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Alleged GPL Violation Spurs Accusations, Lawsuit
lisah writes "Linux.com is reporting that Alexander Maryanovsky, the developer of Jin (a Java-based chess client), has filed a lawsuit alleging that International Chess University has violated several aspects of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Maryanovsky claims that the online chess training website and its CEO, Alexander Rabinovitch, are in violation of both his copyright and the GPL by distributing software that is based on Jin. According to the report, though Rabinovitch is dismissing most of the claims leveled against him, he has apparently left his native Israel for Canada and declines to give his exact whereabouts." Newsforge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
This Story has already been posted on Slashdot.
GPL Gets Its Day in Court in Israel
echo YOUR_OPINION >
Naw, that'd be a BSD-style license, not a GPL :)
That sounds even harsher than what the BSA does to Microsoft pirates.
Quoted from the article:
Pleading lack of time, Maryanovsky suggested that IChessU could either use Jin or pay him $4,000 for a commercial license instead.
So there was an unrestricted commercial license available for $4,000 and instead they took the GPL version and violated its distribution license. If the accusations about license violation are true, this is just as much piracy as selling illegal versions of Windows or any other software.
Newsforge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Yes, they are, but we don't feel the need to point out that fact constantly.
Now, if you mentioned that Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG, that would be a relevant disclosure statement. I'm suprised no one mentioned it.
So let me get this straight: If someone produces some sort of product and puts a bunch of limitations on how I can or cannot use said product that instead of disregarding those limitations and doing what I want that I should actually either respect those limitations or do without the product altogether? And are you also saying that if I do decide to disregard those limitations placed on the product that a reasonable avenue of recourse for the producer of that product is to bring suit against me?
Not if it's still got the easter eggs.
Goten Xiao
The source code is made available to both parties during discovery. Technically, the plaintiff has to ask the court to make it available, but since there isn't a way to investigate/litigate the matter without doing so the judge will almost certainly order the defendant to turn it over to the plaintiff for examination.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Not to go too far down this path but I think the _average_ /.er is more miffed with the process the RIAA is using rather than that they are suing. The flood of Jon Doe suits are absurd. They should have to file one suit at a time based upon better evedence than they currently have been using.
/. crowd has about this.
Then again AFAIK no suit has gone all the way to trial, another beef the
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
According to the report, though Rabinovitch is dismissing most of the claims leveled against him, he has apparently left his native Israel for Canada and declines to give his exact whereabouts.
"I've done nothing wrong and if anyone needs me I'll be in my secret underground chess igloo."
-- You give me beer, I give you condo.
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The whole socket thing is meant for something else. Staying in the realm of chess, there's a generic chess protocol that is used to interface engines with clients. If you have a server and a client communicating over such a generic protocol, and one of them is distributed under GPL, it doesn't mean that the other one also has to be GPL, because neither is a derived work of the other (again, IANAL).
Finally, regarding EULA - GPL is not a EULA. He can distribute the binary client under a restrictive license, but he has to provide the sources under GPL. Rabinovitch seems to be in non-compliance here as well.
The Raven
Exactly, dude. That's what copyright law is for.
Though your sense of entitlement seems to be a tad overwhelming.
The GPL is a license that grants users far more rights than copyright law would normally allow. The alleged infringer here was in no sense restricted by the GPL; it gave him a bunch of rights that he had under certain conditions, and that he wouldn't otherwise have had under copyright law, and he is alleged to have broken those conditions while exercising the rights.
If your uncle lets you live in his house rent-free as long as you don't have any pets, then he is entitled to use the law to evict you and your ferret when he finds out you've breached the terms. Bitching about it just makes you look like a spoiled brat.
If you want to complain about restrictions in software licenses, try some proprietary licenses which bind you under contractual terms that force you to give up MORE rights than the ones that copyright law takes away from you. You're not allowed to reverse engineer Windows or sue Microsoft, for example, if you use their software.
Having read the article, it seems that it really comes down to this: The IChessU client connects to Jin through sockets, and Maryanovsky claims that the intimacy of this connection makes the two programs one. Thus, the code for the IChessU client must be published. Rabinovitch says this isn't so, they are two separate things. But what it really comes down to is, once again, the Open Source people don't like the fact that someone is using GPL'd code to make money without "giving back" even when there is no real violation of the GPL. It's a loophole for sure, but it's there and it's not a secret. If Maryanovsky wanted to have more control over the use of his code, he should have chosen a different license.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
And in its own bizarre manner /. admits the RIAA has a point.
Leaving aside the point that there exists more than one person on Slashdot, it's notable that on software piracy threads, far more people tend to be against the idea of people profiting from copyright infringement, or doing so in a commercial context in some way. So this isn't connected to the RIAA suing grannies for downloading stuff to listen to.
As we all know, P2P removes all licensing agreements from software, music, and videos.
You misunderstand me. The GPL is a grant of rights, not a restriction. It's not 'less restrictive', since it's not restrictive at all. What restricts you is copyright law. It's impossible to be sued, at least in the US, for breaching the GPL. The restrictions all come from copyright law, and if you breach the GPL, you'll be sued for a breach of copyright.
Compared to the extreme permissive licenses like the MIT or BSD licenses, the GPL lifts less of the restrictions placed by copyright law, though. You don't get the right to restore the copyright law restrictions that the GPL lifted, for one. It also lets copyright law bar you from distributing binary-only copies in order to make it impractical to modify the software.
While there are plenty of good reasons why people might prefer thoes licenses, it strikes me that bitching about not having those rights, in the name of freedom, is a bit like a southern US plantation owner complaining about the loss of his freedom to own slaves...
I love this statement. I especially love rephrasing it: "We'd normally chop off your whole arm for this, but we're only going to chop off your hand. Consider yourself lucky."
Less restrictive is still restrictive.
My rephrasing: "Normally I wouldn't give you anything, but here's $10, consider yourself lucky", and then you whine that I didn't give you $20.
But neither of these analogies are really relevant here (not redistributing someone's software doesn't infringe on you in the same way as forceably chopping off body parts).
Do you criticise everyone except those who release everything they do into the public domain?
Wild guess - you're stirring up the GPL vs BSD debate, aren't you? You're pushing the gambit that the GPL is not actually free while the BSD license is. Unfortunately - the BSD license is also restrictive. So shall we just jump to the logical conclusion and call for releasing all code to the Public Domain?
Of course - that completely ignores the reasons behind the GPL and BSD licenses. But hey - let's not bother with such complexity.
Except that their product is absurdly overpriced and most of the profit goes straight to big label's pocket anyway (not to mention payola money). If an artist wants to make real money, he should be on the road, sweating, making shows. I refuse to pay 1/10th of my wage (in Brazil) for a CD, but I'd happily pay the same money for a show (although great shows rarely happens in my city), where I can see my favorit artist performing in an unique manner. If big labels lowered their CD prices, their sales would ramp up and more people would be interested in their artists shows. It's called Loss leader.
Moreover, I refuse to see how can one music piracy is related to software piracy after all. When you need software, you can (mostly) always set for a free/open version. When you want music (aka culture), there is no such option.
However, things might be totally different in Brazil.
Indeed they are: here, some "independent" labels (aka, not the big ones) somehow manage to sell a CD for ONE THIRD of big label's price. Unfortunately for us, there are few of those and most artists are more easily seducted by big labels.
Regarding radio, it's really not a choice. Commercial radios nowadays only play "recent" music (aka music whose label payed fat payola). And usually their selection sucks big time (IMO).
And no, Brazilians are not required to use Orkut, it is just that this specific (and rather, limited) social networking site somehow spread like wildfire here. This "brazilian invasion" already happened before with fotolog for some unknown reason, when Brazilian's behaviour there brought fotolog to their knees with bandwidth cost. Nowadays fotolog impose series of limitations on the service usage.
I'm not defending piracy, but I feel there are some economic reasons pushing people for it. I propose that, removing big label's (along with payola) from this equation, there would be almost none piracy.
Koan: Imagine a dead artist. Am I "stealing" from this artist when I choose pirate music over a legal CD?
"Linking" is a well-understood term-of-art in comptuer science and "talking through socket" doesn't qualify.
Sounds to me like Rabinovitch could answer Maryanovsky's objections by distributing source to the Jin-plus-sockets-adapter and source to a do-nothing socket-plugin to replace his chat application (without performing its chat function). That would make the modified Jin compile and run from the supplied sources - as Jin - without the proprietary code.
(It would also provide a skeleton in case somebody else wanted to build an open-source chat plugin that connects to Jin via Rabinovitch's mods.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
[Rabinovich] now points to online articles that he believes supports his position, such as Eric Schnell's and Jason Rumney's blogs.
Eric Schnell got the whole thing backwards. He thinks that Jin has an A/V module, which IChessU decided not to use and thus do not publish its source code. From his blog:
From I can make out, Jin's creator Alexander Maryanovsky's problem with IChessU is that while IChessU has utilized Jin's code, they are not distributing Jin's entire source code. An A/V module in Jin is not being used by IChessU and therefore the source code is not included.
I've tried to respond to his blog, but his captcha seems to be broken. I've emailed him but got no response so far.
I couldn't find anything related on Jason Rumney's blog, even with a google search.
"All the articles were produced only by Maryanovsky people/fans," [Rabinovich] says, "which is fine because they are published in developer's magazines/sites..
Where would Rabinovich have GPL violation related articles posted? A cooking magazine? Are Slashdot, Yediot Ahronot and Arstechnica all my fans? I didn't know I was that popular.
"He also said," Maryanovsky writes, "that they are planning to wrap Jin in a layer that would allow it to be controlled via a socket. I told [Rabinovitch] that I believe this would still, most likely, be violating the GPL." Despite this opinion, IChessU proceeded with its plan [snip]
That's wrong. As I mention on my page, they abandonded that idea and proceeded to use Jin in a straightforward manner.
Rabinovitch, however, writes [snip] The guy is hurt
Gee, I wonder why I'd be hurt? Could it be because Rabinovich stole my work?
Rabinovitch rejects the charge of bad faith negotiations because it is made without any explanation or evidence.
As I explained to him in my response, there's was no need to explain anything or bring evidence. The letter was to him - he already knows all the evidence! He was there at the negotiations!
Writing to NewsForge, Rabinovitch states that all source code was posted to the IChessU site, including that for the audio-visual module -- a claim that cannot be substantiated, since all code has now been removed from the IChessU site. He characterizes the audio/voice module as a separate program that "has nothing in common with the original Jin (it is even written in a different computer language!).".
So if the source code to the A/V module was released under the GPL, as required, why argue that it's a separate program? Not that it makes any difference, as that is exactly the point of the GPL - even unrelated code becomes "infected", as long as it's part of the same application. If I didn't want unrelated code infected, I'd release Jin under the LGPL. That is the whole difference between the GPL and the LGPL!
What if we integrated into Jin a Microsoft Word button -- would Mr. Maryanovsky then claim that we should publish the Microsoft source code as well?
No, I would then claim that they cannot publish the resulting application at all, as the GPL clearly states:
If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all.
As has been pointed out many times - you do not have any rights to a GPLed application except for the rights that the GPL gives you. The GPL does not give you the right to add a "Microsoft Word button" to Jin (excep
"Uh, not any more. A decent studio consists of a home computer, a good soundcard, and some software (often included with the computer or sound card). A decent studio engineer can be yourself or a friend. If you think otherwise, either you haven't followed what's been happening in the last years in music software, or you have different concepts of what's "decent" when it comes to music studios and to programming labs."
Tools get better and cheaper, no matter what business you're in, but you still have to have that talent. It's quite possible to create something that sounds decent in your home studio, and it's quite possible (but unlikely) that you or somebody you know happens to be a trained recording engineer. Good engineers and good producers make it look easy, but it's not -- most stuff recorded at home by amateurs still sounds like it was recorded at home, by amateurs. Talented engineers and producers are generally worth the money.
With regard to the gear, a decent sound card is not enough if you do not have quality microphones and proper acoustics. Even the folks who create entirely electronic music largely do not rely on the free or the cheap software -- BT told me once that he prototypes stuff on Acid Express, but his full set of tools goes way beyond that.
No doubt -- the explosion in inexpensive audio gear has allowed thousands upon thousands of amateur musicians to putter around with their home studios, and as covered above, there are indeed examples of high quality, popular music being produced quite cheaply. But good recordings generally still cost some serious money to make.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
No it doesn't! This was exactly the point which was being made. I can take GPL code and change it in any way I like and use that modified version and the GPL license imposes no conditions on me at all.
However, if I take my modified version of the code and pass (or sell) it on to someone else then the GPL kicks in. As soon as I distribute it I have to then release my modified code under the GPL.
There is no such thing as "a violation of the GPL". What these people have violated is copyright law.
In RMS's ideal world {and mine for that matter}, it would be law that every piece of software had to come with Source Code {this being necessary for the meaningful exercise of Freedoms One and Three}, either at the time it was obtained or anytime later on request; and failure to supply the Source Code on request would be punishable. Source Code isn't the only requirement, but we're simplifying a little here. Anyway, Freedoms Zero and Two can be taken by force if necessary; at the present time, it is orders of magnitude more difficult {though mathematically not impossible} to obtain Source Code by forcible techniques.
The GPL is a sort of "second best" approach, a way to approximate the ideal situation using existing laws.
Existing copyright law already says that if you want to distribute copies of something someone else originally made and which is still under protection of copyright, you usually need permission in writing from that person. The law actually gives you some limited right to make copies in the name of "fair dealing" or "fair use", which nothing can take away -- even if you promise not to exercise your statutory rights, you can go ahead and do so anyway without fear of repercussions. The other person is a sucker for believing in a worthless promise.
Now, if you have written a program and want people to use it, it's clear that you have to make some provision for distributing copies. This is where copyright law comes into play. If, as a fine upstanding citizen, you want to ensure the Four Freedoms for everyone who uses your program, then you can give permission to distribute copies of your program so long as they preserve the Four Freedoms for everyone who receives a copy from them.
The GPL is a letter of permission to do things above and beyond what the Law of the Land allows, on certain conditions. What it basically says is that: you get Freedom Zero whatever happens, and you get Freedom Two if and only if you don't seek to deny any subsequent recipient of the program from you any of the Four Freedoms. If you don't comply with the conditions of the GPL, then it doesn't give you any permission to do anything, and normal copyright law applies.
If you make a derivative work of a GPL program and don't show it to anyone else, then the Law of the land says you can do that: it's Fair Dealing. However, once you overstep the bounds of Fair Dealing, you require written permission. And the GPL only affords permission if you comply with certain conditions. If you do not comply with the conditions of the GPL, then you are in violation of copyright law.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Now, that's how a real Free Market works -- and it's interesting to see just how much it winds up some of the supposed proponents of Capitalism and the Free Market {what they're really in favour of is oligopoly, cartels and protection from competition by upstarts seeking to enter the market}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!