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Injunction to Enforce GPL
Harald Welte writes "The netfilter/iptables project has just been granted a preliminary injunction against a GPL infringing WLAN AP Vendor. The project is trying to fight against the increasing number of products sold in violation of the GPL. Following a number of out-of-court settlements, this is the first case where a company refused to sign a letter to cease and desist. So we took the logical next step and applied for a preliminary injunction. The court reviewed the case and confirmed that Sitecom is in fact in violation of the GPL license terms."
a precedent is being set and hopefully can be used by the masses here soon.
is this the test of GPL in the courts everyone has been waiting for?
Question for those !(IANAL)s:
Does this now set a precedent in favor of the GPL to be used in such cases as SCO vs *ix/BSD?
#define CLUE 0
I understand why the GPL needs to be used now, so Microsoft can't just take all our innovation, repackage it and sell it with advertising. But when Microsoft is gone, will we be left with something a bit dangerous?
I mean, this pooling of labour thing is very admirable, but as a lasting solution haven't we shown the world there are better, more efficient systems? It just seems a bit unsuitable, it makes me uncomfortable. Capitalism has got us where we are, it seems a shame to throw it away in an overreaction to the danger of Microsoft.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Doubtful that a German decision would be considered by any court in the US.
sulli
RTFJ.
Well, not to piss in everyone's cornflakes, but it still doesn't, unless you're German. Although it is an encouraging sign for GPL proponents here in the US - even though it has no legal weight in the US per se, US judges will often take notice of such things when considering the issue in their own courts.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Scenario: I write program which builds on GPLed code. But I choose to distribute my program as a binary patch. The end user needs to get the GPLed code/binary from somewhere else, then he applies the binary patch and gets my functionality. Is my code bounded by GPL or not? I would claim that it does not, but feel free to cntradict me and make me understand more about GPL.
I'm curious, is this the first time a court has acted to enforce the GPL as legally binding?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
This is great news. Hopefully it will scare more companies into compliance. I'm sure that there are a lot of companies using code from open source projects in their products, and I bet that there are more than a few in violation of the GPL.
There's nothing viral about the GPL. And there's nothing in the GPL that says you can't sell your GPL'ed code. If there was, companies like IBM and Redhat couldn't sell their open source products. But like with any other license agreement, there are terms to go by. In this case, it sounds like the vendor didn't disclose their improvements. If you use GPLe'd code, you agree to those terms. This idea that GPL is somehow the public domain are nuts. There's a huge difference between free and public domain. I'm glad there's a court that agrees.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
What I still don't undestand is why some true geek doesn't purposedly inflinges the GPL, is sent to court and hires the lousiest lawyer he can find. Repeat a hunded times (since the lawyer is so bad you can have them cheaply).
Now you have a greatly tested in court Licence!
Why some rich dotcommer doesn't does this a contribution to the community?
I've never understood how/why the GPL would be "struck down" in court; a concern that seems to appear quite frequently. If I want to release my code under a license that says you must do 50 jumping jacks before you can modify/compile/install/distribute it, why can't I? And why wouldn't I be able to enforce it if someone violated that (as absurd as that may seem)?
Who doesn't like free music?
As someone who is considering writing software under the GPL I hope to see it upheld in court around the world.
/. readers, please hope with me that the GPL wins out it Germany and around the globe.
Also while this case is in Germany and the US often does its own thing, there is something to be said about how the world can influence the US. The US and its citizens like to think they are the ones calling the shots, but the simple fact is that America is influenced by trends around the globe.
So
I wonder what volume of sales Linksys does in .de. This should be interesting.
Would that I had a "-2 WRONG!" mod to give this post and its siblings.
A ruling from a German court can, and, in light od the recent drive (last five-ten years) to harmonize US with European copyright law, SHOULD be considered by a US court. It will never be considered "binding authority, but if no other US court has addressed the question presented, it would be trated as "persuasive authority" and followed IF the US judge found the German judge's legal analysis convincing.
Since the principles of contract (read, licensing) law are pretty similar on a worldwide basis, I imagine the US judges will give considerable weight to the only ruling on this question, particularly if it came out of a German Appellate court.
Just my US$0.02
'wands
(and yes, IAAL)
utter rubbish
Parent is correct. SCO spews FUD about GPL not being court-worthy. A court has just respected the GPL. Does SCO have any examples of the GPL being ruled against in court?
TW
Perhaps that is only the original source code which they developed their product on. Other companies have tried to get away with that, but if they've derived their own software from the original GPL software, they must distribute their own code along with it. I've seen other companies try to get away with only distributing the upstream source code that could be downloaded anywhere else.
The US is a member of the World Trade Organization, and has to respect the Berne Convention on Copyrights or face trade retaliation. The German court judgment WILL have a chilling effect on SCO's US stance.
Plus, the GPL doesn't stop people from creating proprietary software; it just makes them work harder to make sure it's better|different than the (F|OS)S solution. It's really no different than competing against a corporation, except for the motivation of the group they're competing against - they can't use other proprietary code any more than they can GPL code.
Of course, there are some things that are GPL that should probably be BSD, like libraries and device drivers and such, but have to be GPL now to preven t monopolies from adding proprietary extensions and then tricking the majority into using them. (I think the LGPL solves this problem, but I haven't read it so I don't know)
There will always be a place for proprietary software, but it should (IMHO) be (standards-complient) enhancements on top of a (F|OS)S system (e.g. MacOS X), or client-specific programs, or content-based software (e.g. games - the engine should be free, but the story, images, levels, etc are proprietary)
And if you want to argue "But most of the software industry will go out of business because proprietary software can't compete with open source!", just remember that there's nothing that says software companies have a _right_ to exist; complaining about (F|OS)S is like a buggy whip manufacturer complaining about automobiles, or a blacksmith complaining about the Industrial Revolution - evolve or die; and if you die, well, you should have tried harder! Besides, there are still blacksmiths and buggy whip makers around, just not nearly as many of them.
[sorry the post got long and rambly; I'll stop now]
I think there's a fundamental difference between copying a work for personal use and copying a work to turn around and sell it for a profit.
Back In The Day (tm) when I worked in the record industry there were always stories in the trades and mags like Musician about this or that pirate album dealer bust. What struck me most was an extensive investigative report in Musician about the cost of piracy to the music industry (there is no question that some guy selling illegal copies of CDs on the street corner hurts album sales) also had a large sidebar on the topic of bootlegs.
According to both the RIAA rep and the DOJ rep, there was no interest in pursuing tape traders as they weren't considered to be really competing with legit product. The theory being that people interested in tapes and videos of live shows were likely fans who already owned all the legit releases. Speaking as someone who was a tape trader at the time, I can say that that largely mirrors my experience.
So here within the music industry itself you have an example of both damaging and non-damaging copyright infringements...
this is getting old and so are you
blog
http://www.sitecom.com/driversmanuals.php?grp_id=6 &prod_id=237&search=1
It's not clear if this is the original unmodified code, or if it truely corresponds to what they are shipping. It's also not apparant when this was added to their site... maybe have been in response to the injunction.
If anyone from sitecom is reading this, your website's fancy navigation system makes it almost impossible to copy-n-paste a URL to refer someone to a specific page on your site. Also, the search does not work in Mozilla/linux with the Sun JRE. Why not just use standard links and entry boxes?
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I'm a bit surprised that Harald dodged the question in the article...
Nice, and it's always good to remind the media that there's no restriction on selling open source in this manner. But.... That wasn't the question. Why now, brown cow? Why is there a sudden enforcement flurry now?
This is exactly the sort of non-answer that raises my hackles when listening to politicians. It especially bothers me when it's "one of us," a member of the open source community. I can't imagine why Welte would be dodging the question, so I can only assume he's very worried about giving the wrong impression.
--Somebody infect me with a
but this injunction was brought in Munich, which has very little impact on cases currently pending in the United States.
Not if U.S. authorities have their way. Doesn't this Slashdot article on DrinkorDie illustrate the DOJ's stance on international enforcement of copyright laws?
Not that it matters. LinkSys went through the same thing here in the US, during the Cisco buyout. I imagine that would be enough precedent for US courts.
C|N>K
One possible option for the FSF is to recompile the GPL for the German environment, this ensures that in Germany too the license will be optimal and rarely taken to court.
An even better approach though would be to take the source of the GPL, the underlying legal argument that is then compiled by lawyers into codes of laws, and distribute this. Recievers could then use a lawyer to compile the argument into a code that matches their environment. I think I speak for many people when I say that if I were to be given the choice of a code of laws I can compile myself, using a simple "emerge copyright-license" type system, I would find myself at least 5% more productive because the license would be optimized for me. Much, I think you'd agree, more preferable to the current situation.
This is definitely a good thing. As companies learn that they can't use GPL'ed code in violation of it terms, hopefully they will start to gravitate away from GPL'ed code in favor of code under Berkeley-style licenses.
/. community, I'm not commenting here for the sake of pissing people off. I disapprove of the FSF's goals and hope more people will join me. The FSF may "free" the software but at the expense of it's authors.
Obviously, being required to release source code weakens a business's market position since people could obtain their software for free or an adept programmer could come along, snatch the code, and create a better product. All of this could be bad for a software company.
Of course, this may also bring a possible backlash against using open-sourced software and companies may start holing up again, developing their own code.
Either way, though, companies would be abandoning GPL'ed software which in my book is a big plus.
That said, I fully support the enforcement of copyright licenses, even when it's the GPL. I respect the time and effort programmers put into their software and those who write from scratch should have the right to publish or not publish their source code. Those who use licensed code should be respectful of that license, and thus, the work of previous coders.
And note, that while I know my comments will bring much resentment from the
Based on the DOJs behavior, its real stance is probably something like: we want the rest of the world to enforce the copyright laws when the owner of the copyright is a large U.S. corporation, and we want them to not enforce the copyright laws when the perpetrator is a large U.S. corporation. Otherwise we don't care.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Fast-forward 3 months...
I let it lie for awhile (honestly, I was busy with other things, like trying to bring in paid work), until I read a story on Slashdot about the iptables/ipfilter team getting an injunction in Germany.
I decided to revisit our old friends, to see what they've been up to. I caught up with a friend on ICQ who lives in France, and he tells me that he knows a guy in Germany who wrote $APPLICATION entirely from scratch, and that it competed with his own product. Curiously, the guy he knows, is the same one that claims he didn't take any of our code (small world, huh?).
So I mentioned my issues with the "guy", and his company, and as I'm talking on ICQ, I start digging through the code again, and I find our functions littered through their codebase again. I also find an SDK that they've "written" to allow other developers to write "modules" that plug into their proprietary product (questionably using our code).
As I look through their SDK, I have this eerie feeling of deja-vu. I've seen this code before. I start grepping my source tree, and sure enough, the functions in their SDK are byte-for-byte identical to our own, including the comments. Of course, this portion of their code claims to be covered by the LGPL, but the copyright header has the author marked as this "guy", not the original authors who actually wrote the functions he's ripped off from us.
Needless to say, I reopened the issue with the FSF, and gave them the additional information they needed to have to make sure this incident does not get dropped this time.
Not only did this developer ("guy") in Germany lie to us about the nature of his code, he lied to my friend in France by telling him he wrote it all from scratch, and he is openly, and knowingly ripping off the hard work of others, by removing their copyright notice from their code (OUR code), and replacing it with his own name and company name, and are shipping it in an SDK, that they claim as their own. I wonder how many other companies and developers have downloaded this SDK, and are unknowingly also in violation of copyright?
Now I'm pissed. This is the third violation of our code, OUR code, by commercial companies in the last 6 months, without even a single "Thank you for all you've done" from any of them.
Having previously worked for a company who are one of the main distributors of Sitecom products in the UK, I can vouch that their service is very poor..
I'm suprised they even responded to the cease-and-desist request...
it always amuses me that that argument of financial sense only applies to alternate energy devices. Just about very single other consumer product out there doesn't have that distinction. You get it primarily because it's valuable to you, you think it's a good idea, you want to lead by example, you want to do your part to get the show on the road.. Do we add to the nations energy supply by getting new bass boats, 35 inch plasma tv's, new gaming consoles, that marvelous new living room furniture? does it make "financial sense" to get a new TV when you already got one that works? No one ever questions that, they just do it, don't they? What is the energy "payback" time for that 35 inch TV? Oh ya, that's right, never That kind of stuff just costs "energy".
Everyone is in serious arrears if all their purchases were forced to have a "payback" in terms of dollars.
Following the same line of reasoning, no one should "invest" in the linux desktop,because it's not already well established in 99.995 of the dwesktops out there. No one should have ever bought a personal computer, because they weren't "cost effective" and not "there" yet back in the day. Let "the other guy" do it, this "them" or the equally dubious "the business people" or "the government". Ya, lets let "them" do it,while we all sit back and wait, and keep doing nothing other than being consumers and complaining about it.
I'm pretty poor, as in wicked poor, offical US sub poverty level. I still managed to put my money where my mouth is with computers and with alternate eneergy, because in the long run we NEED to. Both. Simple as that.
As to cost effective, granted, PV is not as cheap as coal, but it works, it's scalable starting at any reasonable budget (say one grand for a nice starter system, less than a gaming machine for sure)), and it's here now, not some pie in the sky future time. Wind chargers in particular are highly favorable with coal now, almost a dead even split there. The past two years running, planet-wide more wind-watts have gone online than nat gas derived watts, primarily in europe and the rest of the world, although they are catching on fast in the US now.
Me, I don't wait for this "they" guy to do what I can do NOW. I DON'T have access to some magic back yard fusion reactor, but I DO have some solar and a wind genny. As to ethanol, nothing stopping you, do it yourself, all kinza people have done it, I made some legal back in the 70s, you need some forms and add a chemical to it via the BATF to do it *legally* , as it's booze and they regulate it. Suit yourself on that picky detail, IANAL. Easy as snot to make ethanol, I ran a chainsaw and two motorcycles off of what I made way back then. I built a methane digester before,too, again, small scale, junk parts, easy, made burnable gas. Took me a little under 1/2 hour to build one.
Financing. I can tell you how a lot of people are getting FREE (more or less) alternative energy. Say you got like x-thousands of dollars to build a new home. Call it 100 grand just for conversational purposes. Now, what you do is look for land that is still cool to put it on but like one mile from the nearest telephone pole. You'll get a wicked deal on the land, probably save a coupla thousand an acre just because it's one mile extra away from the "grid tied"- place. The money you save on the land cost for the home you put directly into alternative energy from day one, and a ton of lenders out there will gladly let you tie it in to your 20 year mortgage if you want to go that way, some bioggess, too, like GMAC. You get the same exact home, just now you got a real nice alternate energy system, and more land than what you could have gotten for the same money just a mile away. That's one idea, there's more.
That's one way. On another thread the other day(low head hydro article) some guy chimed in his friend makes an additional 600$ a month selling extra juice back to the grid from his small wind genny efforts. So not only is it affordable, you can profit from it.
So how does it feel to be Slashdot's newest and most successful troll?
I've got to hand it to you man, you've spawned more +5 Insightful comments than any other guy I've seen in a long time. Often without getting modded into the floor yourself?
Do you do it for the money? Do you do it for the fame?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Actually, the GPL also states that if you distribute a GPLed work in violation of the license, your license to redistribute is revoked. So there's still something there -- if the netfilter/iptables guys want to pursue it. I hope they do.
"The urge to fly from modern systems, instead of moving through them to even greater, fairer things is, I think, an indi