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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.
to 3.0 This is another reason I'll wait.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
This is why i hate software firms, stealing of gpl'd code is rife in the industry, yet software firms (i'm looking at you microsoft) are constantly pointing the finger at OSS as if THEY are the ones guilty of theift.
the reality of the situation is that OSS is far more concious of copyright and patent issues then anyone else, and do far more then anyone to audit code for violations yet somehow have been slapped with this label of code stealers.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Their legal department has perhaps never heard of the GPL and is flabbergasted that their developers embarked upon something where they have to release their code - the precious, confidential and proprietary sweat of their brows - to the world.
The whole concept is not necessarily intuitive, especially if their lawyers are specialists in "Intellectual Property" law, then they're really crapping a brick.
Well, I don't know if all copyrights to Wine have been transferred to the FSF, but if not, then no, that's not how the industry works.
Each Wine copyright holder (there may well be hundreds, as for the Linux kernel) is free to sue for damages, royalties, their first born, whatever. Maybe they even can initiate a class action lawsuit together. But there's no way the FSF will collect the damages just by being the FSF.
AFAICT that's the main reason for GNU to require all contributors to GNU software to transfer their copyright to the FSF.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
22 days isn't very long, and it sounds like they're not entirely sure where they stand. Let them get proper legal advice, and then plan out what they'll release. The alternative is that they'll clamp down, pull the feature, and release nothing.
It is LGPL'd not GPL'd code. The license expressly states that the reason for the LGPL is to allow proprietary software to use the library in some ways. Maybe they are sitting down with their lawyers to ensure compliance absent releasing the source. Maybe they have several contributors and need to sort out the rights so they don't get sued. Heck, maybe they are seeking clairity on this point from the license:
Point is, lawyers are slow, and companies often use them to prevent negative, unforseen consequences. Give them more time before crucifying/boycotting/etc. instinctively.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Think for a moment and stop going off like an idiot. Someone contacted a company and said, "you are using my copyrighted material without complying with the terms of the license, the license is as follows, fix it."
Who do you think should make the decision as to what is legally required? Perhaps the legal department? Perhaps they have outside counsel like many small companies, and their lawyers needs to read the LGPL and figure out what it applies do.
You expect them to make a decision on a legal matter without finding out from legal what to do.
Legal isn't going to tell them that it's okay to violate someone's copyright, but legal is going to tell them what they need to do to comply with a legal request.
Companies that sold CDs and simply put links on their website to their modified code weren't complying with the GPL. Do you think that FSF's complaints about GPL violations were handled by the webmaster making his own legal call, or legal figured out what to do to comply?
Care to explain the relevance of this comment? ...*snip*...Unless I'm misreading your comment...
Yup, you are misreading my comment. Here's my original comment, with the pronouns expanded:
If you (parallels) don't want to respect other people's (wine's) copyright, why should anyone respect your (parallels) copyright?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
If you distribute an LGPL library, you have to supply the source for that library (but not the code that dynamically links it) whether you modified it or not. If you modified the LGPL library, you have to supply the source code for the changes to the library as well (but not the code dynamically linked to it).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Legal research demands a little more than you can get from Google.
Sorry to feed the troll, but you obviously don't know the first thing about Linux, and both you and your company's lawyers don't know the first thing about the GPL.
ext2 and 3 are both designed to not need to be defragged, unlike FAT or NTFS, which require it on a regular basis to keep from being nigh useless.
Any company that doesn't examine the licensing of the software it will use before putting it into production deserves whatever legal consequences it earns. The first thing I do before starting a project based on other open source (or more rarely proprietary) software is check the listening t make sure I can use it for what I need.
WRONG. The GPL only requires source code disclosure if you distribute the modified code. GPL code isn't free in the do whatever you want, anarchy style freedom that some might want. GPL is free in a community conscious, mutual support style. I personally, as a developer, am of a mixed opinion about this setup. On one side, there is the desire to try making money by hiding "secrets". The other side is that the people who wrote GPL code put a lot of (usually personal) time into developing this code and taking their code without proper credit and listening to their wish on how to use the code.
If you think that using someone's code without proper credit is fair, stop using GPL and label yourself an IP thief. You will also need to write your own kernel (or go back to paying $150+ per seat to use Windows). There are different costs for using different things. Community support is the cost of GPL software, cold hard cash (along with the potential for other, undisclosed costs) is the cost for proprietary software. Its your choice, but when you chose don't complain that you didn't look at what you picked.
Clones are people two.
Uh, dude. If the Wine project wanted to get aggressive, they would have already lost their permission to use any of that code, and would have to remove Parallels from distribution and replace it with something else. Things like sorting out legal issues for third-party code need to be done BEFORE you release the product, not a month afterwards. If they were violating the copyrights of an actual commercial company and ignoring their demands to pay up, they would probably be looking at a multi-million dollar lawsuit by now.