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GPL Gets Its Day in Court in Israel

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the never-fun-to-break-new-legal-ground dept.

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."

7 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Right.... bit of clarification by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
    1. Re:Right.... bit of clarification by bWareiWare.co.uk · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Right.... bit of clarification by jrumney · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Right.... bit of clarification by SashaM · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.
  2. No it's not by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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"

  3. Further information by kripkenstein · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Better Jin link (I'm the author) by SashaM · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 :-)