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."
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?"
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!
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
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.
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
Since it looks like GPL violator's website is down, here's a mirror:f f3409b0475e/index.html
http://mirrordot.org/stories/c00f3d2fd6588c34ae25
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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 guys?"
What, everyone who writes GPLed software is a music pirate?
Unlike all those Windows users who, undoubtedly, have never broken IP laws by, say, borrowing somebody's copy of Office or downloading a Dreamweaver zipfile?
Dear me.
Harald Welte is one of the netfilter guys. Look into MAINTAINERS and CREDITS.
He owns the stuff and he knows what he is talking about. The netfilter team also accomplished the first acknowledgement of the GPL in a court in Europe.
tglx
Bullshit. The GPL only prohibits taking open software, closing it and selling it as your own with no source available. You are free to use GPL libraries in your proprietary code without releasing your code, and to sell your closed code. Try again.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Actually, many of these companies (as a Corp) may not know about the violations. As soon as the letter gets to legal the practice will stop.
I work in a very large Semiconductor manufacturer and we have the policy that all uses of OSS _MUST_ be reviewed by legal before proceeding. It's a simple matter really. If you don't ask legal and you screw up then you are disciplined up to and including termination, depending on the infraction and whether or not you should have known better. I look to OSS often to see how something is done. If I like how it's been done I ask legal, usually they say no and I go code it myself and then find that I did it some obscure way that doesn't weork as good.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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.
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
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.
A private letter to the party involved is not libel. Remarking on indisputable facts[1] is not libel. Publicly claiming somebody infringes your copyright before you have a court ruling generally is libel, but I see no evidence that GPL-Violations.org does that.
[1]- Examples that are defensible in the US would include "We found strings in Xyzzy Router that almost exactly match strings in our software" or "We believe it is unlikely to produce this machine code without using our code as the source." European law varies, IANAL, get real legal advice if you want to walk close to that line, et al.
>1.) You look at the code, and gee, it looks the
>same.
Which of course is easy if you have access to the source code of course. What about otherwise? Even if one would in some way be able to compare compiled code, how to handle those that thik EULAs are enforcable which normally prevent any way to actually look at the code.
Even with no EULAs, many copyright laws only permit for example reverse engineering for specific purposes, not to see if the code is the same as another one.
Finally, countries with DMCA like laws that include access (and not just for copyright infringement cases) have further problems to get to the actual code.
So how do one get arround all that? Indeed, disregarding GPL, how will anyone (including big software companies) really be able to check to see if someone is using their code at all?
"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.
"Pay for what you take...."
"Take"? It's 'copy', not 'take', one source of the confusion.
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
sveasoft (gpl-violations is slashdotted, so maybe they are listed)
"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."
/only/ under the LGPL. Only GPL code can link against GPL code. Anything can link against LGPL code, look at WineX (Cedega) and Wine, originally Wine was under the LGPL and WineX added extra closed code to it but then Wine changed their license to GPL and WineX had to fork.
Thats true
I must have missed something. I remember reading somewhere in the GPL license that you need to distribute the source code along with the program... I do not recall, however, that the program and its source should be free (as in costless). Nor do I recall that the source code should be readily released to the community.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe are all the following are valid:
- Under the GPL, I can take your code, modify it for my usage, and never release the end result to you or anybody else. Your code is released under the GPL, which sets limits to the way I distribute work based on yours. Not to the way I use it.
- Under the GPL, I can take your code and sell it to my customers, as long as I release your code to my customers. Moreover, I can sell them the upgrades and bug corrections that you release. Sure, some customers will become aware of this and will download your code for free, since it is there to grab. But most won't, because they won't be aware it exists or where to download it in the first place.
- Under the GPL, I can take your code, modify it, and sell it to my customers, as long as I release the resulting code to my customers. Arguably, they must release their source code if they build on top of it and decide to distribute the finished product, since mine and yours are released under the GPL. But they also have the right to never release the work I did to you or to anybody else. And most will, especially if the resulting code is specific to their business processes.
.. 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.
I don't beleive it. Why settle for only $2500? Well, I hope atleast it is $!
Anyway, thanks for the tip.
i was under the impression that slashdot forumns and comments are made up of many thousands of people with differing opinions, often times leading into hot debates regarding such issues as copyright...
thank you for clearing that up, slashdot is only one entity with one opinion on everything.
idiot...
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?
Look at the IMB vs SCO case, IBM brought in an expert on finding out that sort of stuff.
One way to check for violations is to compare the strings, sometimes it will be blatantly obvious, like some group ripped off ReactOS but were so lazy they didn't change all the string in the program so they didn't say ReactOS and when you have strings all around that say REACTOS, you have error messages that are the same, and files have the same signature, and other things like that its easy to find out.
In most cases of GPL violations the code wasn't attempted to be scrambled it obscured at all to hide its origin. Often this is just done by a lazy developer and the management doesn't know about it till they get the warning letter (and look at the GPL violations site, 25 out of 28 cases have been solved with only the warning letter).
'Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF, Apple Lossless and WAV'
And iTunes will convert (undrmed) wmas to something the iPod will play.
Where are people getting this idea that iPods don't support mp3s from?
In one case, copyright is being used as a tool to protect the ability to freely disseminate and modify works. In the other case, it is being used as a tool to restrict freedom of distribution and prevent modification.
I love your twisted logic here, justifying copyright infringement on the one hand because it promotes "freedom" but condemning it on the other because it promotes the "freedom" to disseminate. Orwell would love you.
Here's the situation, and it's not a shade of grey as you imply: copyright infringement is either good for all or bad for all, you can't pick specific instances where it's good for some and bad for some. That's called subjectivism, and it has no business intruding into a legal matter such as copyright infringement. Open that door and all law suddenly becomes entirely relative, and you do not want to go down that path. Is murdering a white supremacist wrong? Sure, the world's better off without him, but does that make murder "right"? You cannot use the "it's for the greater good" argument because there is no "fair" way to define the greater good. What's good for you is most likely bad for someone else. That's why these matters must be objective, not subjective.
So, which is it? Would you stand on a hill and defend my right to violate the GPL however I see fit? I doubt it.
Don't look now, but your double standard is showing. Perhaps you'd be more comfortable with this definition instead.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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"
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?
Actually, you are abiding by the terms of the GPL if you just use it in house. (As opposed to attempting to reverse engineer Windows, which is against the terms of the agreement, even if I do it by myself and don't tell anyone.)
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
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
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?
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
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)
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.
There are reasonable people on slashdot
and the reasonable position is thus
the RIAA and MPAA are unreasonable for calling me a pirate for making a copy of my cd/DVD for the car/van/boat/kids and securing the other in my closet.
the BSA are unreasonable for calling me a pirate if I re-sell my copy of office 97 on EBAY
and companies who use GPL/OSS without following the terms(give credit and open the code) are being unreasonable for not passing on what they got for free.
NOW, do these reasonable people likely have copies of music or software they haven't paid for? yes, possibly.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
No they aren't they are releasing the code for each release. They just aren't releasing the beta releases. They have got the okay from the OSS councel or what ever the governing body of GPL is.
Im a biologist so I see things from a functional point of view.
Lets call my code X and their code Y.
Imagine I have a system that uses Code X. I know all about Code X and how it works. I know that with stimulus A, Code X has a bug that causes it to crash and burn.
I can take code Y and see how it handles stimulus A, if it crashes and burns too then I form a hypothesis. Now I keep doing this with stimuli B C D E and see what happens. If you get the same results with both stimuli all the time the codes are probably derived from or related to each other.
This works for many kinds of comlex systems where you cant just "read" the code.
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!
"I'm not writing buggy code, I'm adding tracking technology to detect theft of the intellectual property!" :)
:)
I'll keep that one in mind next time I write something that breaks.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!