Slashdot Mirror
How To Fight International OSS License Violations?
sirshannon asks: "Frans Bouma's LLBLGen is a free, open source code generator that he licensed under the BSD license so that anyone could use it in any way, as long as they gave him some credit. Now Codease has released a product that apparently uses his code for 90% of the functionality but doesn't bother to attribute it to him. Frans lives in The Netherlands, Codease is in Singapore. What is the correct way to pursue this?"
Jeebus, is it that hard to figure out?
How could he magically demand money under the (L)GPL anymore than he could under a BSD2 license, the topic doesn't state this, but it's not under the old style BSD advertising clause license, nor the MIT style BSD license, this is the 2 clause BSD license (which I've never seen anyone use, but that's besides the point) and at this moment they're not obeying all cluases of the license, specifically the attribution cluase.
"2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
Copyright violation is copyright violation, whether it is music, software, or source code.
Actually, I think you are trolling. Most licenses have not been "tested" in a court of law, and they don't need to be "tested" to be perfectly good. In fact, a license that has never been disputed is probably stronger than one that has been challenged in court. I don't see too many people saying that Microsoft's EULA is unenforceable, because it clearly is. That license imposes many more restrictions on end-users than the GPL or any free software license does, so it would be much more vulnerable. Yet nobody challenged it so far.
Besides, the AT&T case had nothing to do with the BSD license and everything to do with the fact that AT&T failed to properly register its copyrights (a procedure that's no longer necessary).
1) Send them an email. (done?) ...Done
2) Send more emails, make phone calls. (done?)
3) Complain on Slashdot.
4) Send postal mail.
5) Litigate.
Here's some contact info from their whois.
Codease.com contact:
Gary, Zheng sales@invenmanager.com
200 Jalan Sultan
#20-03 Textile Centre
Sg, Sg 199018
SG
90467520
Invenmanager.com contact:
CAMSOLUTION
Sales, Sales sales@invenmanager.com
21B St Michaels Road
Singapore, Singapore
SG
65-63960575
Why would FSF help someone who didn't use the (L)GPL?
Je ne parle pas francais.
Nice generalisation.
Fact of the matter is that Singapore became a contracting party of the Berne Union in 1998 and so is bound by the same basic standard of copyright as the good ole US (or even Switzerland) and they're bound by the TRIPS agreement too.
So we've established that the right is enforceable in Singapore. The question then becomes are there any barriers to actually enforcing that right? Well Singapore used to be a former British colony with a common law system so you've got pretty much the same chance of enforcement there as in any common law country (UK, Canada, Australia etc). Up until just a few years ago the highest court of appeal for Singapore was England's Privy Council so with any case potentially going there for the final decision, the nature of Singapore's law has been influenced greatly by any legal developments in the UK and the nature of legal proceedings is substantially the same.
While you might have been one of the first countries to sign the convention, don't knock the latecomers! I might begin to think that you're sig might apply to the Swiss instead of Americans.
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
If you don't want people to profit from your work, don't release it as BSD.
That's not the issue. The issue is they didn't follow the terms of his license, which has nothing to do with profit (the GPL's terms have nothing to with profit also for that matter).
If you are so vain that you are willing to spend thousands of dollars to sue to have your name placed on something, have fun.
He wrote it in the first place, so why shouldn't he deserve some recognition?
CodeAse has updated the tool so it now shows the correct copyright in the about box and in the documentation. :)
Thanks for all the support!
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.