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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.