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Tracking GPL Violators

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the coercing-compliance dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week, open source developer Harald Welte made headlines when he personally served warning letters to 13 technology companies for alleged GPL violations. Now in a ZDNet interview, Welte explains the challenges behind tracking down these violators and how he persuades them to comply."

3 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. MorphOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is a lot of violation of Open Source stuff. A lot of violation is being found on MorphOS where a lot of Open Source stuff is being used.

    ixemul, libnix, gcc, binutils and other things and when asking for the source codes then you get a reply telling you that the sources got lost. But still the stuff is being worked on and put in the binary release of their OS.

    1. Re:MorphOS by johannesg · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I once released a small but popular Amiga icon editor and image converter as shareware.

      Was that Iconian? If so, I beta tested for you long ago. Sorry to hear you didn't get much for it - it was a great tool.

      Anyway, I know the feeling. I spent about six years of my life on fMSX Amiga, which was free (both speech and beer). I didn't formally license it (I was young and naive at the time), but I did put some restrictions on the source: I wanted to be properly credited, and I didn't want the completely disfunctional Colecovision support enabled because it just didn't work yet. Neither of these seem particularly unfair to me, and anyway, it was (and still is, for at least the next 80 years) _my_ source.

      The result: there were four different "Colecovision emulators" around that were direct rip-offs of my source code. I don't know what I hated more: the ones that replaced my name with their own, claiming all rights to the work, or the ones that left my copyright notice intact, somehow making it seem I had released the utterly non-functioning software.

      Anyway, I made a grand total of not even 20 euro's with fMSX Amiga, so don't feel too bad about it. As for the Amiga community, it turned unbelievably poisonous at some point. I'm not surprised if there are GPL-related problems now.

  2. Avoidance and respect as alternatives to coercion by Eloquence · · Score: 4, Interesting
    While I used to be a GPL advocate, I now put all my code in the public domain. There are two primary reasons for that:
    • The GPL and other copyleft licenses weaken our position in lobbyism against insane copyright laws. I've personally been on a panel with a typical WIPO representative who argued that all us copyleft people should be understanding of her mission because we all needed copyright enforcement so badly for our own works. That is misleading to say the least, but it is difficult to refute in front of a neutral audience. The best response is: "No, we don't. We use the public domain. So there."
    • It generally sends the wrong message. I want to build a world of free sharing, not one of coercion. I want people to share because they believe in sharing, not because the law forces them to. Let's pretend there was no copyright law. Would we then still need a "copyleft law" to make sure that people share their source code (reverse engineering wouldn't be enough, since you can't reverse engineer code comments)? I don't want to replace one control regime with another. You could say that copyleft is socialist ("share for the good of the people"), while the public domain is more libertarian in nature ("do whatever you want").

    So, if you use the public domain, how do you prevent people from abusing your work? By naming them when they take work without credit, by avoiding them and refusing to cooperate with them in any way, by expressing respect for people who share work freely and who give proper credit, and by gently trying to convince others to do so.

    Many companies which ignore the GPL don't understand the benefits open sharing of their code contributions would give them. It's important for us to communicate better how an open source development model helps everyone (an open code contribution may inspire others to contribute more, to fix bugs, and so on; it is much easier to maintain over version upgrades when it's in the main tree). The problem with the GPL is that it's not a tool of communication. We have focused too much on forcing people to do the right thing, instead of convincing them of the benefits of our approach.

    We also need a generally accepted registry for public domain works so that it is provable who the first creator of a work is (that's also necessary as a defense to make sure other people don't claim copyright and sue people for using a work that's in the public domain).

    I do value the copyleft effect of the GPL. I think its significance is overestimated, but it does have value. In spite of the arguments above, I think it is of enormous importance that we avoid a split between the copyleft and the non-copyleft camps. In the larger scheme of things, these differences of opinion are minor, and what is important is that we all support the goal of free content. So while I don't approve of the means in this case (GPL enforcement), I do approve of the end (more free content). Still, I ask you to consider putting your code in the public domain.