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FSF Threatens GPL Lawsuit
An anonymous reader writes "Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News reports that OpenTV is violating the GNU General Public License. He notes that the Free Software Foundation is threatening to file a lawsuit in the case. If you haven't become an associate member of the FSF yet, now would be a good time!" Note that Gillmor is reporting the FSF's claim of violation, not making it himself.
decent programmers who choose to give their work away should not be taken advantage of.
Sure they should, they gave it away!
Now those who license it under the GPL did NOT give it away and should have their license respected.
Back before my time the BSD license said you had to display the credits. Some little company (AT&T wasn't it) didn't want to play by the rules, I wonder how that turned out?
The old BSD license was very close to giving it away, much closer then the GPL, and courts ruled it was enforcable. I would be surprised if the GPL was any less valid.
I'd call those big questions of damages. How much damage might be found to be zero. That could be bad news for GPL.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
What is this with forcing them to open what they have done to the world? It is not forcing anyone, it is just a license which the programmer choose to distribute his software under, or he choose not to, I can't see how that is forcing anything on anyone.
Do you know how to read? Try reading the GPL. It requires any derivative works to also be GPL. That's a restriction, because it means you can never make software that is available for sale from anything that has been opened as GPL. Pretty serious restriction, if you ask a professional programmer. I am one, I know.
As a result, the GPL has proven itself to be an excellent source for back-office proprietary, offline tools that never see the light of day and are never intended for release to the public in any form. Then you don't have to provide source code, and lose nothing of your technological edge to your competitors.
While I admire the spirit of GNU, they're very impractical, and cause tremendous heartache among programmers that are generally in favor of their movement than not. Unfortunately, its primary target, the packaged software industry, is largely unscatched.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
It sounds to me like people have tried to request it, but they have refused to give it. It is not a matter of not posting it online.
I feel obligated to point out that violation of the GPL is not stealing... it is copyright/license infringement.
Slashdot discussions hold various examples of folks who refer to p2p copyrighted file sharing as "stealing". Some people (with whom I agree) then respond that this is not an example of stealing, it is an example of copyright infringement. This clarification is not intended to condone (or condemn) the sharing of copyrighted material; the point is to not sink to the same level of newspeak as the RIAA/MPAA which claims (for example) that not watching commercials is "stealing". The reason this is important is that it has everything to do with what legal analysis and remedies can and should be brought to bear on the matter.
When something has been stolen, there are clear answers to the questions (1) who has lost, and (2) how much. It is in the world of copyright infringement that these questions become enormously debatable.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I hope this is not the argument that is used in court, because I think it misrepresents the intent of the GPL. Claiming that everyone in the community was damaged because they didn't get the benefit of this software without paying for it sounds a lot like the viral GPL that Microsoft warned about.
I think the more relevant point is that by using other people's work as the basis of their software they entered into a contract which said that others could do the same. They have an obligation under that contract to make their work available for others to learn from, adapt, and improve upon.
The intention of the GPL is not, IMO, to allow consumers to have access to other people's work for free. "Free as in beer" access to software is a natural consequence of the GPL that we sometimes benefit from. It is not a requirement nor is it the intent.
That's the relevent point! Take that one to court but leave the first part about everyone getting it for free (As in beer) out.
Free software has been around for a LONG time, and in many incarnations. Sure, much of it has been licensed under the GPL, but the BSD-derived licenses have been around for as long (if not longer), not to mention the classic Artistic license, and so on. Calling the GPL the core of the free software movement is a vast overstatement.
Consider, the BSD-derived operating systems (and by operating system, I mean the core and all the related tools) have been around for a LONG time, and have attracted a large number of developers. These developers have improved the BSD systems as a whole, and have contributed their changes back into the code base, despite there being no LEGAL requirement to do so. Granted, some companies have coopted BSD code, but who cares? In the end the BSDs have progressed just fine.
So, why is this? It's because, in the end, the core of the free software movement is about creativity, generosity, and a sense of community, and NOT because they feel that *have* to contribute their changes back to the community. . I would contend that the reason the Linux kernel has progressed so well has little to do with the license and everything to do with the spirit of the community. Heck, I suspect that if the Linux kernel had been licensed under the BSD license, or even the Artistic license, it would have done just as well. Why? Because people *want* to work on the kernel. They want to be part of that community, and to feel like they can contribute. In the end, the GPL serves as nothing more than a political statement about the views of that community.
Thus, I have to seriously question the idea that, if the GPL was defeated, this would "derail" the free software "movement". This so-called movement has been around for a long time, and will continue, whether or not the GPL is legally tenable.
But if the FSF is right that OpenTV is violating the GPL, and if this behavior is found to be legal by the courts, the entire free-software and open-source movements could be derailed.
It seems to me that if the GPL were weakened by a court decision, that same decision would also weaken copyrights generally and eula's specifically. Which brings to mind and interesting possible scenario:
The lawyers at MS, realizing that the GPL is about to put on trial, initially rejoice but then realize that their own eula is also in danger. Bill Gates donates a billion dollars to the FSF legal fund as a "gesture of goodwill".
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
I disagree. The BSDs had a huge headstart and even taking into account the lawsuits they were not making significant progress. My personal belief is that the BSD license was too permissive. There were commercial derivative works (eg, BSDI) that took a lot and contributed relatively little. The problem is that people are generous but companies are not. Companies are greedy. The GPL forces companies to be generous by using the threat of lawsuits. The GPL was a catalyst that made the "free software movement" explode from a hobbyist plaything into a market force.
My only evidence I can suggest for this is the huge influx of BSD developers into Linux when BSD was clearly superior. I'll agree the problem is not black and white: there were contributing factors like the lawsuit and the core developer politics. But it doesn't explain why there is STILL a vast number of Linux developers. So all I can do is draw from my own experience; given a choice I will always contribute to a GPL project instead of a BSD project simply because I have absolutely no faith in the BSD license to deliver "returns". I don't believe that we can expect companies to play fair. This is why I'll stick with projects like Linux that are predominately GPLd; we need to beat companies with a big stick if we're to get any returns.
When somebody takes another's life it might be due to murder, or manslaughter, or euthenasia, or state sanctioned execution. The legal differences between the 4 are huge.
When somebody takes another's money it might be due to theft, or robbery, or fraud, or embezzlement. The legal differences between the 4 are huge.
So when you claim that copyright infringement is the same thing as theft I think you're just ignorant. You can rant and rave all you like but the law doesn't agree with you.
What's interesting about your claim in a thread that centers on the GNU General Public License is how you are simultaneously misrepresenting two authorities you appeal to. Neither the FSF nor U.S. Copyright law consider copyright infringement to be theft.
And it's not surprising you would make such a mistake, considering you are arguing in terms of "IP" or intellectual property. It's important to understand that copyright law is not the same as patent law, trademark law, and other laws commonly discussed as "IP" and therefore it doesn't help anyone to think of them as a cohesive whole.
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