists. Why it's important to defend.
Part of the point of the GPL isn't so much the technical aspect of the license - there's RELIGION there also. It is the unspoken belief (well, I think RMS has said something to this effect), that many coders contribute to the GPL codebase to make it better (and therefore save the universe from oppression or something like that)
When one steals from the GPL codebase, their contribution - which if sold is REQUIRED, must be returned to the whole. To not do so, to take the accomplishments of others who build on this license diminishes us all. It's as simple as that. Now, it is apparent (at least to what I've heard) that what this company (Castle) has STOLEN the work of others. Of course it should be looked at.
Hell, since many of us are now paying the "assumed CD-R piracy" fees everytime we buy blanks, this at least is a blatent violation of a legally enforceable license.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Yes, they are roughly the same thing. They are licences that modify the standard "All rights reserved" clause that defaults to a copyrighted work. This means that without a licence, you really can't do much more than look at the CD that your software came on.
The difference lies in what the two types of licences say.
The EULAs that we know and love (from MS, Adobe, etc.) grant us the right use the copy we have in very limited ways (one machine/one user, no redistribution permitted, no modification permitted, no source code provided, no liability, etc.)
The GPL shares the "no liability" part, but it expressly *permits* using the software any way you want, copying it as often as you want, selling as many copies as you want. All it asks is (1)that copies (and derivatives) are themselves GPL'd, and (2)that if you distribute a copy (or a derivative) of GPL'd software, that you provide the source code (if asked) to the recipient. These were added specifically to ensure that GPL'd code cannot be co-opted by proprietary interests.
By the way, the BSD licence is also worth mentioning. It's as close to "public domain" as you can get: BSD'd code can be used any way you want, as long as you don't hold the authors liable and you give them credit. It is "free-er" code than the FSF's "Free" (GPL'd) code in the sense that there are fewer restrictions on its use. In practice, however, without the GPL's protections, eventually BSD code gets "embraced and extended" by MS et al, rendering the orginal BSD version incompatible with its proprietary derivatives.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
To sue the infringers, the copyright should (must? IANAL) be assigned to the FSF. I as a GNU GPL developer and copyright owner may not want my code assigned to FSF for personal reasons. How then does the FSF sue on my behalf? Can they legally do so?
It would be a great example of testing the GPL without running into the copyright argument.
An even better situation would be to write code, release the code under the GNU GPL, give it to a friend, sign a legal contract offering him use of the copyrighted code if and only if it is used under the terms of the GNU GPL, and then have him violate the terms of the GPL for either (A) release of derived source, (B) distribution, or (C) both.
Take each other to court, represent yourselves (in propia persona), and have a judge resolve the issue. Sue for enough over the small claims limitations, and when done, release him from legal liability if the suit is successful.
You set precedent, appeals potentials, and all without the FSF's involvement (or political backwash).
--Matt
RISC OS is actually owned by Pace Microtechnologies Plc. They acquired it from Acorn Computers Plc when Acorn was broken up. RISC OS is developed by RISC OS Ltd who licence it from Pace and develop it for the desktop machines. Castle Technologies obtained the rights to manufacture and distribute Acorn's Risc PC in the break up but have since started developing their own products.
From the details it's not clear whether Castle are the culprits or RISC OS Ltd. It is unlikely to be Pace as they are not interested in the desktop products. Knowing some of the parties concern I know where my suspicions lie but I'm not saying.
The BBC were really keen to get computers to the people. They made a magazine TV programme aimed at non-geeky people presented in a non-patronising way. They'd show you computers being used in the field, have a bit of a discussion and show you some source code and explained how it worked.
They also used the Teletext system to distribute free BASIC source code, even before they released their computer they were supplying source for the Acorn Electron. You needed a teletext adapter to get it into your machine. When I was 10 or 11 I used to sit there with a pencil and graph paper copying down the source from the screen. I hadn't even used a computer by then, let alone owned one. I had no idea what I was writing down at first but gradually I got some sort of idea of what was going on. It was made more difficult by the fact that in order to maximize the bandwidth the newlines were tokenized so one line ran into another like this (I'm using ! as newline):
10 INPUT "Hello, what is your name?",name!20 IF name "DrSkwid" THEN 50!30 PRINT "Agghhh Doctor I've been expecting you"!40 GOTO 60!50 PRINT "Daleks, kill ",name!60 PRINT "bye"
happy days
glad you made it to Berkeley
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter