Slashdot Mirror
Munich Court Again Enforces GPL
BrianWCarver writes "Despite earlier concerns reported on Slashdot that the GPL might be particularly difficult to enforce in Germany, that country's courts now hold the distinction of having enforced it twice. The first enforcement came in 2004 when Harald Welte of the netfilter/iptables core team sought to enjoin Sitecom from distributing its WL-122 router, which used netfilter's GPL'd code, without also providing the source code and a copy of the GPL, as that license requires. The Munich Court granted Welte a preliminary injunction and then upheld that injunction (Court's decision in English pdf) and now Sitecom provides the source code from their website. Welte, who also now runs gpl-violations.org to track GPL violations, and who personally handed over warning letters at Cebit to companies not in compliance with the GPL, reported on his blog today that he has obtained a new preliminary injunction enforcing the GPL, this time against Fortinet for distributing their firewall products (FortiGate and FortiWiFi) that include GPL'd code while Fortinet refuses to release the source. Congratulations again to Welte and his attorneys!"
So basically, people go around seeking license infringers and go after them legally when they don't follow it?
How is this different from the RIAA going after its infringers? In both cases, they're intellectual property violations.
Are we only for the idea of intellectual property when it applies to GPL authors? I mean, why should I follow the GPL anyway? I'm told in one situation that copyright is flawed and evil, and in the next I'm told to follow GPL copyright.
Just playing devil's advocate here.
haha I love how you classify a "real" court as being a "US one". I mean, never mind that the US legal system is the worldwide example of "what not to do", and has no bearing whatsoever on any country that is *not* the US (ie, the majority of the world population, and these days, the places where most of the OSS development is taking place).
-- sudo.ca
I guess I've not been paying attention to all the posts in other threads that are so anti-GPL, but I had no idea there were so many asses out there who believe GPL is anti business.
Let me be clear... the GPL is anti-bad business. GPL is pro-good business and pro consumer. And remember businesses are consumers too, the bad businesses are primarily the huge bureaucratic companies which turn out buggy lame software that doesn't always do what you expect it to do.
Now let me define what is bad business. Bad business consists of companies who do their best to create software libraries and intellectual property manifests with the sole purpose of maybe, possibly, making money. That information is sealed and protected so that in order to get at it, you have to pay someone for it.
This is based on the idea that companies have make something tangible to make money. Proprietary software is tangible enough to make money from the masses because they often buy it as tangible.
Big businesses build up this repetoire of "intellectual property" and sit on it for years. It's okay to benefit from a good idea, but copywrite laws these days take it too far. Copywritable material now has an age of 90 years, it used to be 20! Current copywrite laws therefore allow companies like disney to sit on their repetoire and continue to make money off it and don't encourage them to make new material. These businesses are not sensitive to consumer wants and needs, and stifle competition because having huge amounts of Intellectual property that no one else can ever touch is an unfair competitive advantage.
Customers who use GPL are forced to be more creative, because everyone has access to the same software! Consumers win because companies have to be more competitive. Microsoft can sit on their ass right now and say "You want an office package? Great, here's our package for $600 a person. What, you don't want to pay that price? Lick my ass n00b, you can't do shit without my software, we 0wnz j00r ass!"
Here's another way to look at it. Before the internet, most networks were proprietary. Closed off and not communicating with each other. Companies had their own networks, colleges has theirs, and some of them even tried to create VANs (value added networks) to perform EDI (electronic data interchange). Most of those attempts were novel but they sucked. When the internet came out, everyone was suddenly connected. Now EDI is easy, because as long as your computer is on the internet, I can build something that communicates with you seamlessly.
I believe I once read in an article that innovation is increased when you unbundle functions of a system. For example, if IBM owned the internet, and you had to pay a fee to use it, this would stifle innovation because not everyone would be able to or want to pay the fee. Think about the internet vs phone networks. Phone networks have features like call waiting and call blocking and voice mail and caller ID. However, phone networks can only be used for phone calls (without DSL of course). The internet is simply build on a protocol of information transfer from point a to point b, but it has unlimited uses. You can take phone calls over the internet now, and not use the phone network at all. what's even greater is that if you have 5 ISPs to chose from, you can take your VoIP to any of those ISPs and use it seamlessly, because each ISP implements a standard internet connection. They compete on service!
I'm getting off topic but it all has to do with competition. Competition has been lacking in the last several decades, because people think it's okay for big companies to hold big power. The GPL is simply taking current overly controlling law and turning it against itself by guarenteeing that information released under it is free.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"