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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 group even mentions themselves that they were only looking to cease and desist from the practise.
While this does seem to be the right step, I'd have at least expected a requirement to release the source in question - 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?
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
A license is a permission to break some law (James Bond: license to kill, GPL: license to violate copyright under certain conditions). EULAs don't fit the profile, they aren't licenses (unless you live in a country where installing a program from the retail CD to your harddrive is considered a copyright violation).
I've got a Belkin F5D8230-4 MIMO wireless router and the matching F5D8010 cards. Airgo makes the chipset on both. Guess what the router's internal OS is? Guess which OS doesn't have driver support from Belkin/Airgo for the card? I know--this is probably off-topic, as Airgo does release some parts of the router's bits and pieces to the public. That being said, however, to me it's like a violation of the spirit of the GPL to make use of the GPL'd OS to make your product a success, then turn around and very pointedly ignore the support needs of the folks whose code you depended on to get your product off the ground (and Belkin wireless pre-N stuff is exceedingly popular now, as even a casual scan of the Wireless Aisle at the Usual Retail Outlets will confirm). Reading the forums, there's a lot of Linux folks out there who'd love to have a bona fide driver available from the OEM. Probobably a few of whom have contributed code to the OS at one point or another which Belkin/Airgo is dependent on.
At least you can get the card to work via the NDIS kludge (but not in every case, and not even using Belkin's Win32 drivers). I guess I shouldn't complain. WinXP-64 campers are completely out in the cold with this kit, so my partner won't be able to upgrade her Win2K any time soon.
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Right. This is about software distribution, not software use by an end-user. The GPL is *not* an EULA; it's a license to distribute the program. The GPL explicitly states that you do not have to agree to the terms of the GPL in order to use the program.
I suppose that by these same arguments you could argue that EULA's must be valid because nothing else grants you the right to use copyrighted materials when you buy a program from a closed-source vendor. But EULAs go beyond copyrights into contract law, I believe they are a different beast than source code licensing.
I don't know were you got this idea but it is wrong.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FSWithNF
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Not at all. Precondition: you have some GPLd code. You decide to release a product based on that code. How on earth does DLink releasing a closed-source product also based on this code in any way reduce your ability to do likewise? Or anyone else's, for that matter? What you seem to be saying is that DLink is stopping you from piggy-backing off of their code. Which is true, and also forbidden under the terms of the GPL (which they chose to license their base code), which is why they're being shut down.
The BSD license is actually designed to promote true freedom. Freedom, as in "Do what you want to with this, whether or not I approve of it." Not that the GPL doesn't provide for some great ideas, but its hardly a freedom-loving license.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL?
That pretty much sums it up. The way companies like nvidia get away with shipping binary drivers is to not actually link their binary with any GPL code and let the user do that part. Since the FSF and the GPL both recognize the fair use right for people to do whatever they want with GPL software for their own use (without redistributing it), it's legal.
As was I. Having said that, I do regard the GPL as a means to an end, a way of using present copyright and licensing regimes to achieve the four freedoms for software, or something close to it. Under other circumstances, the GPL might not be necessary at all.
Well, the GPL isn't a contract, because it's unilateral, and it's not necessary to agree to it in order to use GPL software, though redistribution is of course copyright violation unless you comply with the terms required by the GPL to permit redistribution. That's why I point out to anyone who thinks that because it's open-source it isn't copyrighted and they should be able to do what they like with it that the corollary implied is that copying and redistributed proprietary licensed software must be equally OK (or not OK).
The obvious reason to use the GPL over the BSD license is that you know your work can't easily be rolled into proprietary code, for someone else to profit from, without ever giving back anything to you or the community. That's made worse by perpetual copyright - it wouldn't be quite so bad if the improved source code would become available anyway in a few years time, and it might also be a disincentive to lift GPL code relying on proprietary/hidden source code to hide the fact, if the developers knew that their indiscretion would become publicly visible before too long.
Copyright duration is an obvious injustice at present. The point of registration is to ensure that only what has potential commercial value is copyrighted. For example, not every email or other document would automatically be copyright, allowing "copyright infringement" to be used against whistleblowers, and work created without the thought of commercial profit could immediately enter the public domain, instead of requiring the creators to explicitly disclaim automatic copyright.
However, I would not want to see the registration process being controlled by a government organisation, like patents or like vehicle licensing, for obvious reasons about the way such organisations tend to become dysfunctional. Instead I would suggest a system of registration in private hands, where in order to bring suit for copyright violation it would be necessary to refer to the escrow deposit of the infringed work on a particular date. That would make it obvious whether it was still within copyright or not, and would ensure that the work became available at the expiration of copyright without being "orphaned" and lost if the original creator was no longer extant. The deposition of a copy of the work could be with a solicitor, for example, or with other organisations that might be formed for the purpose, a bit like the way domain registration works?
As far as permitting non-commercial copying, on any scale, the theory there is that it makes it very easy to justify pursuing commercial infringement vigorously. Under those circumstances, then, I'd suggest that every non-commercial copy made actually increases the commercial value of the work, by acting as free advertising