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Tracking GPL Violators
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."
how do you violate a license agreement that allows you to do as you please?
I mean he's tainting GPL software by making it sound like it has onerous licensing requirements.
When in reality anyone can bypass that requirement simply by sticking the software in a library/DLL and late binding to it.
Even then the source only need to be offered back to the owner, not to everyone. So he's making it seem like the GPL is trouble and he may be a troll.
He certainly has no standing in the GPL unless he is also a copyright holder.
So this is from The Department Of Redundancy Department?
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
Sending letters to copyright violators is usaly something that APB of sweden and I think MPAA http://www.mpaa.org/ does. Many file-sharers oppose this. And use the same argument as RMS http://stallman.org/ that you still have your copy after the copying. So that must mean that the GPL people still have their software after the companies have copied it. So what have the GPL people to complain about.
Let me guess. You have a nasty beard and you wear your backpack with both straps...
Dude. You rule. Excellent work, and excellent attitude. All your work will soon be available at my site. And being you are such a nice person, all of them will give you credit and link back to your site (nice of you to give me the choice of saying they are mine, though).
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
When I saw this story, I was reminded of all the pro-piracy articles this site trumpets out. I haven't yet heard a valid reason for the double-standard. Why is piracy not theft, but GPL violations are often referred to as such? Why is respecting intellectual property important for the GPL, but not for the RIAA? If infringing copyrights against the MPAA and RIAA is a "gray area," why are GPL violations so clear-cut and enforceable? And finally, why is the RIAA bad for going after individual P2P infringers, but guys like this can go after individual GPL infringers?
I'm genuinely curious to hear people's answers.
Find and replace GPL'ed components with BSD components. Free enterprise and innovation from within corporations and small business will only happen if companies are able to protect their intellectual assets. Use of the GPL reduces or even eliminates the incentive for companies to innovate due to license entanglements with the GPL. The long term consequence to software will be stagnation of innovation and a reduction of brilliant people involved in said innovation. Using BSD licensed software eliminates this long term risk to innovation and software as a whole.
Companies: please don't support the GPL by compling with it. I implore all of you to not cave to the FSF and their sham of a license. Don't violate the license either. Instead, fix your errs and rip out GPL bits and replace them with BSD alternatives. It'll hurt, but that's the price that organizations need to pay for being braid dead and not thinking about the licenses involved in their products (or the price for letting managers circum to GPL zealot employees).
Companies sponsoring innovation (either internally or externally in the form of Open Source) will result in continued advancements in technology. The GPL poses a greater risk to the health of innovation than Microsoft. The long term consequence being small software businesses will find it harder to compete against large software corporations because the barrier to entry (base libraries, tools, software, data, etc.) for completing complex projects that can be sold will be sufficiently high and prohibitive. Who in business wants to create a product that you want to sell, but are obligated to give away for free?
Well written software doesn't require much service: it should sit in a closet and tick away for years, even decades (provided hardware will run for that long). The "paid commercial support" argument is flawed in that it only applies to substandard products that are either poorly written, buggy, are made of non-durable components and break, or is poorly documented and *requires* commercial support. BSD licensed software lurks like a dark horse on the Internet, free for the taking and often without support. How come? Because the market for support is too small to have proliferated into something mainstream. Why? BSD software is generally written or used by paid engineers who write/assimilate software with a high degree of skill. In short: it just works.
BSD licensed software makes markets work and allows free enterprise to exist for small businesses. GPL software stagnates markets and maintains superiority of large corporations due to licensing constraints.
As a commercial software vendor, if all OSS utilities became GPL'ed, I'd end up going and buying a Microsoft SDK to author a commercial product. The reason ASPs became a popular business model during the dot com rush was largely due to the fact that the OSS base libraries and tools that could get a company up and running easily, were all GPL'ed and prevented companies from shipping their product because that would've required shipping their source code too. Anyone want to bet that if companies shipped appliances instead of offering services via an ASP model, that more customers would still be using those appliances and that the technology crash would've have been as severe?
Support innovation. Cease using GPL software. Buck the trend and use BSD/MIT licensed alternatives to GPL software/libraries/operating systems. Compete effectively, efficiently, innovate where possible, and reap the rewards for technical excellence.
-- Sean Chittenden