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SWSoft Out of Compliance With the GPL
MBCook writes "According to the Official Wine Wiki, SWSoft's Parallels 3.0 contains LGPL code. It seems that the new 3D acceleration features of Parallels 3.0 are based on Wine code (SWSoft isn't hiding this), but despite repeated requests they have not yet released their changes for the Wine developers. It has now been 22 days since SWSoft was first contacted on this issue; at the time they promised the code within 1-2 days. They have been contacted numerous time and currently say that they are waiting on 'legal department approval.'" Update: 07/03 00:06 GMT by KD : Reader something_wicked_thi notes that Parallels released the source code the next day.
Mod Parent down
The poster is a troll
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
First off, their are statutory damages, but generally only for registered copyrights. Also, it's not clear what "damages" the copyright owner, we don't know who, has suffered. Your relief is based upon damages, and maybe a punitive component, not I don't like you.
The FSF requires copyright assigned because then there is a clear owner and clear damages, because the FSF with the GNU manifesto and other things has its defined benefit from GPL'd code. Makes it more likely you can gain relief... if they sue and ask for damages plus injunctive relief, there is a clear plaintiff, not "a bunch of hackers," that has standing.
22 days is no a long time. Generally, if you are dealing in legal action, 30 days is standard. Sure, obnoxious lawyers demand things with 10 days to correct, but generally, 30 is normal.
It appears to be a major screw-up, they released code based upon LGPL'd code. Legal needs to figure out what they did, what they are at risk for, and what they should do. They need to make certain that they can legally release code, and if that is sufficient.
The copyright holders should hold their feet to the fire, but public shaming and getting half stories out seems a bit premature at this stage of the game. What damages can the Wine project have had from not having access to derivative versions of their software from this company in 22 days? Lots of things can crop of and cause things to take a few weeks. Everyone chill, and don't prejudge until we see a resolution.
Everyone is "free to sue," but each wine copyright holder may or not have standing, and may or may not have sufficient damages to due and/or be granted injunctive relief. If you ask the court to stop them from distributing your software because they are doing so without a license, it's harder to claim that if various copyright holders have 10-15 lines of code.
There is no "class" here for a class action lawsuit.
Write to the CEO (Sergey Beloussov) directly: sb@swsoft.com He is pretty responsive actually.
As a former employee, I should say that part of the problem is developers, that choose libraries for the project without looking into the license. I didn't work on Parallels project, so I don't know how exactly it is there, but in our project I several time had to tell people that they can't use some library, because it is GPL and they were like "Hmm, never thought of looking at it from this perspective". Most of them just used to take and use whatever is available
May Peace Prevail On Earth
The headline is *wrong*.
8 ), the statement is somewhat confusing, since it can be intepreted that they're using only Wine DLLs or that they actually changed some of Wine code to suit them. Are we going after Parallels simply because of a forum post and a timeline on a wiki?
Wine uses LGPL 2.1, not the latest GPL or even the latest version of the LGPL.
WineHQ states that "The licensing terms are the GNU Lesser General Public License" on their main page, which links to the Licensing page where they have the text for the LGPL v2.1 (http://www.winehq.org/site/license).
I read their copy of the LGPL 2.1, and other than requesting that copies of the library and its source be distributed with the project that uses it, I don't see where it says that the source for the entire project making use of the library has to be released as well, unless it can be demonstrated that significant changes have been made to the library to use it in the project or that the project relies completely on it to make it unusable if removed.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think anyone has actually seen any of the Parallels sourcecode, so no one can actually say how much or even if Parallels has modified Wine to use it in their software.
While they admit they use Wine DLLs in a forum post (http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=1264
Does Parallels really have to release their source code if no one can conclusively know if or how they have modified Wine source?
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
True, but the issue here is not GPL'd code, but LGPL'd (Limited GPL, or Library GPL) code. GPL means all your code must be open/released, or you cannot use the GPL'd code in your project; that's the situation you describe above. LGPL'd code can be linked in proprietary projects where the source is not available, but any *changes* you make to the LGPL'd code must be released/contributed back. The LGPL was originally created for libraries that should be usable in proprietary software, but which you don't want closed/proprietary forks of, but it's been used for other things as well.
In this case, it sounds as though SWSoft has taken LGPL'd code, modified it to do more stuff in some way and then used that for the 3d accleration support in Parallels 3.0... that's all fine, and Parallels itself doesn't need the source opened. But they have not contributed those changes to the actual LGPL code -- their own modifications, bugfixes, etc. -- back to Wine, and that is *not* okay under the license. So Wine wants the code contributed back, and SWSoft is stalling, which is the problem.
--Rachel