Stalwarts Claim Asus eeePC Violates GPL

WirePosted writes "Members of the Linux community have complained that the hot new sub-notebook from Asus, the eeePC, may have violated the spirit of the Linux General Public License (GPL). Some Linux advocates claim the eeePC has not included required source code with the installed Xandros Linux distribution and does not easily enable users to install another distro. However, there are indications that eeePC fans probably don't care."

Comments

more than the spirit

[crunzh]

If the following from the article is correct they violate more than just the spirit. However, the latest complaint has more to do with the modication of a particular module of the underlying Linux kernel concerned with managing the hardware interfaces of the eeePC. The module asus_acpi (ACPI - Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) was found by Java developer Cliff Biffle to have been modified so that it works with the eeePC. As Mr Biffle says in his blog, this would be fine except that Asus appears not to have followed the rules required by the GPL when making such modifications. Namely, they haven't distributed the source code for the modified module, nor have they attributed the changes to an author or given the new module a version number or name. Mr Biffle alleges that Asus also appears to have attempted to hide what it was doing by removing all references to asus-apc.

Re:more than the spirit

[morgan_greywolf]

RIght. They've taken a community-developed kernel module and have modified it, and then released the result as a binary-only kernel module without including the soure orat least posting an offer to obtain the source to the kernel module. That's a direct letter violation of of the GPL.Sounds like the author of asus_acpi has a lawsuit on his/her hands.

Re:more than the spirit

[Karzz1]

Can second, third, and fourth-hand distribution of unattributed but non-compliant formerly GPL'd work be prohibited?

Regarding the first part of your statement, it doesn't matter how many iterations of distribution there are. The *only* license that Asus has for distribution is the GPL. If Asus violates the GPL, they lose their right to distribute.

As for the second part of your statement, what makes you think this code is not attributed? In the kernel tree on my current machine (using kernel 2.6.23) the file drivers/acpi/asus_acpi.c has the following as the first 10 lines of code:

/*
* asus_acpi.c - Asus Laptop ACPI Extras
*
*
* Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Julien Lerouge, 2003-2006 Karol Kozimor
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.

As far as compliance goes... compliance to what?

And lastly, and probably most importantly, how did you come to the conclusion that the code was "formerly" licensed under the GPL? That is the *only* license Asus has granting them the permission to redistribute.

I don't know if you honestly did not know this or if you are trolling. This really smells of troll to me though.

Re:It's not the Linux GPL

[maxwell demon]

No, it's not just the GPL. It's the GNU GPL.

Note that this is totally unrelated to the Linux vs. GNU/Linux debate. The name of the license is "GNU General Public License", or "GNU GPL" for short. It's not the only GPL in existence (there's also the Affero GPL), so it's important to correctly qualify it.

Some clarifications are in order.

[cbiffle]

Hi. I wrote the blog post that iTwire cited out of context, and the submitter further mangled. I feel like I should clarify some things.

I'm not accusing ASUS of malice, specifically, just incompetence. They included the GPL in their manual and posted a source tarball, it's just the wrong one. The outside of the retail box even cites the GPL. They've tried to cover their ass and simply screwed it up.

As for the "OMG eee fans don't care!!11", that probably comes from the note I posted which states that I'm not planning to sue ASUS. In fact, what that means is that I've done the lawsuit thing before and simply don't have the time or energy. If I didn't care, I wouldn't have posted my evidence.

I also don't know where that nonsense about making it hard to install another distro comes from, since I posted the info amidst a discussion of installing Ubuntu 7.10 (which I'm using to write this comment).

And finally, I'm not a "Linux stalwart," I'm a "Mac bigot." It says that on my blog.

Re:Source code is fair enough..

[Kristoph]

If you read the original blog you will learn they do distribute source, it just does not include the acpi module. The author of the blog suggests this is nothing more then an oversight.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

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