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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?"
You're probably trolling, but my radar is off today.
Considering that, to date, the BSD license is the only one of the two that has been tested in a court of law, I don't really understand your point.
(I'm referring to the AT&T/USL code settlement of the 90s.)
I suspect this guy's entire problem is that he's using the old advertising-clause BSD license, and Codease probably assumed when he said 'BSD' he meant 'modern BSD.' Were it a modern BSD license, they could use his code without attribution.
Since they've since started to acquiesce to his demands, I suspect they may have finally read his license and realized their mistake.
I don't care about BSD but as the title says OSS in general:
Just threat it like a regular copyright violation case:
1 - mail them
2 - if it don't work publicize, mail FSF (if that's the case)
3 - hire a lawyer in that country or an international lawyer company
If your code is under GPL, FSF may provide you some legal help, but if it's BSD or an unkown licence you're probably sol.
I've seen BSD violations myself, then I looked around for the BSD community in my country to tell them about it, but no signal of such community.
As I didn't care very much about the violator (it was non-profit) or the original author (not a friendly guy in the first place), I let that untouched.
Come on, you (BSD developers) want your name publicized (no matter what else is done with the code). How much community motivation (outside of the BSD developers field) has that cause?
No, it isn't a downside at all, because they're not following the BSD licence terms. If they were, they *wouldn't* be able to "grab your work and act as if they spent 3 months programming". The only reason you're "losing out" is because the other party hasn't followed the rules - it's got nothing to do with the licence itself (assuming you knew the implications of released something under it in the first place).
*Exactly* the same thing could happen with GPLed code (and has - Linksys).
I don't see too many people saying that Microsoft's EULA is unenforceable, because it clearly is.
I don't know how often you've been reading slashdot but I see a lot of people complaining if EULA is enforceable because it's at least a strange contract: you pay for a product, take it to your home or whatever, and after that you agree with a contract.
Their argument is: when you buy a copy and take it out of the store, our relation with the owner is over.
He agreed to sell you that copy and you got the product. No contracts signed, no contracts to be reclaimed, it's now your copy and you can do whatever you want with it (under the general law of course).
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.
You're awfully quick to jump on the *trolling* bandwagon there. It's true that licenses don't always need to be tested to be fine. Most licenses are very similar to things the court has dealt with before and hence there is no need to 'test' them. Also, well worded licenses can be good. But that doesn't mean that having a license be 'tested' isn't better.
In fact, a license that has never been disputed is probably stronger than one that has been challenged in court.
Now THAT's some conclusion! Care to give some reason why that statement isn't just a shovelfull from the dung pile?
I don't see too many people saying that Microsoft's EULA is unenforceable, because it clearly is.
And here we see your ignorance. Shrink wrap EULA's are probably one of the most grey areas of the law. No, one's never been challenged yet, but none have been enforced yet either. And EULA's are broken A LOT. Many people think that EULA's are not valid at all.
This is about the WORST example to attempt to prove your point that you could have chosen! And here is proof that you picked a bad example
http://lwn.net/2000/features/ncm-dvd.php3
And the DeCSS guy won by the way. Twice.
The goal of the EULA is to give MS total control - so it's drafted to give the user as few rights as possible, making sure that grey areas will fall in MS's favour if a court case arises, and be completely unreadable to the layman. The EULA is so different to the GPL & BSD that they would share very little in terms of enforcement.
;-)
As for the lack of the GPL court case, read Eben Moglens (very good, short) essay Enforcing the GNU GPL.
Also remember that as of W32-XP, you're relationship with MS is not over once you leave the shop - you register either by phone or online when you install the system. The registration number you send to MS is a unique ID for your computer which is generated from a combination of various hardware serial numbers. Every time you use MS Windows Update, a list of all programs (by all vendors) that you have installed on your system is sent to MS. Two backdoor accounts have been found in MS IIS, both have "NSA" in the username. (and those are just the proven sneaky activities of MS software.) Your relationship with the shopkeeper is over - but your relationship with MS is just beginning
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
The GPL imposes more restrictions and you could argue that the violations were more serious and caused actual damages.
How? If they fully complied with the license a GPL author would also not see one extra penny. The code that needs to be released is *public*, i.e. it's not attributed *to* the original author and hence it's fishy if it can even be considered some form of payment.
Also, another alternative might have been that they would not touch the GPL code at all, in which case GPL author also gets no extra penny.
It might be a little easier to prove damages with the GPL, but I think you're reaching.
Not exactly - the University counter-sued AT&T
because they violated the BSD licence in some
files they have taken from BSD to SYSV.
In the end, AT&T had to retain the original
licence, and agreed to licence a few of the
UNIX(R) files to BSD under a BSD-alike licence.
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
You really need to talk to the FSF, because they will have the resources and the knowledge to help you.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
It's about not obeying the license. I want my code being acknowledged as the code the application of CodeAse is build on, a very large portion of the code is mine, it is licensed under a simple license so all they have to do is follow indeed the line you quoted :)
:) I released the source so others could modify it to meet their requirements, and if they distributed it in binary form, the BSD license would ensure the binary form would show the copyright notice... (in an ideal world that is ;))
I chose this BSD variant because it was restrictive enough so people who would build a new tool based on it would have to produce the copyright but still would be able to sell it eventually.
If it was about money, I shouldn't have had it released as sourcecode in the first place, I think.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
He certainly deserves recognition since he wrote it. CodeAse also needs to be honest and open about the fact that there is an open source project that they used code from. Their customers shouldn't have to spend time to search through the millions of possible open source projects to find the duplicate and realize that they could have used a free version. They should have a choice. If they feel that the additional 10% difference in features is worth paying for, then they will.