GPL Gets Its Day in Court in Israel

MadFarmAnimalz writes "In what appears to be the first court test for the GPL in the Middle East, Alexander Maryanovsky, the author of the GPL licensed Jin Chess Client is taking IchessU to court for violations of the GPL license."

Comments

Right.... bit of clarification

[LiquidCoooled]

There is an open source chess client called JIN licensed under the GPL.
This is an executable and front end chess client.

This has been extended by iChessU to support a closed source DLL which adds new functionality (notably video streaming between players).

The source code to the Expanded client is available and providing you have the closed source binary DLL, you can run the newly compiled program.

Isn't this like me releasing a GPL program which is linked to the nvidia or ATI blobs?

Hell, isn't it similar if I write a GPL application which uses the Windows API?

I personally feel as though this is an overreaction, the ichessu site does not hide the fact its based on JIN and offers sources, or am I wrong and this is infact a genuine GPL violation?

Re:Right.... bit of clarification

[bestinshow]

The method of adding functionality to a GPL application shouldn't be the issue. Clearly the client application distributed to end users is comprised of GPL software (JIN) and proprietary extensions, and they communicate with each other.

Clearly the fact that they asked to license the software and were refused (or offered a reasonable offer which they turned down) shows they were aware that it was GPL and wanted to license it under different terms. The fact they they went ahead and tried to bypass the license but still use the code shows extreme bad faith.

This may be an issue with the GPL wording though, which leaves this loophole that can be exploited by proprietary developers. Turn the GPL software you want into a server, release the source to the modifications made here, then keep all your own proprietary stuff in the client that communicates with the GPL server, then ship both together to run on the user's system. Clearly the GPL needs some effort made to outlaw 'serverising' GPL code in the same way that dynamically linking or statically linking code is outlawed. Clearly the fact that someone picks the GPL over the LGPL is because they don't want someone using their code with non-Open Source code additions.

Of course you need to allow the situation where the server functionality is explicitly added to the code base by the developer(s), e.g., something like Apache should not be restricted from serving to IE, for example (I know Apache isn't GPL, but you know what I mean). I think that this can be allowed safely, clearly the software is a server by definition, whereas a chess client is not a server by definition, and also the client and 'server' are distributed together, require each other, and run at the same time.

Re:Right.... bit of clarification

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

The nVidia blobs and kernel stub are not GPL. The GPL Linux kernel contains no code for accessing the NVIDIA blobs.

The process of installing the nVidia Kernel stub combines GPL and non-GPL code and compiles it on your machine. The resulting binary is NOT re-distributable under any licence. This is why Linux distributions do not come with the nVidia and ATI drivers built in, but you must install them separately.

This workaround works because the GPL only comes into effect when you copy a program not when you use it, as long as you are not copying (i.e. redistributing) the results you are not bound by its terms.

iChessU could use the same trick. Download the standard JIN source, download the iChessU patch and binary and compile them yourself - noone is copying the result, so the GPL is not violated. Though the resulting program contains GPL and non-GPL code and so can never be copied under any licence.

Re:Right.... bit of clarification

[jrumney]

You're misunderstanding the terms of the GPL as they relate to various linking technologies. There are many armchair lawyers on slashdot who like to claim that the GPL only applies to static linking, or that using TCP sockets gets around it etc. But the GPL does not contain any mention of linking technologies or what is and isn't covered, it just talks about "derived works", which is up to the courts to define. In a case where the defendant approached the plaintif about licensing their work commercially then suddenly changed their mind and wrote some dynamic linking or socket based code specifically to "get around" the GPL, I would expect the court to side with the plaintif, since the defendant has shown that they understood from the start that what they wanted to do was not allowed under the GPL, and their intention is plainly to try to circumvent copyright law through technicalities, which the judge is unlikely to approve of.

Re:Right.... bit of clarification

[SashaM]

I personally feel as though this is an overreaction, the ichessu site does not hide the fact its based on JIN and offers sources, or am I wrong and this is infact a genuine GPL violation?

Actually, there are several violations:

1. IChessU's released source code does not compile, so it can't possibly be considered the "complete corresponding source code", regardless of the status of the audio/video library (which to the best of my understanding of the GPL is also covered by it).
2. IChessU do not release their application under the GPL, but instead under a horrendous EULA. Read it, really.
3. Although they do mention Jin, they don't mention my copyright. Instead it's "Copyright (C) [2006] [unknown]", as if they don't know whose copyright Jin is.

Alexander (aka Sasha) Maryanovsky.

No it's not

[brunes69]

Isn't this like me releasing a GPL program which is linked to the nvidia or ATI blobs?It isn't, because ATI and NVidia do not link to the kernel. The portions of the NVidia and ATi driver that *do* link directly to the kernel (also known as the "kernel stub"), are indeed GPL. What happns, is the closed source X driver communicates to and from the stub indirectly, not via linking.

It's actually just a different DRM/DRI implementation, which nearly all X drivers use nowadays.

Note in this case DRM does not mean "Digital Rights management", it means "Direct Rendering Manager"

Re:In a way, this is very lucky timing for GPLv3

[RoboRay]

By law, at least in theory, laws are required to be understandable by the general public. Otherwise, ignorance of the law would be a valid defense. If the laws were written in some "law language" that only lawyers and judges understood, they could just tell you that the law said whatever they wanted it to say. How would you know they were lying to you and abusing the system?

Of course, at least in the US, the law may as well be written in different language because even the law-makers don't generally understand what they're voting on.

GPL doesn't need to be tested.

[Kidbro]

Here we go again... GPL doesn't need to be tested in court. GPL doesn't restrict you from doing anything. The only thing GPL does is to allow you to do some things with copyrighted work - such as, under certain circumstances, distribute said work even if you are not the copyright holder.
What's being "tested", if anything, is copyright laws. And I believe that we all can agree on the fact that they are already, if nothing else, fairly tested in court.

Re:GPL doesn't need to be tested.

[Decameron81]

"GPL doesn't restrict you from doing anything."

Actually it does. Or can you merge GPL code and non-GPL code in a single codebase? This is a restriction of how you can use the code you obtained through the GPL license.

Further information

[kripkenstein]

I happen to know Hebrew. Some more information from the Hebrew documents is the matter of money; the Jin programmer is requesting 20,000 NIS (about $4500) as 'damages' (for the violations made so far). This is perhaps an initial offer for settlement. Note how the $4500 is just higher than the $4000 he initially wanted from them (which seemed more than fair to me, personally).

In the lawsuit, it is mentioned that in Israeli law (which I cannot confirm or deny, I have no idea) the minimal fine possible for this type of offense is 10,000 NIS (about $2250).

I can translate other parts of the Hebrew documents if anyone is interested.

Re:Further information

[SashaM]

Umm, actually, that is false. We are asking for a total of 110,000NIS (about $25,000).

Re:Further information

[SashaM]

Am I right in understanding that you want 11,000 NIS (about $2250) for each screenshot of your software that appears on their site?

10,000 NIS per screenshot, not 11,000. I realize it sounds funny asking damages for screenshots, but the Israeli law only allows between 10k and 20k of damages per violation. We are also suing via a legal "fast track" (otherwise it'd take years to get a decision) where we must ask for minimum damages. So, without the screenshot damages, I could be looking at spending the same amount of money on the lawsuit as the potential damages. Plus, after a couple of weeks of futile attempts to explain to Mr. Rabinovich that he is wrong, and him basically telling me to fuck off, you could imagine I'm a bit pissed and want to nail him for everything he has.

Alexander (aka Sasha) Maryanovsky.

Better Jin link (I'm the author)

[SashaM]

Although the content is currently the same, the real URL of my Jin website is http://www.jinchess.com (could an editor please fix it - I think it can handle the residual slashdotting). I'll now get back to reading everyone's comments and reply where I can :-)