Slashdot Mirror
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."
w00t!!!
FIRST POST SUCKERS!!
Whats next, rude phone calls? Or how about ringing the door bell and then running away?
Sorry, but its not like Motorola is going to stop because a group they never heard of handed them a letter.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
How do you get to prove it?
Who proves it?
Who sues at the end of the day?
Is there a legal fund set up to help out?
We don't know?
If someone is acting on "our" behalf, I think "we" should know fully what is going on before hand.
For all we know, this could be a scare tactic by MS to worry people back to their side of the fence.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Information wants to be free unless you're somebody we don't like.
It'll be good to see GPL violators being held responsible. We can start with CherryOS.
Paraphrasing:
Violators will be shot
Survivors will be shot again
how long until
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!
GPLviolations.org was served with a patent infringement suit from the BSA
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
end up being one big company later having all "legal department" to enforce GPL and IP issues as well as defending them?
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
They could tell the Motorola people that their fathers were hamsters, and their mothers smelled of elderberries?
Then fart in their general direction?
Google has been doing this since they have been selling their packaged search. Kernel modifications and various other patches in their search boxes. It seems like the "OSS" community only wants to see what they want to see.
FTFA:
Since more than one year, the gpl-violations.org project tries to bring vendors who use GPL licensed software in their products into license compliance. To achieve this goal, it uses a number of measures, ranging from warning letters over public documentation of GPL violations, up to legal proceedings. In this year, the project managed to conclude more than 25 amicable agreements, two preliminary injunctions and one court order.
Sounds like some folks are paying attention to this guy.
Giving a legal letter to some booth lackey at a convention is NOT how you get a company's attention. Send it to the CEO, the resident agent, the law department, heck ANYONE who won't simply throw it away.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
They can't do anything but send letters.
They have no standing - only the copyright holders have this, and if they don't do anything then nothing will happen.
They might be able to whip slashdot into a frenzy though.. maybe that's all that it's all about?
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
Who doesn't violate the GPL anymore?
http://onticfusion.sytes.net/
Since it looks like GPL violator's website is down, here's a mirror:f f3409b0475e/index.html
http://mirrordot.org/stories/c00f3d2fd6588c34ae25
If I was a developer, I'd be very wary around GPL'd code. I believe the GPL is unnecessarily restrictive, and OSS would be better off without ANY restrictions on use.
Afterall, information wants to be free. Limiting its potential with arbitrary restrictions benefits nobody.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Let me guess.
:)
1.2-300 pounds
2.black duster or trenchcoat
3.t-shirt with either Star Wars or some free 4.computer-related shirt acquired from a trade show
5.big beard. Mandatory
5.telltale fedora
6.2 cellphones on belt pocket. One might be a Treo.
7.Lifetime membership to RenFair
You don't want to mess with these guys.
Neither means one or the other. You can't include three things.
There is an umbrella organization who doesn't own the products in question but is sending letters to people it claims is infringing on the use of said products and is threatening to take legal action.
Why does this sound so familiar?
* To see some of the stories you've been missing, see my Journal *
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
... for him to serve one to SCO.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
How can they tell that a binary has GPL code in it? I mean, do they use strings or something? If that's it, then it's pretty easy to defeat their GPL detection. Looking at the assembly isn't telling because some simple algorithms will be written the same and produce similar assembly, and optimizations will mangle all that anyway.
It'll take just one serious error/mallicious report/misidentification to be cause for libel and bring a suit that takes this site right out of commission.
This is good. I wrote in a previous comment that I thought the GPL had no teeth, if the FSF where the only people looking into GPL violations, because they don't really do a Hell of a lot about violators (sorry, it's a fact), and most FOSS developers don't have the resources to seek a legal solution against violators. None other than Bruce Perens took me to task for this opinion, but I still stand by it: The GPL might as well be a blank sheet of paper for most FOSS developers, what do they intend on doing when some Taiwanese hardware manufacturer embeds their code? Spit a lot? It takes a lot of money, money that few of us have.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I think we all remember the MPlayer and libmad case, where KISS stole GPL code, and used it in their DVD recoarders and DVD players.
Wouldn't this be a good place to start, as KISS doesn't give a f**k about the GPL?
These people should be the next target. Maybe they'll be forced to GPL all that work the Pakistani company did for them.
I have seen violations at places like Iomega for there NAS drives. It was one of the issues that I brought up durring beta testing. And they said it wasn't an issue that they were using Linux with out releasing the source because their firmware developer for the embeded Linux told them it wasn't a problem and they weren't going to release the source. This little product only costed about 200.00 for network storage, and it has the potential to hit the market like the Linksys WRT54G did with custom firmware.
If anybody is interested in pursing Iomega about this let me know because I will sign a petition.
It is important to note that you cannot really violate the GNU General Public License per se. You can only violate the copyright law by not accepting the GPL and doing anything that is otherwise prohibited by the copyright. The GPL is not an EULA but a real copyright license. That is why the GPL doesn't really have to be "tested" in court because we already know that the copyright infringement is illegal and tested to no end, and it doesn't really matter whether the protected work in question is Microsoft Windows or GNU/Linux, because without accepting and following the GPL, you don't have any license at all. Of course it doesn't make you a "thief" (unless you also wrongfully took or used someone else's property with the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use), neither does it make you a "pirate" (unless you also rob or plunder at sea without a commission from a recognised sovereign nation) but it makes you the copyright law violator, and that is something to worry about, especially under the jurisdictions with draconian copyright laws. That is why instead of talking about GPL violations, we should really talk about copyright infringement, because if you don't want to follow the GPL, you might illegally use Microsoft software just as well.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
My company and I have looked at open source opportunities before, but it's precisely for this reason that we kept away from OS - even though we felt we could use it and contribute to it... Can somebody please explain this to me, or provide me with a clear link?
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
I wonder if some company may eventually say:
"We won't sue you for infringing on our patents if you don't sue us for infringing on the GPL"
Also, would that even be legal to accept an agreement like that? Nevermind that it would probably be a bad thing for OSS.
CherryOS anyone ?
"Sweet llamas of the Bahamas !"
This opens up another front on the OSS battle so to speak. While some posters here question the value of informing companies that they may be in violation of the GPL and claim that they can simply ignore it, companies that ignore such warnings do so at their own peril. Why? Because from a legal standpoint they can't be sure who will hit them with a suit or when. There are all sorts of questions about who would have legal standing to bring a suit, and this itself would vary from state to state and country to country. If I'm a company bent on violating the GPL, defending that could be difficult especially if a GPL backing company like IBM or Novell decides it's in their best interests to get involved and bankrolls the lawsuit.
Given this, I think few companies will intentionally violate the GPL. So I think that most smart companies if informed of a problem, will probably rectify it one way or another rather than risk an uncertain threat of liability. Certainly any high profile organization with a smart legal counsel would. The not so smart ones are another story!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
without ever really stopping to think that that's not really what "free" means at all.
Then think about this: there at least two mainly known definitions of free: positive freedom and negative freedom.
The GPL follows the first one. Libertarians (i.e.e right wing people) follow the second. That's why you don't understand the mismatch, because there isn't one meaning for freedom.
And as positive > negative, *I* would say that GPL has more freedom than BSD.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Too bad Hyperion Entertainment didn't dare show up at CeBIT. Oh well, they'll get their C&D letters by registered mail instead, but it's not as entertaining when the humiliation doesn't take place in public right off the bat.
I don't get it. So they send these threatening letters to a few people - the so-called 'major abusers' or whatever, in the hope that the hundreds of thousands of 'home abusers' who just copy a few lines or, share their favourite algorithms with personal friends, are really going to change.
Frankly, if the GNU crowd want to stop copyright abuse, they'd better start outputting some source code actually worth protecting. I mean, have you _looked_ at sourceforge recently? It's all half finished projects and crappy PHP webapps. Who cares if we abuse the copyright on that stuff?
Basically, the new GNU license abuse is here to stay, and the Free Software industry better get used to it. Instead, they were lost in their own self-congratulatory world, talking up a few chart-toppers like Apache and Tomcat, while all around them hundrends of little start-up software companies were ripping the source code from apps and embedding in commercial stuff.
Basically, the FSF needs to ditch their bully boy tactics, and deal with the fact that copy-and-paste theft of neat bits of GNU code are here to stay. Sure, go imprison some college kids, if you want to stoop that low. But I for one will still be using peer to peer networks and the next generation of anonymous file sharing networks to obtain Free Software source code, and compile into my applications without telling anyone.
-----
Seems like the poster is a GPL violator himself. He found the easiest way of fighting back the threat: slashdotting the site.
No karma wore...
I know this *is* slashdot and all, but according to the article, the group last year reached 25 amicable conclusions, 2 preliminary injunctions, and 1 court order. That would lead most *readers* of the article to conclude that in fact they do take people to court. That is the usual way that you get injunctions and court orders.
Often companies start with warning letters too.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I've seen allot of arguments for and against the GPL. I don't really take sides either way, but here are my general observations about it.
/any/ way, code that has a GPL license, that you must also release your code under the GPL. It's my understanding that this is not so. If you modify code covered under the GPL, then you have to release your modifications. If you use code covered under the GPL, then you have to release copies of that source. If you create /new/ code, but it depends on a GPL item, then you can release your code under whatever license you see fit - open or closed source.
Allot of people have the common mis-conception that just because software is released as being free, that they can do what ever they want with it. The truth is, if that were the case, then all we would have is mass chaos. This would lead to (more) code stealing and mis-use of IP.
Another mis-conception that I see, is that people believe if your code extends, in
Anyway, I've forgotten my original point here, so I'll just say this:
We can't have Free/Open Source without rules; That would just be Chaotic/Open Source. And if you violate the GPL, you deserve to be sued for. It's akin to breaking a Constitutional Amendment. I mean really....
http://www.accelerateglobalwarming.com
Apple didn't bother with a scary letter.
Apple has threatened to invade Taiwan if the self-governed island moves toward formal independence from Apple's dominance in the mp3 player market. The threat has become more real to many in Taiwan as Apple prepares to enact an anti-secession law that some analysts fear may provide Apple with a license to attack the island.
Iomega stock tanking...rumor on the street is that nberardi might sign a petition against them.
...outsourcing this to SCO?
If I were to sell copies of Star Trek DVDs that I made myself, Paramount would be all over me for violating their copyright. I have no contract with Paramount. That's the point - I have NO right to sell someone else's copyrighted material without permission. You must have permission to distribute ('publish') someone else's copyrighted material.
That permission could be given by a contract. Or it could be given by a license, such as the GPL. When the author places his work under the GPL, he grants permission to copy to those who adhere to the terms of the GPL. If someone doesn't follow the terms, then they DON'T have permission to distribute the copyrighted materials. It's a simple case of copyright infringement.
The GPL is far simpler than the usual EULA. The GPL makes no restriction on use, but most EULAs do. Most EULAs prohibit copying, but the GPL encourages it. The GPL is a license granting you permissions that you wouldn't otherwise have under copyright law. You don't have to accept the GPL, you just fall back on standard copyright law if you don't. No contract is needed.
Company A starts using some 'free' (they believe) source code in their product, mistakenly unaware of the subtleties of the GPL ... then they get a threatening letter. Yup, that's going to encourage the use of OSS in the commercial world!
Do we really want all these violators on the prowl? Seems like the article is about people on the prowl for GPL violators, not the other way around.
Critical reading is a lost skill in this country.
Those like me who've read and understand the license, use it to make sure the MUSIC we distribute are not redistributed without PERMISSIONe. We *want* that restriction. If you don't like that restriction, feel free to not use the MUSIC and go the hell away.
3 words,
1 hypocrite
It's only fair since the majority of GPL code is snagged from leaked commercial code or code taken straight out of the company the GPL freak works for.
Fair is fair. Strip and distribute.
GPL Violations.org has successfully been slashdotted. Congratulations! We are a force to be reckoned with.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
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.
Programming requires logic, not math.
Eigen values, matrices... only applicable if you're doing an engineering software. The point of taking all that math in Comp Sci is to learn problem solving logic, how to approach a problem. There is no calculus/Eigen/matrices in presentation (UI), persistence (db, XML, flat file), or unless specific cases - business logic.
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.
True generosity is using the BSD license - there's nothing generous about trapping future development by license.
This is one of the instances in which geeks are naive to the weaselly, successful ways of lawyers and politicians. The geek instinct is to first survey the complete territory: "how many violations can we grep across the Net?" The lawyer or politician would first identify a few highly vulnerable violators, and take them out, before hinting that perhaps "everyone does it". They'd build momentum, gaining mindshare for the idea that "you better not do it". By the time they did their "complete survey", they'd have already shrunk that population through intimidation. Before creating more, by promoting the idea that it's widespread.
Geeks have to start thinking more about "social impedence" feedback problems. Maybe all the recent work by programmers in modelling social networks, filled with live normals, will create some conventional Usenet-style wisdom. We've got to learn through data what the accomplished weasels seem to know by instinct: defining the scale of the problem prematurely can increase its scale. Computers are sitting ducks - solving people problems requires a much more dynamic approach.
--
make install -not war
It's nice to know that someone is looking after the GPL.
/. knows, copyright violators are bad people who need to be punished. Right?
/dev/null.
After all, as everyone here on
Now, everyone go and enjoy your vast collection of pirated MP3's and DVD's you downloaded last month via Bittorrent. You can all nod your heads in a knowing, philosophical manner as you examine your hypocrisy and double standards.
Attempts to justify your copyright infringement activities in the name of "sticking it to the man" or other variations of socio-economic class warfare will be automatically redirected to
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
sveasoft (gpl-violations is slashdotted, so maybe they are listed)
First, the math thing was more of a side-point, not a main point.
Second, you don't trap future development! The GPL mandates that source code must be made available. Licenses like the GPL specifically allow one to make modifications to the code as they wish, provided that any redistribution includes those changes. This encourages development!
What the GPL *does* do, is prevent other people, the freeloaders, from taking all that work, rebranding it, and selling it at a profit. It keeps the rights to the code squarely where they belong -- in the hands of the developers who funded the work and provided the labor, not in the hands of unscrupulous businessmen who are out to make a quick buck on the generousity of others.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
The core of the problem is googlebot itself. Since it is distinguished from ordinary user by it's own identification and behavioral patterns, it disqualifies itself from Turing test in comparision with ordinary user. So it is easy to be spoofed at.
There may be usefull another layer for googlebot, which checks for authenticity of links/redirections by mimicking human behavior, disguised as some widely used browser. There is no need to check everything, that would create a detectable pattern again, but just a heuristicaly selected subset of the web site.
There you are, staring at me again.
.. 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'm even pretty sure there are some GPL violators amongst the companies that fight against OSS (or at least trying to prove how bad and communist OSS is)...
"Honesty is such a lonely word..."
This one, that is - I wish I had mod points!
As to playing by rules, by all means. When I write a piece of software, the rules say I have the copyright to it (or my workplace has). I kindly allow you to run and copy that program as much as you please. I do not immediately allow you to take the source code and put in your own program, but that should only be a concern to someone who writes programs. If you want to copy parts of my code into your own program, I allow you to do so under some conditions, which you may or may not find confusing, but which are actually quite simple: You have to release the combined work under the same license. As long as my program contains only my own code, I can sell it under alternative licenses, and make big money on it. As soon as I have borrowed someone else's GPL'd code in it, I will either have to make an explicit agreement with the owner of that code, or release the whole thing under GPL.
As to MPAA, RIAA, and their ilk, I do not disrespect them because they wish to stop illegal copying. I disrespect them for their clumsy and heavyhanded tactics, exaggerated claims, silly campaigns, and their inability to see how the times are changing. That is reason enough for me.
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.
Harald Welte did a very interesting presentation about GPL Enforcement in Germany at FOSDEM two weeks ago.
He is one of the few, with Theo de Raadt, who really fight against proprietary software. See this Kerneltrap.org feature about OpenBSD fight against closed source drivers for wireless.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4340497.stm
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
...the math thing was more of a side-point, not a main point.
...you don't trap future development! The GPL mandates that source code must be made available. ...This encourages development!
That's nice, but the rest of the programmers/developers out there know you're just myopic.
Mandate: An authoritative command or instruction.
I am unable to make additions and release under the license of my choice - that is a confinement because I'm considered automatically guilty.
hiroMyopic++
I forget, are we for or against intellectual property rights on Tuesdays?
What are these "facts" you speak of? Don't cloud the issue with the idea that people should ACTUALLY read the GPL, and maybe make an attempt to ACTUALLY understand it. Who are you?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
It's nice to know that someone is looking after the GPL.
/. knows, copyright violators are bad people who need to be punished. Right?
/dev/null.
After all, as everyone here on
Now, everyone go and enjoy your vast collection of pirated MP3's and DVD's you downloaded last month via Bittorrent. You can all nod your heads in a knowing, philosophical manner as you examine your hypocrisy and double standards.
Attempts to justify your copyright infringement activities in the name of "sticking it to the man" or other variations of socio-economic class warfare will be automatically redirected to
You can mod this as flamebait if you want, but before doing so you should really examine whether or not you have a double standard when it comes to copyrights. If copyrights are good for Linux, they're good for the MPAA and RIAA as well, and both should be equally respected. If you want to bash the RIAA/MPAA by massive copyright infringement, you have no right to complain when some company takes a GPL work and violates the GPL copyright.
Food for thought.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One thing threatening Open Source today--piracy.
As we have already seen, the GPL is under attack from evil forces known as "pirates." These shadowy folk silently steal source code and violate the GPL, infringing on the rights of GPL authors. They are nothing more than thieves getting a free ride off the work of others, and I for one am disgusted at the idea of it. As you can see in the previous article, clearly Slashdot is also sickened by the idea of copyright infringement and piracy.
Some have even called for a lawsuit against these pirate thieves. Suing individual infringers has always been a position that Slashdot and its readership has supported, so it's only fair that the original GPL authors protect their rights and safeguard their material from being stolen in the future. I think we should all support any lawsuits against these infringers to protect the rights of GPL authors everywhere.
I appluad Slashdot and its readers for always taking a proactive stance against piracy and copyright infringement in general, and I would like to join the cause against this "source code theft." Piracy is a major threat facing OSS today.
One thing threatening Open Source today--piracy.
As we have already seen, the GPL is under attack from evil forces known as "pirates." These shadowy folk silently steal source code and violate the GPL, infringing on the rights of GPL authors. They are nothing more than thieves getting a free ride off the work of others, and I for one am disgusted at the idea of it. As you can see in the previous article, clearly Slashdot is also sickened by the idea of copyright infringement and piracy.
Some have even called for a lawsuit against these pirate thieves. Suing individual infringers has always been a position that Slashdot and its readership has supported, so it's only fair that the original GPL authors protect their rights and safeguard their material from being stolen in the future. I think we should all support any lawsuits against these infringers to protect the rights of GPL authors everywhere.
I appluad Slashdot and its readers for always taking a proactive stance against piracy and copyright infringement in general, and I would like to join the cause against this "source code theft." Piracy is a major threat facing OSS today.
Mirror here.
Kim Jong Il: Hans Bwix? Oh no!... Oh hewwo Hans, gweat to see you again!
Hans Blix: Mr. Il, I was supposed to be allowed to inspect your palace, but your guards won't let me into certain areas.
Kim Jong Il: Hans Hans Hans, we've been thwew this a dozen times. I don't have any weapons mass destwuction, okay Hans?
Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN's collective mind. I'm sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me in, or else.
Kim Jong Il: O else what?
Hans Blix: Or else we will be very angry with you, and we will write you a letter, *telling* you how angry we are.
Like when the RIAA sues individual infringers?
Or is Slashdot only for that when it's a GPL author? What a double standard.
If you're only using open source code for in-house applications you don't have to abide by the terms of the GPL or any other open source license. This primarily stems from the legal definition of a corporation as a single "person". As long as any violating code remains within the company you aren't engaging in distribution.
Do you have to run through legal whenever you want to install Tcl or Perl? What if you wan't to add proprietary extensions?
This is just yet another way for the whole OSS/GPL community to shoot themselves in the foot. Something that RMS never understood.
That is why the GPL really is a license and NOT a contract. You have license to do what you otherwise are not allowed to do. A contract is restricting your rights, so you must be compensated.
In fact, since the US ruled that "recieving copyrighted works" is equivalent to monetary comensation (as far as music sharing was concerned), then the code that was given is several million dollars' worth of consideration.
You can get a lot of restrictions for that sort of money...
seems like an honest question to me .. i don't get /.'s position on intellectual property at all. one minute they hate it, the next they love it and want to use it to prosecute gpl violations
I can't get to the article, but the summary lists Buffalo as a possible violator. If they are, I doubt it's intentional, since they released all their Kuro box code (which their linkstation is based off of) here .
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
It is good to see someone doing something about GPL violators, but what happens when the violators are other GPL developers?
I contribute (a little) to a project called AutoIt3 (http://www.autoitscript.com/). They make a really useful scripting language for Windows.
Until recently they were using the GPL license. However some people took big chunks of the code, ripped it and repackaged with a different name. They only mention "based on AutoIT" or something similar on the Readme.txt but not in the code and of course they do not mention the original authors of the original work nor on their web page.
Some of the AutoIt developpers were so pissed that now they have changed the license (for their newest releases only, of course) and do not distribute their code until some months later.
Perhaps what these guys did is legal, I don't know, but if GPL developpers dishonor the heart of the GPL, then why use it and how can we expect for commercial companies to abide to it?
The GPL isn't an EULA - meaning, it doesn't apply to use. It applies to distribution.
Let's say you have that super-fancy application you just developed to take over the world. Of course, you want ease of use for that, so you rip some code from GPL'd programs. Now, as long as you don't give this application to someone else, it's perfectly legal to use it all you want.
"GPL Violators On The Prowl"
That should be... "On the prowl for GPL violators" or "GPL Violators on the hitlist" or similar!
Rip off Apple by using their code in your project without permission -> get sued by the copyright holder (Apple)
Rip off Microsoft by using their code in your project without permission -> get sued by the copyright holder (Microsoft)
Rip off a free software developer by using their code in your project without permission -> get used by the copyright holder (the developer)
Which part of this simple process don't you understand?
But it's only legal because of the GPL, which licenses you to use the code in this way. The GPL only restricts distribution, but it applies to use as well. If it didn't, then use would not be permitted.
Let's see... I'm over 200 pounds, but I'm over six feet. We'll count that. I own a black duster. Hell, I own two. Half my t-shirts were free giveaways, but I never owned a Star Wars shirt. I grow a beard out of laziness. I own a big black cowboy hat, which is close enough to a fedora. I don't carry a cell phone when I can help it, because I loathe cell phones. And I've never been to a Ren Faire, and won't ever if I can help it.
Man, I made 4.5/7 and didn't even know. Thanks!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If I'm not free (as in freedom) to create a commercial product based on GPL code, without being forced to reveal my source code.. is GPL software really "free" (freedom) software? I think not.
BSD is a much "freer" license.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Since open-source licenses (including the GPL depend on copyright law for their enforcement, most open source advocates seem to have no problem with existing copyright laws as it applies to software.
Patents are another issue altogether.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
MOD PARENT UP, effing HYSTERICAL
These slashdotters don't like people pointing out their hypocrisy, and will get very defensive about it.
No matter what you say they will be convinced that it is ok for them to violate licenses/copy rights, but it is not ok for anyone when it applies to open source.
Plus with all the comments I am convinced of that prevailing attitude. In these articles we keep hearing at lengths from Joe Slashdot Pretend Business Major who has no clue about these businesses are run, telling others how their business should be ran. Most plans are essentially allowing people to amass all the companies stuff for free. Most of these "fair deals" usually end up with the business at a severe disadvantage and/or are too unrealistic(i.e. the albums should cost $0.01, they put it in every absurd format and encoding rate I can thing of, and they must give me the original CD).
Then again, most of that kind of stuff is justifying their greed of downloading a lots of copy righted works that they don't have the copy right owners permission to take, and not paying those who worked on the movies/music/games/etc they freeloaded.
The GF bought a Sony HDTV which of course, the resident geek BF set up. I was amused to see a full printed GPL license in the included paperwork. I gather it uses a GPL-derived photo viewer program to display the content from media inserted into the Sony-proprietary (irony!) Memory Stick slot on the front.
I wonder if should I ask Sony for the source code for the TV.
I searched for some kind of adapter that would plug in the Memory Stick slot and take a Compact Flash card with no joy. There is an adapter that goes the other way, fitting the Memory Stick into CF slot, but the BF hesitates to recommend buying a memory stick just to make the TV happy. *sigh*
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
the copyright for the code rests with the authors [unless assigned to another person/group/co/org]. these are the peple that need to bring the actions. the fsf are a good starting point for people intested in doing so.
the site mentions court wins, but provides no links [eg press releases, cort decisions, etc] and doesn't even directly say that the site owner was involved in the case. he makes tenous associations between himself and the fsf, but doesn't provide any real proof of association [and no, putting a link to another website does not count].
this looks a little sketchy to me...
sum.zero
As long as you don't redistribute you have no problems. At my old job we used to use openh323 stack because it saved us 1/2 million in licensing fees for a commercial voip stack. Problem was it was pure shit, we had to put 3 developers on it for a year to get a workable version. I don't think we ever released what they did, for fear our competitors would pick up our changes and actually get a workable voip stack for free.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
if the other groups are using gpl code, they are required to keep the original copyright attributions in the code. failure to do so voids their rights under the gpl as far as i know. this is their only right to that code, so they now are violating the copyrights of the original coders.
your friends should have taken the violators to court, not turned anti-gpl...
sum.zero
Rip off a free software developer by using their code in your project without permission -> get used by the copyright holder (the developer)
Which part of this simple process don't you understand?
The part about how we are supposed to use them.
Use them for what?
there are very real differences between commercial indfringement and personal filesharing, not to mention that filesharing is legal in some places.
;P
your arguments, while often verbose, are simple misdirection and oversimplification.
can't we all just get along?
sum.zero
EXACTLY!! Who the hell is this guy, and why does he think he should take it upon himself to declare who is or is not in violation of the GPL?
This could be an effort to create court cases in which the GPL is declared to be unenforceable.
It is JUST as free as claimed.
If you wish to use it, no problem.
If you wish to improve it, no problem.
IF you wish to distribute it (with or without your improvements), no problem.
If you wish to steal it, Problem.
Now if you DON'T use GPL code in YOUR code, then there is no requirement for you to release YOUR code.
You are completely FREE to choose how YOUR code is done. It is NOT legal to violate the GPL.
Usage of a program is not restricted by copyright law. So use is permitted just fine without the GPL. The GPL even specifically says:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
So, no, running the program is not covered by the GPL, it doesn't apply to use at all. It goes so far as to explicitly exclude it from the terms.
sorry, having looked a little harder i now see he is the chairman of the netfilter team and that the actions seem to revolve around his own project's code. i would think this should be made clearer in the text of the site as it is, at least partially, a vehicle for his personal interests. having to go to another site for the info is not enough, imho.
it is likely more of a case of incompetent web design than malfeasance though...
sum.zero
US Mail Certified letters to those corporations US Legal Departments is the best place to start...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Rip off a free software developer by using their code in your project without permission
Most free/open software licenses don't require anyone's permission to use the code, just adherence to the license.
How, otherwise, can a coder know what 'going quadratic' means, and how to avoid it, in terms of a search algorithm?
Maybe it is the fact that I work in an academic library, but I don't really write my own search algorithms. Mostly, the DBMS handles the searching, I just maximize my SQL query. It is only in instances of very small amounts of data that the data isn't dumped into a database, and I might have to write a Perl script or something to search it. And then, as long as I can manage a simple linear algorithm for the search, it does fine (small amounts of data, you know?).
And yes, I AM bitter about all those hours as an undergrad writing linked lists and search algorithms in C++.
This probably can't happen. Usually companies are only asked to stop the violation, meaning the penalty is only having to go back and redo the development the way it should have been done in the first place.
Damages are also a slight possibility, but the amount is hard to establish for GPL violations unless they are one of those few dual license cases, where the software is also offered for sale under a commercial license.
I suppose some court in the future COULD impose punitive damages that include loss of a company's copyright, but it seems unlikely, and would probably be reversed on appeal.
IANAL
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Now maybe companies will realize that using GPL code is stupid, and start using free software instead.
I've often wondered about that. If I keep the original copyright notice in there, and make modifications (perhaps significant) and release my changes under the GPL, how do I label it? I have to keep a copyright notice that attributes the code to someone else? What about my contributions? What if it's a complex mix where I can't nicely label just my parts? The GPL tells you what you're allowed to do and what your obligations are, it doesn't tell you how to do this in practice. Does the FSF have documentation on this? I haven't seen it.
This really could have a reverse affect. What I do not see here is "We try to work with companies to find a suitable path to bring them into GPL compliance". What I do see is the GPL version of scare tactics and lawsuits.
Most companies, especially the smaller companies, may be trying to be in compliance. They may not know how. This effort is most likely going to scare many companies off by showing how successful companies have tried to work with OSS and wound up being stuck in legal battles. The GPL is confusing for many and is mostly understood by word-of-mouth and/or other peoples confused interpretation. Not every company has a legal department to assist.
Let us take Sveasoft for example. Many people are outraged by the companies refusal to freely distribute (paid subscription required) their binaries and often scream "GPL VIOLATION". They do have their sources available for the public. According to Sveasoft, as well as my understanding, the GPL restricts the sources and not the binaries to be freely available.
A "strong arm" is not what Linux needs to assist with wide spread adoption. A community of people to assist with compliance is.
So, I guess locking up (or killing) people and taking away someone else's money are all the same: either good or bad. It may not happen that locking up convicted felons in a prison is a good thing while locking up innnocents is bad. It HAS to be either good or bad, right?
Well, not.
It would be "double standard" if the OP stated the ultimate goal is to protect the copyright owner - however, if he thinks that benefitting the average citizen is the important thing, the standard against which everything is measured, then he may claim that different cases of copyright infringments can be judged differently without having to resort using double standards.
And the law is based on pretty subjective things (and at its very fundament is (or should be) the "greater good"): that's why we use humans to create the law and make judgements and not computers.
Real life is overrated.
Poster 2: That's really generous of you.
Anonymous Dumbass (sneering): True generosity would have been to give all of your money to the relief effort.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
You're only missing one thing. The GPL was created with the intended purpose to fight for the distribution of code, and the only way to do it was using the same laws that allow for the restriction of code. That's why it's ofter referred to as copyleft.
Really. You don't think RMS would give up the GPL in an INSTANT if it meant no other code could be copyrighted and it would all be in the public domain?
The law requires the permission of the copyright holder to use (as in, make a derivative work from) the code. The license grants the permission.
The ability to utter legalese tends not to be the same as legal protection or legal sanction. It's possible that GPL, by exposing source code to public view, exposes authors to de facto publication, placing their efforts squarely in the public domain. I realize GPL doesn't say this! My point is that GPL may be moot, void and irrelevant, depending on what happens before constructionist judges the first time GPL is challenged. My guess is, attempts to enforce GPL may be thrown out of court as meritless pious fiction.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Transposition type. I hope you are just being obtuse!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As a very honest question, are there any open-source licenses that both a) allow the code to be used in a closed-source product (I understand the BSD licenses are like this) and also b)prohibit the code from being relicensed in such a way to prohibit (a) (I guess this would mean not allowing the code to be integrated GPL code)?
Thanks.
Ever put a GPLed binary on a USB stick and distribute it? Did you forget to include the source or offer it? No? Hope it's not netfilter/iptables because this guy will want $$$...
Remindes me to the Netgear situation. I'm waiting since August 2003 for the source code of the firmware to the WG602. They did release a source. But the orginal firmware (the one I bought in the package) had a telnet server and the route command didn't work completly. I couldn't find this bug in the released source. Thus they released the wrong one. One guy tried to help me last year, but I haven't heard from him since 3 months.
b4n
Use of copyrighted things is automatically permitted. The only thing restricted by copyright is copying. (And public performances, which only applies to video, audio, and performing art copyrights, not software or image copyrights.)
Or have you been brainwashed by all the EULAs out there into thinking we need permission to run software?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
And why should a company even care ? It seems he's a no-one, a busy body who spends his time interferring in the affairs of others, worse yet he's a Trekkie!!!! http://gnumonks.org/users/laforge/ Though what he is doing is on the right track, he is trying to highlight the misuse of open source software by companies, but if GPL-Violations.org is to get any credibility they need some tougher sounding backers : Lawyer types, other big companies who DO play the game right ... and they need to drop the "I wish I was Lt LaForge" stuff ;-)
Depends on many factors. Deliberate infringement of copyrights or patents is always worse than innocent, inadvertant infringement, though. And for-profit infringement is always worse than free. So the company would already be negotiating at a huge disadvantage, and with much more to lose. There are other factors (how broad the patent is, how important the GPL'd program is to the community at large), but in general, other things being equal, that would be a very risky, and probably losing, move by the infringing company.
:)
The fact that there is so much redundancy in free software only strengthens the community's position in such a case, since dropping one project (at least until the patent can be worked around) will still probably leave several that do approximately the same thing. And you thought Gnome vs. KDE vs. Xfce vs. GNUStep was a bad thing!
Yeah, sometimes I'm funny. Sometimes I just fall flat.
You catch flies with shit.
As I work for a hardware vendor with an avid interest in operating systems for the embedded sphere, I would like to see more effort on the positive spin of GPL violations, and less on the policing spin.
What do I mean? Why hasn't someone thought to set up a "GPLCertification.org" site, where vendors could get their products certified as GPL compatible?
Police-state tactics, of repairing the damage 'after the fact', don't suit the F/OSS ideology, in my opinion. Far better to put in some up front creative energy into coordinating GPL usage, than to wait for someone to violate it and then butt-rape them in the courtrooms.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You are the one missing the point. There is no difference between original poster who stated that the bitching about GPL vs RIAA are identical concepts, but that idea goes way over the heads of so many here trying to rationalize their hatred of RIAA/MPAA. If the GPL is about sharing, they should be happy that others are using their code and they should be more explicit what forms of renumeration are appropriate when a small portion of GPL'd code is incorporated into a much larger package. I know we've quit using ANY GPL code in our product because one attorney stated that even if we included one GPL module (about 200 lines), we'd have to release the source code for our entire package (about 2 millions lines). It was too difficult to get the absolute "correct" answer to the question as to how much we really needed to divulge. It was cheaper/quicker to re-invent the wheel. I suspect as more of these clashes go to court (and more proprietary source code becomes public record) the more companies will stay/run away from any GPL/BSD/OSS source.
Rephrase the question, as it really has nothing to do with the GPL. How can they tell that a binary has someone else's code in it?
Looking for strings is one mechanism (and the most obvious). Looking for particular quirks in the behavior is another, disassembling the code is another. There are people who are experts in looking for this sort of thing. Yes, there's a chance for false positives, but the chance is slimmer than you might imagine. And, the false postive will turn up in discovery, before the case gets off the ground, so that's no biggie. (That's kind of the whole point of having discovery, SCO's abuse of it notwithstanding.)
Easy to defeat GPL detection? Perhaps, but it would take work, and the whole point of using someone else's code is to save work. If you've got to do a massive rewrite to hide your theft, you're probably going to end up doing nearly as much work as if you wrote the code yourself from scratch. So what's the point?
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00 000117----000-.html
TITLE 17, CHAPTER 1, 117 of the US Code begs to differ...
I'm only considered fat by people with frickin' eating disorders. And I've known a few.
And I'm still taller than you. Neener.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I wish you'd have posted with your name instead of AC, I would have given you an insight boost. I totally agree with your statements.
What about GPL developers who violate the BSD license? Why does the GPL using community tolerate members who violate other licenses? What makes it's okay to violate the copyright and license of non-GPL software? Why does the GPL community tolerate such behavior in its members?
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4l.html
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The other posters' responses are more or less right on, but this may be an easier way to think about it: the GPL is a purely a defense against charges of copyright infringement. The legal part is: it will never come up in court except as a defense. (And it will probably never come up as a defense, because anyone who's actually complying with its terms is unlikely to be sued.) That is why it has never been tested in court. You don't sue someone for violating the GPL, you sue someone for violating your copyright, and they proffer the GPL in their defense, if they can. Which they presumably can't, or you wouldn't have brought the suit. Think of it as a limited-use get-out-of-lawsuit-free card that comes with the software.
I prefer, "Unless you've got a really tight cunt.", not only because boobs can be faked, but because that's where the action is.
what do they intend on doing when some Taiwanese hardware manufacturer embeds their code?
Let China swoop down and close all of Taiwan's factories?
Get your Unix fortune now!
What's so bad about the open sound system?
If I wanted to discourage Open Source software, this is a great way to do it. One of the reasons for using Free software and Open Source software is the sanity of the licence. I want to AVOID the software police looking over my shoulder.
If large companies are going to be harrased, or possibly sued because of mistakes they might make with open source, they are not going to use it. And if they don't use it, then that has a huge effect on what other people do.
For illustration on this point of human nature, when I was a kid, it was free to go to the various museums in the area. However, one new curator was dismayed to learn that buses were using the museum as a stop, solely to let their passengers use the washrooms. Shortly thereafter, the museum started charging admission, and is currently $27 to enter; there may be a free day once a week, but last time I was around there, this was not the case.
Moral of the story: whenever there is no cost to use something, eventually that resource will be abused. People will always equate costless with worthless.
Moreover, and more to the point, there is no 'money' behind open source code. Their threats have no teeth, since they are not backed up by lawyers and legal action. Sure, there are eventually victories, like against SCO, but it is costly to fight such things, and Im guessing that smaller targets will submit to getting 'screwed' by a large company rather than risk entering the courts. Sure, people are happy to pony up cash to help defend linux, but what about a small OSS app some college kid made in his spare time? If a large company blatently rips off his code, it is first unlikely he would even know, and second it is unlikely he would persue a legal recourse. And, any victories would be uncertain, come at great personal expense, and may not even be worth it in the end.
Heh, mine is in dec :P
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
"Those like me who've BANDAGED and KISSED the TREE"
Anonymous coward, you are an idiot! Of course, you must have known by now, your mommy told you so.
(BTW, feel free to hunt me down like the dog I am. I am not hard to find, and once you've found me I will pinch your pimple.)
More accurately, the combined work of the new code and the GPL item is required to be under the GPL when you distribute it.
However, if you can extract the new code by itself from the combination (for example this is easy if they're separate source files), then the new code by itself can be under whatever license its author wishes. This is permitted even if you receive a combined work: you are free to extract pieces of it and use the pieces according to their individual licenses. The GPL has a clause in it permitting this.
-- Jamie
The BSA hounds whoever it's masters PAY it to hound. Who would pay the huge fee's to the BSA?
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
Programming requires logic, not math.
Formal logic -- especially the boolean logic central to coding -- is a branch of discrete mathematics.
There is no calculus/Eigen/matrices in presentation (UI)
Well, if you use vector graphics (SVG, Flash etc) for your presentation, obviously you're using vectors there. If you use raster graphics (bitmaps, gifs etc), you're using matrices. And hopefully you can see that the presentation for something like Doom 3 involves quite a bit of mathematics.
Further, while talking to databases may not require calculus, it definitely uses set theory and boolean logic. And parsing XML requires some type of finite state machine. Again, discrete maths.
You can write programs without having studied mathematics formally, but even one ungraduate discrete maths subject will make you a better developer. Do yourself a favour.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Adult supervision
That used to be a lot funnier before the National Guard proved it at Abu Grabe
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Sorry about that. It's been hard to see past all the bullshit posted in this forum lately. :)
Synology (www.synology.com) sells the DS-101 Disk Station, a NAS appliance based on uCLinux, with no source offered and no GPL references anywhere on their site.
Jim Buzbee did a review on Tom's Networking recently thst mentions the detectable presence of BusyBox and thttpd in the firmware image. His review mentions that Synology are "working on" this issue, but they don't appear to actually be complying. I've written them as well, politely asking them to do so, and aside from a polite "We're on vacation, we'll look into it" response, there's been nothing for weeks.
I hope they do release the source, as the modding possibilities for the box are enticing; but to date, they're still in violation of the GPL.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Have anyone deal with microchip and there compiler C30? It's based on GCC 3.3 and all copyright belongs to FSF. It's possible to download the source for the compiler but that version is not the same. And earlier version of the compiler had compile error in the public code. Another funny this is the extra licence requirement. When downloading a binary version the is a 60-days license and the compiler will stop working after that time. For some resons the license check is not included in the public version :) /bin/make" (and extra space is added). This makes it impossible to run under Unix. All the files have been edit in windows as well.
There latest public code of the compiler are all the building files bean tempered with. For most (not all) the start of the file have been changed from "#!/bin/make" to "#!
Does it help if I cry out loud?
Check out this program
o mPs
http://www.s0nic.hostinguk.com/wiki/ow.asp?2PDFFr
The description says "This program will allow you to create PDFs from any source (doc,xls,ppt etc...). All you need is to create a printer which outputs to a file. From your preferred application print to this printer. This will generate a file. Select this file with 2PDF4ROMPS and generate your PDF.
Simple postscript to converter. Totally based on the superior GNU Ghostscript.
Note for the more technically inclinedIf you supply the postscript file from the command line, the PDF will be generated without any user intervention, allowing the use of 2PDF4ROMPS from the command line."
Apparently it incorporates ghostscript, but it is NOT free and source is NOT Available.
In the license on the website it says about the code (which includes the ghostscript source too!):
" * You may not distribute the Godwin Caruana source code, or any modification, enhancement, derivative work and/or extension thereto, in source code form.
* The source code contained herein and in related files is provided to the registered developer for the sole purposes of education and troubleshooting. Under no circumstances may any portion of the source code be distributed, disclosed or otherwise made available to any third party without the express, prior written consent of Godwin Caruana.
* Under no circumstances may the source code be used in whole or in part, as the basis for creating a product that provides the same, or substantially the same, functionality as any Godwin Caruana's product.
Should source code be distributed in original or modified form to a third party entity without prior writtent consent from Godwin Caruana, a minimum penalty of 10,000 UK Sterling applies."
Until recently they were using the GPL license. However some people took big chunks of the code, ripped it and repackaged with a different name. They only mention "based on AutoIT" or something similar on the Readme.txt but not in the code
If they have removed copyright notices, forget the GPL, forget licenses, forget civil suit. Move directly to Sec. 506, criminal offenses.
"(d) Fraudulent Removal of Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with fraudulent intent, removes or alters any notice of copyright appearing on a copy of a copyrighted work shall be fined not more than $2,500."
That is $2,500 per count, i.e. per file (same way RIAA reached a $97 billion lawsuit). After the first $100,000+ lawsuit (I assume 40+ files), I don't think they'll do that again...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They deserve to be questioned about their use of GPL code.
GNU is Not an Association of America? GNAA? if I had mod-points I'd mod you Funny, but I don't even know the pass for my grimrc login
GrimRC
it's = it is
its is similar to yours, hers and his; no apostrophe here
fees = plural of fee
also I think whoever should be whomever, though I'm not absolutely sure and could have made a fool of myself
as an aside, English is crap, but it's my first language (British) and I don't know of any better; you'll notice I don't use full-stops much
GrimRC
as far as I understand it, the original (indivisable) work is copyrighted, and the derivative works of a copyrighted (indivisable) work are not copyrighted differently; small fixes might not be copyrightable (proof-reading a copyrighted book and making corrections doesn't grant copyright over the corrections); I think those contributing under the rules of the GPL, are meant to understand they don't have copyright on the moderate changes they make
.pl or whatever), then clearly that file has its own copyright; after all, copyright doesn't apply to ideas but to some concrete form; on the other hand, I could imagine the chapters in a book having individual copyrights, so where does the granuality end?
however, if a contributor adds significant functionality, and in so doing creates a separate code file (.c,
copyright and "authorship" are slightly different I think; nobody can pretend to have produced a work that you actually produced, regardless of copyright (even if you assign copyright to them!), because that'd be some kind of misrepresentation
why not refrain from adding your name to the copyright list at the headers of code files (that is where it is right?) unless you add a considerable amount to the file (like a chapter to a book)? you could review occassionally whether you consider you've done enough to warrant your name being added to the copyright list; you could create a second list of names of extra contributors and patches, with their names getting promoted to the copyright list as appropriate
I should say I'm not a lawyer and may be very wrong
GrimRC
I've not seen anyone mention it yet; can this be a good way to make money? can a legitimate copyright owner sue for damages? would this be a good way for some contributors to some of the big projects to earn some money? even a small contributor to the Linux kernel should be able to sue many of the license violators, though presumably the size of their contribution may affect their personal damage awards
I'm not sure about how one qualifies for damages; companies taking software like Linux and incorporating it without honouring the license are taking somebody's work and using it commercially; don't they deprive the copyright owner of recognition (which is hard to avoid with GPL)? shouldn't the copyright owner expect their work to garner them some recognition, when it is used in other projects and those projects must offer the source code?
GrimRC