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GPL Violators On The Prowl
ravenII writes "GPL Violations.org are looking after the GPL. Warning letters were personally handed over to companies at their CeBIT booths by Mr. Harald Welte, free software developer and founder of the gpl-violations.org project.
It seems big boys like Motorola, Acer, AOpen, Micronet, Buffalo and Trendware seem to violate GPL. Please visit the site for more information on GPL enforcements and violators."
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
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
Remember kids, read before you post!
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
In many cases, the letter will likely be forwarded to the internal legal department for review, which may spark questions and conversations internally. In many other cases, the letter will likely be found in some rarely-used briefcase several years after the earnest, booth-attending middle-manager has left the company.
[
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.
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.
If you RTFA, you would see that Harald Welte is a developer and copyright holder of netfilter, which is used in a number of commercial firewall products. He also has license to prosecute the copyrights of some other developers.
So yes, he has standing to both warn and sue the companies he has given notice to (as well as the companies that have settled with gpl-violations.org).
--kirby
Whats next, rude phone calls? Or how about ringing the door bell and then running away?
Heh, that would be kinda funny actually. Like in one of those made for TV movies, could you imagine someone calling some female CEO of company X in the middle of the night and saying in a dark voice:
Dark voice: "We know where you got your source code, so you better put it back."
Female CEO: "Who is this?"
Dark voice: *pauses*
Female CEO: "Who is this? You better stop calling me"
Dark voice: *click*
Child: "What's wrong mommy?"
Female CEO: "Its ok honey, go back to sleep."
--
suso.org website/email hosting, no disk space quotas and personalized support.
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.
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.
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
If the violator doesn't accept the GPL, nothing else gives them the right to use the code -- it's not public domain, it's licensed under a specific license. It's not a matter of contract law, it's copyright law, and no contract is required, any more than New Line Cinema needs to have a contract with you to stop you from selling a remixed version of The Fellowship Of The Ring.
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
Get an injunction from having the manufacturer's products distributed in the US, and have the products seized by customs when they enter the country. I.e., direct financial loss.
Only trick is in detecting what manufacturer is embedding it.
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.
"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.
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)
.. 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.
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
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 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*
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