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Embedded Device Manufacturers Ignoring GPL
swillden writes "Iain Barker and some other Linux Kernel Mailing List readers have discovered that several manufacturers of DVD players based on the Sigma Designs EM8500 chipset are distributing Linux, both in the devices and as binary-only firmware upgrades, but not providing source. Apparently, Sigma Designs provides its customers with a copy of the kernel as part of a chipset SDK, and those customers are making and selling devices without complying with the terms of the GPL. It's not clear if this is because Sigma didn't tell its customers about the GPL and their obligations, or if they're all ignoring it on their own. Maybe they've all bought licenses from SCO and therefore don't have to comply with the GPL? The LKML post contains a list of some of the infringers."
.. I've run into more than one GPL nut who just happened to be running unlicensed copies of [proprietary M$ software] .. This seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
To use proprietary software, the license usually requires that you promise not to share with your friends. It's wrong to make this promise, and wrong to keep it if you made it.
The courts of most countries will disagree though, so I avoid proprietary software completely.
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And yet people constantly claim that the GPL is not anti-business.
Well, it is anti-business. But that isn't our intent, just a side effect. The GPL is designed to protect the author of a work, not to promote or advance business. You could make a million dollars from it or it could ruin your company, I don't care. What I do care about is that you're not stealing from somebody, especially by violating the GPL. Arguements about how it fits into the business world are auxilary - worthy of discussion, yes, but not withing the context of the nature of the GPL itself. Business and the GPL has about as much relevence as orange peels have to it. There may be a connection, but I don't care what it is.
Thanks,
Bruce
Yes, but don't forget that the GPL can be applied to things other than code - easy to forget here on slashdot. You could, for example, make a GPL-protected book, and I mean a physical book and not an e-book. Then someone could theoretically change the book ... add new characters, whatever. The "preferred method of the work" would, indeed, be paper. Now when you request the original it could, or even should be provided on paper! The author is allowed, however, to ask for a reasonable compensation for raw materials. There are subsections of the GPL designed just for hard-publishing ... obviously one-off source printouts can be quite costly, preventing reasonable acquistion of the source. You are allowed to create a library when it comes to books, in a sense borrowing the source. Electronic distribution is allowed in cases like this, to help avoid these logistical entanglements.
Thanks,
Bruce
Some developers like the license. Some of us find out just how troublesome it can be, and change our minds.
My earlier projects were distributed under the GPL or LGPL. Then I got a job. I have to develop software for an organization that doesn't have the ability to release source code; we are a subsidiary of a larger organization that technically owns the copyright of everything I produce at work.
If I want to create software that uses GPL'd libraries, even if the software I create is a completely separate source tree and I don't change a single line of code in the distributable source of the library, the software I create has to be GPL. This is simply unacceptable; I don't have the time to get permission to do that on every project from my boss, let alone from the head of the parent organization and their lawyers. Eventually, every one of my creations at work may become OSS (and indeed, one of them already has) but I can't sit there and wait for that to happen before I start.
The solution is to use MIT-ish licensed software instead. Therefore, I license my own projects with the MIT license, so I can accept contributions to them and still be able to use them at work. Had I ever accepted contributions to my GPL projects without copyright assignment, pieces of those projects would be GPL *and* copyright to someone else, and I wouldn't be able to use my own projects at work!
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
It's rather funny that in the piracy topic, so many people are pro-piracy, but when it comes to the GPL, the same reasoning doesn't apply.
I thought RISC in this context meant Really Inbreed Shitty C0cksuckers.
o well...looks like it's time to pull my pitchfork and flaming torch from SCO's "where the sun don't shine" part.