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GPL Successfully Defended in German Court
Philip Bailey writes "The GPL Violations Project, based in Germany, have won (subject to appeal) a court case against D-Link, who had allegedly distributed parts of the Linux kernel in a product in a way which contravened the GPL. D-Link had claimed that the GPL was not 'legally binding' but have now agreed to cease and desist, and refrain from distributing the infringing product, a network attached storage device. Expenses, including legal expenses, were received by the plaintiffs; they did not request any damages, consistent with their policy. They have previously won a number of out of court settlements against other companies. Slashdot has previously mentioned the GPL Violations Project."
The thing is, even if the GPL is not legally binding... what else gives D-Link the right to distributed copyrighted works of others? Answer: Nothing
Since the GPL is based on well established copyright and contract law, in most nations it shouldn't really need to be "tested" in court. IANAL, but I would think that it would have a far stronger legal standing than EULAs which often make the people who agree to them take all sorts of measures that have nothing to do with traditional copyright protection.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
We expect people to agree to our Terms of Use but we don't have to obey those from others when we use their products.
How hypocritical!
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
without seeking damages.. GPL has no teeth. more of a, "lets infringe and see, whats the worst that could happen" attitude. asside from that it COSTS money to goto court in the fist place. If the RIAA didnt seek damages would anyone have stopped Kazaing?
The German legal system doesn't have binding decisions, i.e. a judge will - for any new case - look at the legal text and provided evidence and make a decision himself; but as there's nothing wrong with the GPL (and nothing else gives you a right to redistribute software) I'm pretty sure it will hold in the future as well.
This is basically just a relief for people who had doubts in the past.
"if the GPL is valid and a company has released a product contaminated with GPL code, shouldn't they have to release the source rather than simply refraining from the practise?"
This is the viral nature of GPL. I suspect from now on, D-Link will move over to one of the BSD's, probably FreeBSD. The viral aspect of GPL is what I suspect keeps many companies from going full Linux. At least when you make a deal with the Devil, i.e. Microsoft, and MS allows you to modify one of their Windoze kernels for a hardware device, you have the comfort of knowing that your competitors will not use the GPL to try and get their grubby little fingers on the code that you paid huge sums of money to your developers for free.
Copyright by itself is viral. If you modify someone elses Work of Art (i.e. creating your own work based on the original), you need her permission. To distribute it you need her permission again. And to distribute it for modification, you have to ask for permission again and again. Same is valid for the modificaton of the modification. This is viral by nature. The GPL just gives you all three permissions at once, but it doesn't change the virality.
In fact the same is valid for the BSD licence. The original copyright holder has to be mentioned in all derived works, and also in the derivations of the derivations. In this case the virality is attached to another aspect, but it is still viral.
...that your perceptions are maybe the result of different groups of people comprising the slashdot community? I've found that my own opinions on certain subjects are in a minority, while on other subjects they seem to be in the majority. I've even witnessed that on certain topics, moderation of certain viewpoints that you think would be related, turn out differently depending on the topic. I suspect this is due to many people, like myself for example, who just don't read certain topics, while reading other topics faithfully.
I myself have a very low opinion of those who think they have a right to copy whatever they want because "information wants to be free". I see such people as manufacturing reasons to justify their own shoddy behavior. OTOH, I have a very high opinion of the GPL(and other open source licenses) and those who defend them.
Just keep that in mind.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
Imagine this. A clueless properietary software company builds some software based on all the best libraries it can find. It takes some GPLed libraries, licenses some closed source libraries, and links it all together into one closed source executable. Normally, it has to sign non-discolsure agreements as parts of the deal to license the closed source libraries.
In this situation, there is absolutely no way for the clueless company to legally sell the executable. Under the GPL, it must supply the source code for everything needed to build the executable. The only options are: 1) violate the GPL and try to get away with it; 2) release the complete source and get sued by the other closed source licensors for violation of the NDA; 3) no longer sell the executable. I wonder which options most companies would go for?
I bet you this happens all the time. Perhaps even in some of our favorite closed source Linux kernel modules. NDAs are the primary reason given by NVidia and ATI for not open sourcing their graphics card drivers. Perhaps there are even several layers of this happening, with companies trying to sell licenses to closed-source modules that include GPLed software.
It should say absolutely nothing, because the GPL only covers distribution (which you don't automatically have a right to do) while most proprietary software licenses try to cover mere use (which you do automatically have a right to do, under the Doctrine of First Sale). Unlike the GPL, EULAs have no real meaning.
Of course, I'm not German so I have no idea if they do things differently than we do in the US.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Hm,
...
Yup, it looks like the GPL is now (officially) legally binding in Germany.
No, the GPL is not legal binding in germany. In germany only 2 things are legal binding: laws, and contracts. And this is more or less true also for the rest of the world, except that in some countries court rules "become law" or are similar to law unless in later times other courts do no longer agree in certain situations.
What after all does legal binding in your eyes mean anyway?
This says nothing about the EULAs that come with proprietary software. Those are different licenses with different terms, and would have to be tested individually.
What is an EULA? Something you agree on before you buy a product, that is before you aquire ownership? If so the EULA is completely valid as long as it does not contradict any law.
If you have aquired ownership of the product before the EULA is presented to you, e.g. there is a EULA on a sheet of paper inside of the box, or after opening the box and using the software a EULA dialog pops up, the EULA is completly irrelevant and void.
Back to the topic: as far as I understand the ompany D-Link claimed they simply used the GPLed software and had no contract with the author so the "GPL note" on the software would be not legal binding. Thats of course a bullshit idea of D-Link, especially as this is not the first GPL law suit in germany and in all cases the copyright owners won
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Many people (apparently even those in charge of large companies) seem to have this very strange idea that the GPL is not valid, and that because of this they can do whatever they want with the work in question. The premise doesn't have any basis in reality, but the conclusion is sheer insanity. It's somewhat akin to walking into a liquor store, noticing that their liquor license has recently expired and then stealing on their booze, claiming that because it can't legally be sold it must be free. The GPL's validity as a license has nothing to do with copyright law, and those people who have licensed their work under the GPL have explicitly NOT placed their work in the public domain. Hell, D-Link doesn't have (to my knowledge) a publically availible license for their proprietary code at all! That must mean it's public domain, right?
As much as I'd like to see a legal test of the GPL (not because I think it's invalid, but because coporations will become much more willing to deal with it, once it's been proven in court), this is simply a very, very basic test of copyright law. It's amazingly basic, but apparently some people still don't get it: D-Link doesn't think the GPL is a valid contract? Fine, then they're not licensed to distribute the code at all!
IANAL, but IMHO an EULA is an 'agreement' that you, the 'end user' will use the 'license' only under certain conditions as agreed by accepting in the End User License Agreement.
Ergo, the EULA is used to limit the license, for without the EULA, your 'end user' act of purchasing the software would give you a broader 'license' to do what you want with the software.
IANAL..., But the person who gets to defend that right is the copyright holder, not you (the poor victim who depended upon the terms of the GPL.) If the copyright holder takes them to court, and accepts "court costs + stopping distribution", then that is it. I don't see what standing you would have to sue since it wasn't your copyright that was violated...
But why the hell not distribute the source? They are selling the fucking hardware, so making it hackable is an additional attraction (look at linksys' consumer routers: only reason they sell so well is because we can put linux on them!)
They are shooting themselves in the foot, really, and I am so fucking sick of this secrecy for secrecy's sake
6) contact the authors of the GPL libraries and negotiate a different license. This involves paying money for the distribution rights, just like they pay money to the authors of the proprietary libraries.