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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!
Stop wineing already! ::Ducks::
If you don't want to respect other people's copyright, why should anyone respect your copyright?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Mod Parent down
The poster is a troll
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
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....
Expect it soon, after all the slashdotters send them a nice e-mail.
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.
Sorry, you seem to be mistaken. You're only required to publish changes if you /distribute/ code, which is not what is happening at all. And, you don't need to GPL things compiled by gcc, you need to GPL things compiled with glibc, ie, when you actually include GPL'd code in yours. I think. For all I know, glibc could be LGPL'd [now that I think about it, it probably is]. The reason being, you don't actually distribute any part of gcc with your software.
That would be like having being told what you can and can't do with things written in Microsoft Notepad.
We at slashdot are scientists, specialists and kernel hackers. Your FUD will be found out.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
Okay, there is a list of authors. So what. Something not being okay doesn't mean it is legally challengeable.
Further, courts can offer monetary relief and injunctive relief, that' about it. Damages need to be translated into dollars.
They didn't follow the license, therefore, they are infringing upon WINE or those 800+ people's copyright, so what?
They are legally in the wrong, so what?
What are the damages? Do you want to foot the bill to just get injunctive relief?
One of the reasons to assign to FSF is they WILL foot the bill to get injunctive relief, which is a threat to businesses that makes the FSF credible. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that: 299 Shi Quan He (picked a line at random) is not going to drop a $20k retainer off at an attorney to file for an injunction to stop Parallels 3.0 from shipping...
SWSoft screwed up, seems to acknowledge that they need to fix it, and some jackass is all over Slashdot because 3 weeks later and legal is figuring out what to do.
[ Technical note: You don't normally defrag ext2 or ext3: neither need it. ]
I've seen very similar complaints from folks who never understood or had the GPL carefully explained to them. Yes, if you build on top of someone else's code base (such as a Linux kernel, which is under GPL) and send that modified tool to your customers, then you have to send along your modifications to your customers. This is how Linux the kernel, and the GNU softwaer on which so much of Linux the operating system, became so powerful and effective.
If you're going to compete in that world, and reap the benefits of the software, you'll have to have some real addition to sell on top of it. This may be continuing technical innovation in your product line: this may be unique support for its use: it may be customization services for your customers. But yeah, you can't change 2 lines of code to break compatibility with anyone else's products and pretend it's the same product, then keep it secret. (That's basically what Microsoft did with Kerberos in Active Directory: it's been worked around in MIT's source code.) Nor can you reap 1000 man-weeks of development time, add 2 weeks for a cute new feature, and deny the others who provided that 1000 man-weeks the opportunity to test or include that feature.
If your source code is so precious that only you can be allowed to see or use it, then you are massively vulnerable to software theft. And frankly, that kind of secrecy makes your code untrustworthy: what precisely are you scared of people seeing? That you've hacked your libraries to work around a hardware bug that should never have been there? Or that your security model is a sad, sad joke? Or that your much vaunted "new feature" is something that has been in place for 4 years, but was never published? (Yes, I've seen all of these happen.)
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
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
The member of the Wine community who is chasing this up certainly has bought a copy. He's a regular on the Parallels forums.
However, anyone who downloads the demo is eligible for a copy too... since the Wine code is in the demo version too.
Has any of the /. staff thought writing an addition/plugin/module/whatever to slash that identifies these troll posts and stop them from being posted ? Most of these have been around for ages, and posted many times (although i couldn't find that many from /., mainly because [AFAIK] google will not index threads that are hidden).
Shouldn't be that hard, define some way of calculating the distance between texts, allow users to flag posts as repeat troll, when enough similar flagged posts are found add it to the list, and finally check new posts against the list at post time.
But OTOH, this is probably a little overkill for something that is already dealt with rather well by the existing modding system.
Lima India November Uniform X-ray
There is already ill feeling towards SWSoft from some of the community over issues of license adherence and I'm surprised it's not already been mentioned in this discussion.
SWSoft are also the developers of Plesk which is (expensive commercial) server management software, similar in functionality to cPanel and the like.
For a number of years now some Plesk users have been complaining that source code is not made readily available for some of the patched packages that are provided by SWSoft with their Plesk software -- specifically here I am referring to Qmail, but this applies to other modified software bundled with Plesk.
It's a total bummer - make's it impossible to tweak the mail server when you can't simply rebuild it, especially with Qmail - the base code for which doesn't have any of the more modern useful features that other mail servers have until you apply a myriad of patches to it.
- Which patches have they applied and how?
- What other tweaks have they made?
- Where can I get the source code for the non-SWSoft bundled components of Plesk?
I really think SWSoft have pushed their luck for too long already, it's about time they either became compliant and released the ALL of the code they were meant to - or they should be punished legally.
Posting anonymously because we use Plesk a lot (not my choice).
I would be interested to hear comments from anyone else on the matter of source code for the modified open source components utilised within Plesk...
Before we all get too excited...
The TFA links to a page on the official Parallels website that acknowledges the use of open source code from various sources, including the use of the LGPL, and offers to provide the source on request, as required.
Allegedly, when people have actually EMAILed this address, the response has been less than satisfactory.
Its quite right that the WINE people are keeping an eye on this situation, but I suggest that people browse the rest of the Parallels support fora and form an impression of the company's general track-record vis. timely and helpful responses to EMAIL requests before trying to answer the "conspiracy" vs. "cock-up" question.
Parallels for Mac is a jolly impressive product - they got a perfectly usable package out of the door, at a very low price within, what? six months of the launch of Intel Macs, and have since been regularly upping the ante in terms of OSX/Windows integration. However, they also have issues - e.g. too many people were enticed by the website to try the beta version of 2.5 and the current blurb for 3.0 widely oversells its ability to Run today's most popular PC games on a Mac.
The latter is a pity - what they've achieved is jolly impressive (e.g. I've been quite happily running "Freelancer" - everything apart from the opening splash & movie works, UT2004 was tolerable, with glitches) but its much more "enjoy a few of your 3-4 year old PC games that you didn't think you'd be able to play again".
As for the EMAIL & support: they'd been selling virtualization software to a crowd of tech-savvy developers and sysadmins, then they suddenly started dealing with regular Mac users who wanted to sync their mobile phones or run accounting software and were now trying to "virtualize" the copy of windows previously installed under "bootcamp". Anybody here want to volunteer for that particular helldesk?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
If, however, you modify the LGPL'd code before you distribute it, then you must also distribute all of your changes.
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Whoa, whoa. I didn't say it's a good thing to be fragmented. But to a large extent, it's pointless to defragment with a reasonably well written file system such as ext2 and ext3. There's quite a bit of low level work that went into optimizing their disk access, and the file structure is not prone to the sort of performance degradation common to FAT32 or to a lesser extent NTFS when numerous caching operations are done. Moreover, the typical caching of frequently accessed files in available RAM massively reduces the performance hit of fragmentation. The fragmentation you're worrying about is more important for, for example, high bandwidth video streaming. But unless you've engaged in interesting games to prevent any other processes from accessing that disk at all, the performance hit is negligible if even perceptible to ordinary use.
Legal research demands a little more than you can get from Google.
The GNU C Library actually is distributed under LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node /Copying.html), So your closed-source proprietary code is allowed to link with it without any problem and you don't have to redistribute the Glibc's code as long as it's unmodified. According to http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=12648& highlight=wine , a guy named Andrew, who is a Parallels' forum administrator, openly admitted they're using modified LGPL code, as quoted: "In current implementation Parallels uses modified Wine code under LGPL license.". What they're missing is the fact that according to the LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html), in it's Section 2, if they distribute modified binaries based on the LGPL code they need to redistribute the source code of the modified LGPL library under LGPL or GPL. Quoting:
"2. Conveying Modified Versions.
If you modify a copy of the Library, and, in your modifications, a facility refers to a function or data to be supplied by an Application that uses the facility (other than as an argument passed when the facility is invoked), then you may convey a copy of the modified version:
a) under this License, provided that you make a good faith effort to ensure that, in the event an Application does not supply the function or data, the facility still operates, and performs whatever part of its purpose remains meaningful, or
b) under the GNU GPL, with none of the additional permissions of this License applicable to that copy."
Umm, as original developers they own the copyright on the code. Period. Any distribution of the derived library (not the entire Parallels suite!) can only occur under the terms of the LGPL. Thus while the developers do not have a purchased license to install parallels, they are in a position to demand that Parallels release the modified library source doe to their customers. Otherwise Parallels is in breach of copyright and has no right to distribute the derived library in any form, customers or not.
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.
Sense of entitlement? Are you serious? Listen, why don't you think of this in different terms. You own a company, and you pay your hackers to write a complex bit of software, which you sell to your clients. Suddenly, you become aware that another company, writing a piece of software that does something very similar to yours, is using your code in its product.
When you contact them to rectify the situation, they say "We know we're using your code and not abiding by the terms set forth in the license, we'll deal with it" and then a month later they still haven't dealt with it. How would you feel? Are you seriously saying that you wouldn't take them to court? They are in clear violation of your license, they have admitted as much in correspondence with your company, and still haven't dealt with it, despite your lenience. You could take them to court for millions of dollars and you would win.
For some reason, a large number of people here don't seem to understand that the GPL is a license like any other software license. It is used by free software hackers in their basements, and it is used by large, multi-national companies like IBM, RedHat, and MySQL. Just because the license is permissive does not mean that it is not a license with requirements that need to be met.
The situation with the WINE crew is exactly analogous to the scenario I outlined above, the only difference being that WINE is not a company. Everything else about it is exactly analogous. And you're going on about the coders having a "sense" of entitlement. Here's the truth: WINE is a huge and complex project that has taken a team of very talented hackers a long time to put together. Along the way, its efforts have been helped by companies, as well as by other projects like ReactOS.
The reason SWSoft used WINE in the first place, rather than just rolling their own solution, is because WINE is complex enough that to reinvent the wheel would probably have cost them millions. They were allowed to use WINE without pay -- but only on the condition that the GPL be abided by. Had it been for pay, would they have used the code first, released a product, and then waited nearly a month before sending a check? Hell no, and you know it as well as I. The problem here is that people like you and like them seem to think that just because WINE asks for source instead of code as payment, no payment is required, or that there is some leeway on the payment of debts.
In any other situation, these "internal issues that this kind of company is going to encounter" would have been taken care of prior to release. Here, they weren't.
On top of that, there's not much for them to figure out: if they used LGPL'd code, any and all changes to that code must be released. Some other posters have suggested that they're "verifying" or some such. There's nothing to verify. If they inserted code they can't release under the LGPL into a LGPL'd product and are distributing binaries produced by that mixture, they are in violation of the LGPL and can and should be sued into oblivion.
Oh, yes. I'm sure you'd be tempted to do that. Until you saw the price that sort of development costs. This isn't a little library of convenience routines or something. This is WINE -- a project of extreme complexity which has benefited from nearly a decade of development and testing. It is completely non-trivial. The reason SWSoft used it in the first place is precisely because "recreating the functionality from scratch" would cost them an arm and a leg. In the real world, we don't piss away millions of dollars in development costs just because we're annoyed that we're being asked to honor the law.
From my knowledge on how wine works, and what parallels does (it runs windows), there has to be modifications. WineD3D was written with the thought that someone could port it to windows, but it hasn't been done. We're pretty sure that there has to be modification to WineD3D to get it to work on windows, and then you got to consider how it interfaces with parallels. So whatever they did had to be pretty clever.
The fact they had to be asked whether they used wine code first before mentioning they did is concerning. The fact they released a product with wine code in binary form without thinking they needed to release the source is even more concerning. The license requires to provide source code modified or not. Right now the are in violation of the license and committing copyright infringement.
What makes you think that small projects can naively violate the (L)GPL? How can a project can be so stupid not to know the requirements of the GPL before using it? There is no exemption there, and if anyone fails at it they are committing copyright infringement.
Yes, but it's not immune to fragmentation or the effects fragmentation can have. I've seen Linux mail servers on ext2/3 that have absolutely terrible performance caused by disk fragmentation, and the admins absolutely refuse to believe there is a file system problem because they're drank the "ext2/3 doesn't need fragmenting" kool-aid. Once they switched to, say, XFS which has online defrag tools, the performance bottlenecks disappeared.
It's a myth. I don't like people spreading it. Fragmentation can and does affect Linux systems. Just because the system is resistant to the effects of it should not mean that you don't have to think about it. Linux is resistant to viruses and has a superior security model, too. Does that mean we shouldn't be concerned about security vulnerabilities?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I bet some lawyer for the company is itching to see if the LGPL is up for a court test. I wonder if they're ready to put up hard cash in the form of billable legal hours and a challenge in court on the basic legal grounds point, value, and weight of the LGPL against American copyright law. It doesn't generate a large sum of money profit for someone so it must be challenged.
This is a possible scenario. Of course the contrary of this is also possible and they ultimately release the changes back to the rest of us.
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