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GPL Hard to Enforce?
the-dark-kangaroo writes "The GPL may be difficult to enforce due to a lack of clarity over who owns the copyright to the software, according to a legal expert.
Lucie Guibault, an assistant professor of intellectual-property law at the Institute for Information Law in Amsterdam, said at the Holland Open Software Conference in Amsterdam, that the GPL should clarify who is the author of the software to ensure that open source software distributed under this licence receives legal protection."
Wouldent this be covered under Derivative Works as the author "derives" the finished product from a copyrighted work? I am way way not a lawyer, IANAL.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
The person who wrote the initial program 'owns' it. Contributors are just that, 'contributors' (donors if you prefer) of source code to the owner's project. They do not gain any ownership rights just because they submit patches.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If the author of GPL-licensed product discovers that a company has not adhered to the terms and conditions of the free software licence, the individual may find it difficult to argue his case in court as the defending party could argue that the copyright appears to belong to the Free Software Foundation, according to Guibault.
"The only name that appears on the licence is the Free Software Foundation -- they appear to be the licensor," she said.
Seriously, you can't pay someone to come up with schlock this bad.
Who will 0wn that code first??!?!?!!
Dashboard Widgets
We'll see what is enforceable and what isn't when these big companies that are dumping money in to open source development feel like they have something to protect from each other.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
In most cases, I'd think that most authors would note their identity when writing code that is open-sourced under GPL. After that, how difficult is it to figure out?
He has been enforcing GPL for over a year now with impressive results.
This guy does not know what he is talking about.
DUH.
Could someone explain to me what the problem is as I'm confused?
Seems to me that if an infringing company claims the Free Software Foundation is the licencor then they're screwed. Since the FSF has no legal right to grant a license for something they don't own the copyright to, the argument would indicate that the license is void. In which case copyright law kicks in and almost any usage becomes infringement.
Then again clarification can only help and save people legal troubles.
This is why contributors to GNU software are expected to assign copyright to the FSF.
This issue has been addressed, and the FSF has shown one way to handle it properly. There's nothing to see here.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
This isn't a real problem. The basic issue is that only the copyright holder has standing to litigate copyright violations. But it's never really ambiguous who the copyright holder is. The FSF recommends that free software developers assign their copyrights to the FSF, so that they can deal with violations. Many individual projects require all contributors to assign their copyrights to a consortium, to the project leader, or something similar. There are some projects with copyright held jointly by many developers, but there's almost always someone who you can point to and say "this person/organization holds copyright over the majority of the code". And even if it's not immediately obvious from the license who the copyright holder is, that doesn't matter in court; not knowing who has standing to prosecute is no defense.
Also, notice that "Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GPL, was unable to comment in time for this article." A brief interview with RMS would surely have cleared this up as a non-issue.
It's a valid criticism actually. In many cases, authors or groups of authors just GPL the software and forget about the legal consequences of the actual copyright. In many cases they may not realize who owns the actual copyright, especially in cases where there are multiple authors contributing. Also, there should be an option to automatically transfer rights to enforce the copyright to a third party. What happens if an author dies and his decendants don't care about the copyright?
If it's not clear in the license who owns the contract, then it would be a viable defense when you get sued for a GPL violation that the plantiff doesn't have standing due to not being the copyright holder.
You mean, all those messages I sprinkle in my programs that say "Copyright 2005 Eric Smith" don't give them a hint?
Then to point out the even greater boneheadedness of this story, let's say that EvilMegaCorp went to court and said "oh, we didn't think you owned this copyright, we thought the FSF did" and the judge agreed, the FSF would be in court the next day saying "no, we didn't write it, we wrote the license, but if you'd like to name us as the author of the software we'll gladly defend the copyright on it."
So STFU and get back to teaching students how to swindle.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Its pretty easy to tell who owns copyright in any open source project. Most open source projects come with a tar.gz released archive containing one or more of the following files: README, INFO, CREDITS, AUTHORS, COPYING, etc... Any one of these files, in addition to the actual source code, shows clear evidence about who owns copyright in an open source project. Sometimes there is one person, sometimes more than one. The author of the article forgot to bring up these facts, and instead relies on spreading FUD.
These things are an entity of greed, something in which the GPL was not founded. IMHO the GPL is an agreement between the user and the developer to maintain the inegrity of the code, and to further its existence and usefulness. This, by nature, is in effect the opposite of that which defines conventional means of protecting ideas and property.
Developing open source software for public use is not something attributed to those who would benefit from doing so arbitrarily, it is something attributed to those who would better the world around them no matter what they are doing.
The true meaning behind the division we see is far deeper than what can and cannot be enforceable. The problem we are facing has resolution in the re-thinking of laws and governing institutions over our daily lives. The GPL is not something which can be negotiated or changed to make the individual able to wave in the air in a courtroom, it is a doctrine to which can be added for the need of expanding an idealistic medium of communication between the individual and the masses.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
I have exclusive copyright for my work, unless I transfer it in a written "instrument of conveyance."
An infringer might claim that I have no standing, but could not possibly make that case as there is no instrument of conveyance, and I and FSF would both testify that I had not tranferred ownership.
Since when was uncertainty as to the owner a defence? If I rip off your bicycle (to use the stupid IP as physical property analogy), am I less guilty because I thought I was ripping off somebody else's?
Doesn't the FSF get the software authors to assign their rights to the FSF itself? So the FSF then have legal capacity to act on behalf of the authors.
IANAL, this is just a wild-assed guess.
One copyright enforcement is as bad as another, right? Information is free? Once released, the authors/creators wishes have no bearing, right?
Seriously. Why is ignoring one bad, and the other, good?
This is pretty stupid. The author of a work is the copyright owner in perpetuity unless they assign ownership to someone else. If there are multiple authors then the authors as a group own the copyright. This is the way copyright has always worked.
A work is technically, and legally, copyright upon creation by the author. You don't have to register something with the US Copyright Office for it to be protected. The point of registering with the Copyright Office is to provide an official registration so that if you are legally challenged, it's likely the first person to register is the owner. But it's nothing more than a measure of protection.
If I create a work and you register the copyright in your name, the burden of proof falls to me to prove that I created it first. But if I can do that, then legally I'm protected and you are not.
So putting your name on it does nothing for it. If you want to protect it, go to the Copyright Office web site, download the form, fill it out, and send it in with you $30. That's the best protection you can have.
For example, if I find that foo.bar.example.com include foo.bar.sourceforge.net GPL'd code, I can blow the whistle on foo.bar.example.com even though I've never had any involvement in foo.bar.sourceforge.net.
I've got the same rights to foo.bar.sourceforge.net as the original author, thanks to the GPL.
So the copyright ownership issue isn't that great.
It can become an issue if you wish to relicense the code - you need the permission of all copyright holders. But that's an obscure case, and only the kind of thing which "something for nothing" corporates would normally be interested in.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
in order to understand how the lawers think mostly(only?) of money, you must understan that a bunch of them hate their job, yet joined it because of the money.
Apparently money is worth more than anything else in the world...
The argument is pretty specious. The problem is not the GPL, but how the GPL is applied. The GPL advises those trying to apply it to a piece of software to make a clear statement of who the owner is. The FSF advises people accepting patches to get clear statements giving copyright over to the person listed as owning copyright to the software. I advise people to get clear contact details so that they can be contacted if a relicense is called for.
However, many projects don't do that. There's no clear statement on the Linux kernel saying who has the copyright.
The problem comes about because suit over copyright violations has to come from somebody who owns a copyright that is being infringed upon. If John Bobson sues foocorp, foocorp could claim that they didn't know John Bobson was an owner, and would John Bobson please prove it... however, that shouldn't be a difficult matter... esp. as it only needs to be done to a preponderince of the evidence, this being a civil matter.
(I am not a lawer, and can't even spell it. This is not legal advice.)
Yeah, google is a publicly owned company. Where are my shares, dammit?
You don't have to actually produce an implementation of the idea in a patent IIRC (obviously, IANAL). You just have to show that you are taking steps towards an implementation, not that you actually produce one. So, if Duke Nukem Forever contained patented software components, it could be argued that they are making an attempt to bring an implementation to market, hence the patents on those ideas would still be valid.
"where two IP lawyers try to convince the videogame industry of patenting everything in sight: ideas, technical contributions, etc. "
Q. What do you have when you have 2 lawyers buried up to their necks in cement?
A. Not enough cement.
Seems like his 'enforcement' has relied on the good nature of the 'violators'.
A quick glance didnt point out any legal findings in real court, so its all just a lot of hot air.
The GPL doesnt stand up.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Scenario:
EoSCo (Evil or Stupid Company) copies GPL'ed code from SRP (Some Random Project) and delivers in in binary-only form.
RI (Random Investigator) finds fingerprints of SRP in the binary and tells the workd.
JRC ( J. Random Coder,) a contributor to SRP, notices RI's blog entry and sends a letter to EoSCo: "You are violating my copyright. Please stop."
EoSCo ignores Letter.
JRC Sues EoSCo for copyright violation.
Judge: Do you have a license from JRC to copy this stuff?
EoSCo: Your Honor, we thought it belonged to FSF
Judge: So you have a license from FSF?
EoSCo: well no...
Judge: You have violated JRC's Copyright. Cease using this code at once and pay damages.
Note: each contributor to SRP owns his own copyrights, unless he assigns them to the SRP. Thus, EoSCO is vulnerable to each of the contributors. It only takes one single contributor to kill EoSCo's illegal product.
In other news, water is wet, fire is hot, and MS is the devil.
She is from Canada so I bet she speaks English.
Lucie Guibault
Senior researcher
http://www.ivir.nl/medewerkers/fotos/guibault.JPG
http://www.ivir.nl/staff/guibault.html
Institute for
Information Law (IViR)
Rokin 84
1012 KX Amsterdam
room 4.10
tel: +31 20 - 525 39 47
fax: +31 20 - 525 30 33
e-mail: L.Guibault@uva.nl
This Copyright Method, Like Almost Every Single Other Copyright Method, can be circumvented with a simple winamp plugin.
Make music people are willing to pay for, and cultivate mature customers.
Oh wait, that means your greedy leech asses couldn't depend upon 14 year old girls for your revenue stream, doesn't it?
Maybe it seems straightforward to you, but that's not actually how it works. It belongs to the author(s), however the general public is allowed to license the code without paying or notifying, provided they follow the instructions. They don't own it, they're just allowed to use it. Its like saying, I have a bicycle, its mine, but its alright if you use it, provided you don't tell people its your own.
I hope no one finds out you can burn a gazillion copies from the CDR!
Seems like his 'enforcement' has relied on the good nature of the 'violators'.
A quick glance didnt point out any legal findings in real court, so its all just a lot of hot air.
The GPL doesnt stand up.
Lucky all these companies caved in then isn't it? I mean, you'd expect multiple companies to cave in to the demands to fight off the terrifying threat of an individual with a baseless case, right?
Just because it didn't make it to court doesn't mean the case is without merit. In fact quite the opposite. The GPL violators caving before court suggests that they figured there was a good chance they wouldn't win.
The First4Internet CD copy protection technology destroys the registry keys (driver device names) associated with your CD-ROM devices. Then a monitoring app allows or disallows access to the device.
The monitoring app is buggy. If it stops running or loses your device references, you will have to reinstall windows to make your CD-ROM devices work again.
Also, by messing with the internal driver properties like this, many apps simply hang or crash the system when trying to access the device.
You can forget about using your legitimate buring software after putting one of those CDs in your computer...
-- anon DRM developer
when you look at the header to the source.... :
say
* Freequest IRCD - src/hosthash.c
* Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Mark Rutherford (mark@freequest.net)
who owns it? since I look at code at least several hours a day, how can you not see that its stated clearly in the header????
sounds like another attack on the GPL to me.
Just another lawyer seeking self promotion. Every contract ever written is said by lawyers to be of questionable quality until such time as it is fully tested in court at great expence or profit depending on whether you are the suffering client or the grinning lawyer (well behind your back, you get the crocodile tears and sympathy to your face - as long as you keep on paying that is).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Well, that's it then. I'm changing my name to Mercedes and stealing every Merc I can find. I mean, if the car owner wants to indicate that the car is theirs, why don't they engrave their name on it rather than leaving a Merc logo on it? I mean, it confuses me as to who really owns the car.
if the author wants recognition that is fine & well, but if they want to remain anonymous and release it under the GPL (public domain) then what part of "this is not to be owned and exployted by a greedy private corporation" under any circumstances does anyone not understand?
On the other hand, the GPL is just clear enough, that anyone reading it knows when he is in wrong doing.
That is why there are so few trials involving the GPL in court: violators tend to make agreements before it even gets there.
It happened just last month around here: on a list I subscribe too tehre are some lawyers who suypport Free Software. One of the members of the list noted that one program a large internet provider offered for free (beer) download for its subscribers was actually a renamed and closed GPLed Software. We on the list had the same doubt as the article proposes: in name of whom should we send a letter to the violators? The developers of said program were all from abroad - they might not even get interested in getting involved. Moreover, for the local lawyers to be able to legaly represent the foreigner developers, there would be quite a lot of bureaucratic entanglements.
So, on the list, we decided just to send a lawyer letter pointing that their software was violating the GPL - said lawyer was representing no one in particular. Ok, it took some phone calls besides the letter, but in no much time, they complied and released the source code for downloading, as required by the license.
So, IMHO, IANAL, ETC, even when a case actually gets into trial, a single developer, with no more than a few dozen lines of code, involved in the proccess is more than enough for the wrongdoing to get characterized.
-><- no
Quote:
A quick perusal of any GPL'd software in the world would have shown how full of shit the guy was.
The cake is a pie
Well, by this logic, the government (whose laws govern copyright law) own at least all proprietary code, and probably all code period.
Seriously, what the hell?
I don't know how things work in Denmark, but in the case of a copyright issue with a big open source project like the Linux Kernal I imanage that they would just file as a class action, get a few named plantiffs, clarify the class defintion and advertise vola and entiy that can unambigous enforce all copyrighted materals in the source.
Of course you would have to meet the Rule 23 requirements and the judge would have to approve, but I don't think that would be a big issue.
Classes have been appoved in copyright suits before, the New York Times archive case comes to mind
1. I believe that in the US, a copyright comes into existence either at the point of creation or at the time it is first plublished (I don't remember which). So it doesn't need a specific copyright on it, but the downside is that if the owner ever wants to seek damages, it will be more difficult.
2. You can only "reserve all rights" when the work is registered with the copyright office. If it's not registered, you still own the copyright, but there are certain legal advantages that you will not have at your disposal.
Seriously, you can't pay someone to come up with schlock this bad.
You have clearly never read a John Dvorak article.
The bestest thing Guibault said was "Mozilla may be one of most clearest examples..." She is obviously the goodest at her work and can tell you the bestest licenses to use so you won't need a more gooder lawyer if someone does the most baddest things to your program thingy.
O ya, real difficult.
pfft.
Maybe somebody should try reading.
Can Joe Hacker sue Company X for misuse of his source code (90% of the code is still his) even though the name listed (quite legaly so far as I know) on modification.cc is Jack N Box? As the GPL stands, I don't think he can, which can be a problem, especialy if Jack N Box is a ficticious person who works for Company X.
Ladies and gentlemen I think we have an exploit in the GPL, I think we need a patch.
IANAL
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Uhhh, which would they be?
How we know is more important than what we know.
The FSF owns (a) the licence, and (b) all code assigned to it. (This is why they do strongly suggest assigning rights to it, to avoid any lack of understanding or willful stupidity on the part of lawyers or corporate execs.)
Any individual programmer owns all GPLed code that they write, provided they have not assigned the rights to the FSF.
Personally, I don't see the problem. Well, actually, I do. The problem is that a lot of lawyers get paid to find problems and create them when they aren't there to be found.
The French only pay doctors when people are well, which means that doctors there do a great deal to prevent illness, rather than profit off it. Maybe US corporate lawyers should be paid on a similar basis - by how many legal tangles they DON'T get into, which seems a better indicator of when they are doing their job.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm not a bush basher generally. I'm not totally against the RIAA and MPAA.
But I must say, that this initiative is truely diabolical. My freedoms to surf the internet privately is clearly being breached here.
Are we going to see them applying the same interpretationist polcies that they use on television to the internet. I mean whos to say what constituits a "terrorist" website?
Goodbye my friends. I think 1984 has truely, and finally come alive, and its time for some of us to go underground.
That encourages private solutions that keep legal actions to a last resort.
more like it
Headline should read: "Professional Troll Submits Poorly Thought Out, Misinformed Paper To Conference, Gets ZDNet's Attention, Gets Picked Up On Slashdot, And Thus Nets Publicity For Himself And Ad Impressions For ZDNet?"
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
1) The GPL *CANNOT* do anything about who the author is. You have to put copyright notices on the work, true, but this is Berne Convention level stuff; it has nothing to do with the GPL. The GPL is a license the author(s) use(s) to license their work to the public. If the author(s) so choose, they can put the work under multiple licenses (e.g. also allow proprietary commercial exploitation for a licensing fee), but it's pretty damn clear that the author of the work is governed by copyright law; NOT by what license(s) they license their work with.
2) Derivative works work exactly the same way--they're something for copyright law to concern itself with, not for a license to define.
3) Most of the time, ANYONE with standing can bring a copyright action. What does this mean? I don't have to be the author of the entire work, but if I have rights to ANY part of it, I can sue them for breech of the GPL if I have an enforcable copyright on a piece of the copyrighted work. I can join with others so that we all together sue them for breech, etc. But the catch is that we can only sue them for breech with respect to those parts we actually have copyrights on, not over the whole work, so they could try to weasel out by getting rid of the parts we wrote (if that was feasible). Of course, the flip side of this is that statutory damages can become a real bitch if suddenly you face N different actions from all N developers, separately, well, this being Slashdot, just picture a Beowulf cluster of lawsuits...
4) The GPL has been enforced. It continues to be enforced. Most of the time it doesn't add "extra" details (like a preferred venue), that's quite deliberate. It's meant to operate under any Berne Convention signitory (e.g. most anywhere that recognizes copyrights), not any particular locale. Jurisdiction being what it is in the Inernet age, you can sue damn near anyone in any Internet-connected venue these days if they have even minimal contacts there (a stock example is the mention of that US citizen suing US citizen with US website hosted in the US under the stricter British libel law because the web page could be read in Britain and it therefore would affect the plaintiff's reputation in Britain). In other words, whoever sues first gets to pick the venue, most likely, unless there are compelling enough reasons for the judge to punt the case elsewhere.
DISCLAIMER:
I am not a lawyer. I certainly don't know international law. I have, however, read lots of things written by people who were lawyers. I suggest you talk to one of them if you actually need legal advice of some sort, because I cannot give legal advice, I cannot represent you, and I cannot and do not wish to create any manner of attourney-client priviledge between or among any of us. These opinions are my own, and may not reflect those of my employer(s). Please correct any point of this which is mistaken by providing contrary evidence for examination. The copyright on this post is disclaimed and this post is placed into the public domain by me, the unnamed author. If you think this disclaimer excessive, you haven't read some of the wackier legal reasoning I have in cases that, in my opinion, should never rightfully be used for precident of any kind.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I've seen too much anti-F/OSS articles lately to consider it a mere coincidence.
/. , i've seen articles along the same tune on different (and not so linux-friendly) sites, too.
This "GPL may be valid, but it's unenforceable" today, the one with "the corporations are just using our ideals in order to make money" yesterday, and a series of "windows servers are cheaper, easier to patch and just as popular as *nix servers" articles last week. And all this just on
This means "they" are getting desperate.
This means "they" admit they're losing and that we win.
On the other hand, this also means we'll see more and more of this kind of garbage in the future.
the GPL defaults to NO RIGHTS.
There is no problem. Joe Hacker owns the copyright on the code he wrote, unless he signed it away. He did not give the copyright to Jack N. Box, so Jack N. Box's heirs do no have rights to that code. Those heirs do have rights to the code Jack N. Box wrote, which is only 10%. Company X can contact Jack N. Box's heirs for a different license, but they only have the right to that 10%. (And if they gave rights to everything they might be in trouble themselves for negotiating in bad faith since they sold rights they did not have)
There is no problem here, except that Company X has a really hard time changing the license. In general the point of the GPL is to make it hard to change the license to something else, so this is intentionall. In fact if company X goes to Joe Hacker and gets rights to his code, they may be unable to use it if Jack N. Box's heirs decide to not give those rights up. In short a tiny minority can hold the majority to not changing the license. (Again, this is by design)
Note that some people assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation. The advantage of this is the FSF will sue to make sure code they own is not misused. This saves Joe Hacker the effort of finding a lawyer when needed. The disadvantage is in theory someone can gain control of the FSF and sell rights (or just make a new version of the GPL that gives everything away), and there is nothing Joe Hacker can do. Most projects using the GNU license choose to not require code be turned over to the FSF to protect against a rouge FSF sometime in the future.
(IANAL) I believe retroactive monetary damages are only available for registered works, otherwise only ordering to cease infringement and damages for refusing to cease infringment are available.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
triple damages for wilful violation.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
The parent has nothing to do with the grandparent.
I'd say that the author of the parent is just on drugs, but a number of other responses to this article, and another I posted recently, just don't fit.
Is slashdot broken?
It seems pretty clear to me that software under the GPL is meant to display a copyright notice by the original author just as prominently as the GPL notice itself. What exactly is the original article trying to say here?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The article is asking the wrong question IMHO; a better question would be, "Is copyright hard to enforce under GPL circumstances?"
C|N>K
The miltary's desire to conquor China for it's fertile land and resources.
"its".
Shouldn't this be filed under "It's Funny, Laugh" rather than "Your Rights Online"? Seems more like slapstick than much of anything else. How many times does it have to be said: you don't enforce the GPL, you enforce COPYRIGHT! The GPL (like "fair use") is a defense! You don't "enforce" a defense, you raise it - if you can.
The GPL is no easier or harder to apply in a legal sense, than any other software license which is based on copyright. Any evidence that the GPL is legally weak, should be applied to any other software license; I am sure you will find any significant weakness to be shared with it.
Copyright law may be regarded as weak or strong, well or poorly tested, with light or with severe consequences for violations. Whatever the case, the GPL is an extension of rights that were guaranteed under copyright law. The doctrine of equal protection, and the strength of copyright law itself, must support the GPL, or else other licenses will also fail by the same criteria, from any argument against the GPL.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Shouldn't that be SuperHyperMegaNetCorp?
You mean they have the internet on computers now?
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
Somehow I feel this is a corporate event trying to cash in on the free software movement. The director of the European BSA is among the speakers.
Could anyone that attended plase confirm or infirm that? Or even more important: did anyone attend?
Yes, as a zillion high rated comment already point out, there is no legal doubt that the author own the code. And a "copyright year name" statement is not needed, but anyway encouraged and common (the article actually also state that).
However, the article is about damages, not ownership. If it is unclear to the defendant who the opposing legal party was, it may reduce the chance or size of damages awarded. At least in Holland. No question though, the defendant will be forced to stop the illegal distribution.
Stopping the illegal distribution is what is most important to us, but a lawyer is usually paid to extract as many money as possible, so his point of view is obviously different.
Last time I checked, copyright certainly does not last in perpetuity
Have you checked the Copyright Act of 1976, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, and the Supreme Court's upholding of copyright term re-extensions in Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003)?
Getting a little stickier here: What happens if person C, who's working at a corporation, contributes to the code but he signed an over-reaching agreement with his corp about ownership of his work.
You're talking about a work-made-for-hire contract, I assume. C's employer owns the changes. C may not distribute the changes to the public unless and until C's employer distributes them to the public.
This is paranoia and nothing more than that.
While no case involving the GPL has ever gone to cort open source is hardly the only case where code ownership is split up amoung sevral partys.
Many commertal products have sevral owners. You might notice a long list of copyrights in the manuals for some advanced applications.
Co-Develuped apps, libarys and code slippets all contribute to this issue.
Multi owner code has come to cort and the corts have no problem letting one owner of code enforce his copyright on a violator.
The corts have addressed the more complex issues of multi owner code where one owner violates the liccens of annother owner.
IBM vs Microsoft reguarding OS/2.
Thies issues of multi owner code had to be resolved otherwise porting code to annother platform would be a significant legal risk.
I don't actually exist.
The FSF would LOVE to own the copyright and handle the case in court. The violators are going to argue in court: "Sorry mr Torvalds, we asked the FSF for premission to use your code in our product and they agreed"? Or: "Oh, we thought the FSF owned the copyright to the code we copied, and they are in a different jurisdiction, so we thought you couldn't sue us"?
This argument is completely bull. You don't need to know who will sue you to adhere to the rules. The rules are pretty clear.
Now if you want to ask for permission to copy part of the code, and accidentally ask the FSF instead of the real copyright holder, a genuine problem could ensue: If the FSF would blindly say: "Sure, go ahead, you can use any code we have the copyright on in your commercial closed-source product". However, the chances of that happening are very, very slim. A commercial entity stands a slight chance with everybody BUT the FSF.
The problem with that theory is that the person is (supposedly) talking about the GPL, but what you're saying has nothing to do with the GPL or any other license. It could be said about BSD code or the semi-free (no-commercial-distribution) editor that Linus originally used to write his kernel, or even just some random code I put on my web page that comes with no license whatsoever!
There may be a problem (of sorts) with code in general having less-than-perfect attributions and/or copyright statements, but that has nothing to do with the GPL. By claiming this is a problem with the GPL, ZDNet is clearly spreading lying FUD (though whether they are the source of the FUD is unclear - probably not).
You say you're not a lawyer? Heh, I have a hard time believing that.
Nice post btw.
VStrider.
clearly his 'intellectual property' amounts to little more than two brain cells.
Some people seem to dissing Lucie Guibault as some nitwit who doesn't understand it. Might be true but she works at a place that translated the Creative Commons license to the Dutch jurisdiction so I think she may not be quite as stupid as some of you think.
They say beauty and brains are diametrical opposites.
Easy! Simply add a statement such as the following in your project notes, and adhere to it when accepting code, fixes or patches. Its what we do in several of our projects now.
This is defensible in a court of law, so your project should have no problem using it.
The article vaguely implies that there is a quirk in Dutch copyright law. Unfortunately, they don't really explain the problem or link to the Dutch law.
"But Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GPL, claimed that even if this is a problem in the Netherlands, it will not affect free software elsewhere."
Even when you are in the right, sometimes its not worth it financially to fight. Today's legal system its about right or wrong, its all about who can hold out the longest. Its just a large poker game, where the little guy is at a disadvantage from the start.
In thend you may 'win', but you may also be put out of business trying to pay the legal bill. So was it really worth it to stand up instead of 'caving' ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At least in America they will and the French seam to be far less tolerent so I imagin they'd do the same.
I think you'll find it's the contrary. It's focused around ensuring everyone actually gets treatment regardless (because they are obligated to, and they do not exclusively treat patients like 'customers').
However if socalised medicen is a good thing and the American medical system is bad then I'll die wrong and those who survive me will only be able to blame me for my own stupidity.
Bit late, it's already happening...
America spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet is way down the league tables when it comes to life expectancy and also actual healthcare treatment (as measured by the World Health Organisation).
In fact (on just checking) the US is indeed rated 37th in the world, and they do indeed spend the most.
France is, er number one in the world.
They also spend less, much less. Not just in total (obviously) but significantly less per head, yet it's still better. They live longer too.
American 'health tourism' has in fact been a problem here in Europe (particularly for operations or AIDS/cancer treatment that's very expensive in the US), especially in countries like the UK where treatment is completely free at the point of use (and no ID required).
Q. What's brown & black and looks good on a lawyer.
A. A doberman
Nice summary
I'm no lawyer but I would think a group of 'greedy' lawyers could sue on behalf of the general public. I know the government can file suits on behalf of its citizenry.
The only think I could think of is when you want to buy GPL software : their is many contributors. Can you do it without everyone's assent. But the right thing to do is to fork with dual licenses.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Nor does it mean you have a copyright at all. There is no statutory language in the United States that states that "computer programs are literary" (missing from 17 U.S.C. 101), or that "exclusive rights are granted to computer program works" (missing from 17 U.S.C. 102a). Rather, the governing statutory language is that methods, processes, systems, etc., "regardless of form", are not copyrightable (17 U.S.C. 102b).
Changing a fragment of code such as a+=1 to ++a would hardly qualify as having copyright protection.
Isn't it possible to assign/delegate copyright enforcement rights without actually assigning copyright? As I recall, that's what Novell is claiming their deal was with SCO. SCO got the right to distribute Unix and sue on the behalf of Novell, but Novell claims it retained the actual copyright.
A GPL version of this could be added to the new GPL, so that the author of a derivative work and the original copyright holder automatically cross-license the right to sue on each other's behalf.
We are the 198 proof..
The FSF has known about the problem of knowing who holds the copyright for many years. That's part of why they ask that authors assign copyright to them. This ensures that they have standing to enforce the license for the software for which they're responsible. Only the copyright holder or his assignee can enforce the license.
TFA says:
The license makes no copyright claims, except to assert the FSF's copyright on the license itself. The license gives the terms under which the copyrighted material may be distributed.So, yes, we need to know who that copyright holder is, yes, we've known this for years, yes, it's covered where it should be, rather than where the author of that article chose to look and yes, the author is stupid, stupid, stupid.
How stupid? Here's RMS's take on it, from TFA:
See what I've been reading.
Here are my 2 cents:
The GNU GPL is not a contract or agreement as it does not require that the reciever of the software do anything that they would have been legally able to do anyway (and it is not agreed to). Therefore, by its very nature, it cannot ever be enforced by the copyright holder against the receiver as
[The modal verbs of ability (e.g.: can, could, cannot) above are used in their strongest sense to indicate logical possibility (as opposed to only physical possibility according to the constraints of the laws of physics or society).]
If there is a lack of clarity over who holds [legally, copyright cannot be owned] the copyright (which, in my experience, is always made clear with copylefted software unlike other works of literature where it is usually unclear), then:
In summary, the GNU GPL does not and a license cannot remove the rights of the copyright holder. The premise for this statement is also untrue, as the GNU GPL, being a general public license (to be used for multiple works), does not state who the copyright holders are. If the premise were true and the statement were true, the statement would not logically follow from the premise, as the clarity is in no way connected with the ability of the copyright holders to enforce their rights.
The GPL cannot clarify who the author of the software is as it used by multiple authors (who specify who they are themselves). Regardless of whether the authors are specified, the software still remains under copyright (which is I assume what the nutty professor means by `protection', implying that software is some kind animate object with feelings) under the Berne Convention. Nothing in the law, says that one has to specify who the copyright holders are (although this would make it even less obvious whether one was receiving the license from the true copyright holder if one didn't even know who one was receieving it from, so people may avoid distributing such software--although the proprietary software world indicates that this is not considered a problem as no one knows who owns the copyright on, say, much of the software published by Microsoft).
News@11....I mean congratulations on saying something factually accurate.
If that is not enough, what about the vast majority of proprietary software out there that comes with...gasp...no source code at all, and...gasp...without a
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Some of the larger packages, with many contributors, would be ripe for a first-ever class-action copyright infringement lawsuit. IANAL, but that is my take on it.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Now, a government can impose certain formalities on works coming from authors domiciled in that country, but for works from other countries they can't impose a notice formality. The Netherlands can impose requirements with respect to authors who are citizens or nationals of Holland, but any local laws would have no effect upon the protections granted by the treaty because the treaty completely eliminates any formalities upon works from other signatory countries.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
http://www.advogato.org/proj/Monkey%20Nutsack%20Li nux/