Castle Denies GPL Breach

Anonymous Coward writes "Castle Technology, who were accused of breaching the GPL in RISC OS 5, have made a press release denying the allegations. This story has been covered on The Iconbar RISC OS news and resource site." We've given Castle some loving here on slashdot recently. Looks like this one isn't going away quietly.

Comments

Re:Where did the accusation come from..

[Anonymous Coward]

It was originally posted on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml) by Russel King, here.

Re:Confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that is perfectly alright and compliant with section

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,

The problem is not that they would use floppy disks (which are pretty much the most frequent medium for software interchange, still), but that they apparently conveniently forgot to include that written offer!

In addition, it would seem that we have forgotten another few phrases:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

Re: Confusion

[markov_chain]

Read the press release more closely: "based in part on the following functions" could mean that they just looked at Linux code and then wrote their own from scratch.

Re:Confusion

[Target Drone]

No, they are saying that they did not use any GPL code.

The RISC OS ... kernel did not contain work taken from or derived from the ARM-Linux or Linux kernel."

If you mail them a floppy you get a copy of components source code that allegedly violates the GPL so that you can see for yourself that it's all-legit. We'll just have to wait and see if anybody gets a copy of the code mailed back to them and if it violates the GPL or not. Personally I find it fishy that they just don't post it on the web right now to clear their name. I suspect the mail in a floppy is a stall tactic.

Liars. Google cache proof.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google cache of the (now removed) page http://www.iyonix.com/32bit/PCI_API.shtml
is at http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:mf1nlduliL4C: www.iyonix.com/32bit/PCI_API.shtml+&hl=no&ie=UTF-8

Note that the source code for many of the Linux PCI device drivers is publicly available on the Internet and may be useful in developing the corresponding RISC OS device driver.

So, if they had clean conscious, why would they remove that page?

I don't buy into this.

Re:Will this be the first GPL test case?

[Christopher Craig]

Without a license, you cannot use copyrighted material. If you use copyrighted material, without a license, you are in violation of that copyright. The only matters before the court would be "did you use the software" and "are you licensed to do so".

This isn't technically true. You are allowed to use copyrighted materials without a license, but you aren't allowed to copy, distribute, modify or derive from copyrighted material without a license. The DMCA has restricted this a little more so that now a company can require you give up some of the rights you would have had without a license in order to use their product (which is one of the huge issues with the DMCA), but the GPL doesn't rely on this.

The GPL specifically provides that you are not required to accept the license, but without accepting it the author gives you no rights above the standard ones provided by copyright law (pretty much reading the source code and running the software)

Calm down...

[zjbs14]

They're not releasing that piece of source as part of some GPL requirements, they're releasing to show that it's not covered by the GPL. From the press release (empahsis mine):

For the avoidance of doubt, the hardware abstraction layer (roughly analogous to a PC's BIOS) has it's PCI allocation and bridge setup based in part on the following functions from the Linux kernel sources

I admit that it could probably be worded better, but it sounds like they could have took the function names/possibly signatures and wrote their own code. Get the source and find out. However, if the experts in this matter can still show that the object form is too close to the GPL output, then there may be something to worry about.

Re:Will this be the first GPL test case?

[ChaosDiscord]

The GPL is a license to software. Plain and simple.

Without a license, you cannot use copyrighted material. If you use copyrighted material, without a license, you are in violation of that copyright. The only matters before the court would be "did you use the software" and "are you licensed to do so".

You are operating on a popular but completely incorrect belief. This incorrect belief grants copyright holders far more power than the law really gives them. Copyright industries want to encourage this erroneous belief but we need to fight back.

You do not need a license to use material protected by copyright. If I buy a book, a DVD, or a CD I'm free to take it hope and read it, watch it, listen to it, loan it out to a friend, destroy it, give it away, or sell it. No license is needed or granted. The particular item that I purchased is mine, the copyright holder no longer has any claim to it. What the copyright holder does have claim to is the exclusive right to make and distribute copies. (Well, the right to perform publically is also in there, and there are lots of complex exceptions, but that's the gist of it.)

This is important and many people seem to have missed it: You do not need a license to personally use (read, watch, run, listen to, whatever) a copyrighted work you purchased.

Given this, the GPL is not a license to use the software. You're free to use software under GPL without ever reading or agreeing to it (but you should probably note the "NO WARRANTEE" clause). You can refuse to agree to the GPL and use the software. The GPL only seriously comes into play if you want to distribute copies. Normally under copyright law you cannot ever distribute copies. The GPL is an open offer to let you distribute copies (granting you more freedom than copyright law normally allows), in exchange for certain behavior on your part.

Normal software licenses attempt to change your purchase of a particular thing restricted by copyright into license of something you don't own. This is completely alien to the United States copyright system. In a similar case much earlier (around 1900 if I remember correctly) a publisher tried to put a license on an actual book. It was soundly defeated in court. The legal precedent for software End User License Agreements is pretty shaky, primarily resting on a single case at a lower court level (district?) that rather insanely decided that copying a program into memory to run was an infringing copy and as such required a license. It could yet be overturned. If it does get overturned traditional software will revert back to the same rules books, CDs, tapes, and DVDs live with and do fine under. The GPL will continue to work fine because it already assumes you have every right under copyright law but offers you a license to do more than copyright law allows.