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Expert Says Cisco's iPhone violates GPL
Stony Stevenson writes "Even while Cisco Systems is suing Apple for violating its iPhone trademark, an open-source enthusiast is accusing Cisco itself of infringing copyright in the same product.
From the article: "Cisco has not published the source code for some components of the WIP300 iPhone in accordance with its open-source licensing agreement, said Armijn Hemel, a consultant with Loohuis Consulting and half of the team running the GPL Violations Project, an organization that identifies and publicizes misuse of GPL licenses and takes some violators to court."
Business and innovation are getting completely strangled by all this IP rights cr^H^H stuff. Is it actually possible to produce anything without setting yourself up to be sued by someone who better understands how the law "works" than you? It's gotten to the point where any business needs a lawyer first, and accountant second and a functional business model an optional third. Can anyone identify the date that making products ceased to be about how good your product was and became more like a poker game where you win if you can raise the stakes higher than the other players can afford?
I know this might be a radical concept, but if you RTFA, you will see that TFA attempts to make the tie. Essentially, the point is that Cisco is being hypocritical in accusing Apple over iPhone trademarks, while violating copyights on the Cisco's iPhone.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Ok, to clarify things - the only thing they HAVE to give people is any modifications to programs licensed under the GPL. If they modified the Linux kernel running on this (which they most likely did) then, yes, they need to release that. If they wrote a custom app for this purpose, that does not need to be released.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
When Cisco sued Apple, there was no way Apple was guilty...
When an open-source "expert" announces that Cisco "might" have violated the GPL...
Please note that Slashdot posters are not a homogeneous mass. Different claims are typically posted by different people with different opinions.
Also please note that there are different types of "IP" involved in the differing infringements:
- In the Apple-Cisco dispute it is a trademark issue. (Last news I saw makes it look like Cisco had let the trademark lapse - which leaves it open to the next claimant.)
- In the Cisco-GPL dispute it is a matter of whether Cisco failed to abide by copyright licensing terms, along with an attempt by a party to whom those terms grant rights to require performance.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The article implies a linkage that isn't there.
iPhone is a trademark dispute between Apple and Cisco.
The other appears to be a vague accusation the Cisco didn't abide by a usage restriction (not related to apple in the least) on source code....
I mean, perhaps this could be considered ironic, but irony is not a legal challenge and in any case, even if the GPL has been violated, it has no bearing at all on the case between Apple and Cisco.
I'm not a big fan of the way either of these companies use their legal teams, but you don't have to be a lawyer to realize that Apple is wrong here. They gave away their entire negotiating position when they announced iPhone before securing the rights to the name. They either pony up what Cisco wants, or choose a new name. It's not that difficult.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The GPL (v2) REQUIRES that a commercial distribution of the software as object EITHER be accompanied by the source OR by an offer, good for three years, to sell a copy of the source to ANY THIRD PARTY for no more than a nominal copying fee. (Non-commercial distributions, under some circumstances, have a third option of just forwarding the offer they got from upstream.)
Since they didn't distribute the source, in machine-readable form, with every iPhone, they must make (and live up to) the offer to EVERYBODY - not just their customers, not just to repurchasers of their customers' equipment:
Since they didn't distribute the source, in machine-readable form, with every iPhone, they must make (and live up to) the offer to EVERYBODY - not just their customers, not just to repurchasers of their customers' equipment.
Got it now?
Since they ALSO didn't make the offer they're already in violation, and have thus have no right to distribute the software and are liable for violation of the underlying copyrights. However, when someone is caught in violation by not making the offer, those enforcing the GPL will generally settle for letting them clean up their act by making the offer retroactively and providing source code under it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... the only thing they HAVE to give people is any modifications to programs licensed under the GPL. If they modified the Linux kernel running on this (which they most likely did) then, yes, they need to release that. If they wrote a custom app for this purpose, that does not need to be released.
Sorry, not true.
If they have a stand-alone part that is unchanged they still have to distribute the source of it.
If they have stand-alone part they modified they have to license their modifications under the GPL and distribute the whole part's source (not just the deltas).
The only thing they can avoid *GPLing and distributing source for is a stand-alone part that they wrote from scratch - and then (since it's a single software load rather than a distribution containing clearly separable components) only if the underlying code was licensed under the LGPL rather than the full-blown GPL.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They can't restrict one 'unfriendly customer' from then passing the modifications on to the world at large, though.