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GPL Violators On The Prowl
ravenII writes "GPL Violations.org are looking after the GPL. Warning letters were personally handed over to companies at their CeBIT booths by Mr. Harald Welte, free software developer and founder of the gpl-violations.org project.
It seems big boys like Motorola, Acer, AOpen, Micronet, Buffalo and Trendware seem to violate GPL. Please visit the site for more information on GPL enforcements and violators."
If nobody is going to take these people to court then there is absolutely no reason to hand these people warning letters. They have no intention of changing their practices unless they are taken to court: they are no better than Apple or Microsoft.
I'm f#$king magic!
Is all the feedback going to be negative? Everything has to start somewhere, and frankly I applaud the efforts of this guy to at least start enforcing a license that many companies do not take seriousley. If nothing else, it brings to light the face that many legit companies in fact do not care to honor the GPL, but benefit from the software that is covered by it.
sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
That's irrelevant. This is between the software author and the violator. If a company is violating the copyright of a software author, their infractions must be dealt with.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Before making nonsense, worthless comment, wait till the site gets unslashdotted and READ it. Most of you question might be answered there. Many other questions being asked are just stupid or have obvious answers. Like, how can you prove that the violaters are indeed using GPLed software. Many of the violaters are openly using GPLed software. Like using the Linux kernel. And then some question are very silly/small minded. Please.
Good thing you're not. We don't need any more ignorant developers.
Those like me who've read and understand the license, use it to make sure the programs we distribute are not redistributed without source. We *want* that restriction. If you don't like that restriction, feel free to not use the code and go the hell away.
But that's exactly my point, don't you see? That's the contradiction. You guys want everybody else to play by your rules when it comes to computer programs (those rules being fairly complex and confusing, from my point of view), but you have absolutely no desire to play by other people's rules when it comes to things like music and movies.
And those rules, by contrast, are incredibly simple: Pay for what you take, and don't give people copies. But any time somebody like the RIAA or the MPAA try to enforce those rules, you guys go positively batshit over it.
That's the contradiction. That's what I'm trying to point out. Hopefully somebody will read this and go, "Huh. I don't know if I agree, but he's got a fair point."
benifits nobody
Guess what, most companies don't want to give back source code, and its apperant by how many companies are violating the GPL. Having the restrictions the GPL does, it causes the companies to give back, which helps the community. Take PearPC for example. CherryOS has (obviously) ripped the code from them, and claimed that they wrote it all (in a few months or something, by one man, with no programming experience, which is bullshit) Nowadays, PearPC doesn't get many updates, because everytime they do, CherryOS does too. It's dampened the whole thing for the developers. If CherryOS was forced to obey theGPL (which they will eventually, some organization like the EFF or something will take them to court) then this wouldn't happen. Now tell me how limiting restrictions would help this case.
This is the most sensible thing I've seen written on this subject thus far. It's a good point: WHY does FOSS not have representation in the BSA?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'll second the other poster who said, 'Good thing you aren't a developer.' See, development takes work; lots of it, in fact. Writing a program doat does anything more than put 'Hello, world!' on the screen takes a measure of effort that you, as a non-developer, can't really comprehend.
See, writing programs, especially *good* programs, isn't easy. It takes skill, patience, and experience, as well as a certain type of mind that isn't very common. And, before you tell me that even your seventy-two year old mother knows how to program, ask yourself this -- does she know what an eigenvector is? How about maxtrix transforms? Relational algebra? Multivariable calculus?
Why are these important? Because programming requires a high level of mathematical ability, at least if you want to have any understanding of why you are writing code a certain way.
So, all of this together makes a programmer, and people who do this sort of thing pour hours into their work. This is something they have created, and honestly, they should, and do, have the final word over what happens to their works. Some people are generous enough to release their works under a license like the GPL, which enables anyone else to use the program which the programmer has created, but with the caveat that the program can't be stolen and sold.
As a programmer, I'm happy the GPL exists, because there are a lot of ideas I've had for 'open-source' programs, and while I am happy to write them, I don't want to spend months coding, just so that some asshat can try to charge money for something I, as the creator of that thing, have released for free.
Finally, information doesn't 'want' anything -- it's an intangible concept, like 'santa claus' or 'income tax reform'. People want information to be free, and while that's all and good, there are far too many people demanding free information, and far too few people willing to work to provide it.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
You're making an entirely unwarranted assumption: That GPL developers routinely infringe others' copyrights. Most developers I know are very respectful of any copyrights on a work.
I suspect the fraction of free software developers who infringe many copyrights is lower than the fraction of general internet users who infringe many copyrights, just because the former tend to be more familiar with the law and what it takes to produce a copyrightable work.
Don't confuse GPL developers with file traders just because they both read Slashdot.
The BSA hounds whoever it's masters tell it to hound.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
"From my (albeit limited) understanding of the GPL, it just wants you to give credit to the original authors of the code. When someone downloads a song, they are not in any way claiming that they wrote the song. There's the difference betwen the two."
The forms of art are inherently different. The average pirate doesn't incorporate a downloaded song into their own work without credit, and the average GPL violator doesn't listen to the code. The implicit rationale here is "I follow this certain set of rules for one piece of media, and if another medium has different rules, then they're wrong and can be ignored." Different media have different uses, and thus, sets of rules.
In situations like this, the golden rule still applies: treat others as you would like to be treated. If a software developer -- big or small -- wants you to honor their wishes and respect their rights, do so. Likewise, if a musician -- or even a record company -- wants you to respect their wishes and respect their rights, you should as well. Because some day -- whether you're a musician or a programmer or a painter or an author -- it may be your own rights that somebody has taken the libery of ignoring.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
.. assuming that there is willful infringement in every case, and that the companies involved will not comply with the letters. This is a pretty big assumption.
I guess you flunked out of charm school, and I guess you've never heard of the old adage "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar", so I'll spell it out for you here:
Making threats against a neutral party will usually make them a hostile party.
If they are neutral and you threaten them, you're damaging your own cause, because you'll be souring them on OSS and the GPL.
If they're hostile and you threaten them, then you don't gain anything.
If they're neutral and you ask them nicely, they just might comply.
If they're hostile and you ask them nicely, you haven't lost anything.
By sending the letters, the companies who are doing this understand that we're not all rabid loser anti-corporate zealots. Making threats will do nothing more than sour them on the GPL and open source in general.
I've written GPLed code. I've protested what the RIAA and MPAA have done. I'll tell you why on both counts.
I write GPLed code as a step towards making someone else's life better. I like writing software, the code I GPL I would be writing anyway, and making it GPL doesn't harm me in the least. I make it GPL instead of BSD or public domain because I want to see the amount of freely available software increase as rapidly as possible, and I think the GPL promotes that.
Now, what's wrong with the RIAA and MPAA trying to enforce their copyright? If it were that simple, nothing. But I'll tell you what... these guys have successfully lobbied to take the vast majority of what would be in the public domain, a part of common culture expected to be commonly available, and made it their private property. Companies like Disney are founded on public domain material - Grimm's Fairy Tales, Pinnochio, Sleeping Beauty, you name it. They didn't pay a dime for those stories, stories that someone else wrote and the culture validated, because those stories had passed into the public domain.
Since then, Disney and other MPAA companies have successfully lobbied a 28 year copyright period into *120 years*. They go back and lobby for another 20 years every time their oldest works, the ones they built on public domain material, are about to fall out of copyright. This is no less than organized crime - bribes given to lawmakers to steal our culture from us. That's item 1.
The MPAA and RIAA are working very hard to make general computing illegal. A general computer is fantastically useful - it has transformed the lives of billions. Open systems based on simple principles can yield unbounded potential. The internet is a new testament to that fact, if the prior success of general computers weren't enough. But the MPAA and RIAA believe that general computing is a danger to their revenue, since it allows copying without flaw any information you have available to you. So the MPAA and RIAA, whose members' revenue is a fraction of that of the computing industry, but who control access to public attention and famous figures, lobby governments continually to make computers without DRM illegal. Have no doubts about it, mandatory DRM *will* cripple your computer. It *will* end up in a place where all of your personal information is available to "reputable" companies, where use of programs written by "unreputable" companies will be illegal to run, and where government sanctioned monopolies will charge exorbitant fees to vendors so they can release programs that actually run under DRM. You will see programs that cost money each time you use them, and more money to use them in more sophisticated ways. And using them in innovative ways that the creator never thought of? This will be simple impossible. This is the future if mandatory DRM is allowed to pass. That's item 2.
Finally, the penalties for copying the mass marketed tripe they produce are ludicrous. Charging 10 times the value of the illegally copied goods might be reasonable, both as a penalty and to account for the offenders that you can't catch. But the penalties are 100s or 1000s of times the cost to buy legal copies in stores. The penalties are totally disproportionate to the offense. That's item 3, minor as it may be in comparison to the other two.
That's why some of us get outraged when organized criminals call us communists for happily giving away our works, and name people who copy material that should have been part of the common culture after brigands of the sea who rape, murder and steal.
Freedom minded people might also want to appreciate someone ELSE'S freedom to distribute his works under whatever license, agreement and policy they wish.
It's a double-standard pure and simple. I'm not saying that the majority of slashdotters are downloading movies and music against copyright law unlike the GP but I will say this.
The same fucking power and ruleset that the GPL is using is the same fucking power and ruleset that copyright holders are using.
The GPL is a copyright. Copyleft is just a cutsie term that the FSF attached to it. I love the GPL. I love libre software. I appreciate the FSF working WITHIN the law just as the Nature Conservancy works with contract law to preserve greenspace.
The question of someone's vigilante method of serving notices (I can't read the original site to determine if he is operating as counsel for the FSF) is a different issue. The pure and simple fact is that people who download or distribute music against the original terms of copyright are just as shitty as people who download or distribute GPL code against the terms of the GPL.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"