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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."
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.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
My blog
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.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
I have a Eee PC. It is a nice little system. Once customized a bit is very usable for the hardcore Linux users. The 24 second boot time is nice.
About the GPL. The manual has a printed version of the GPL, so I don't really think Asus is trying to hide anything. What is more likely, and more like most big companies, the Eee was under a deadline to launch before the Xmas season. The last thing to get done is probably posting source code. Has anyone asked the source code? (perhaps someone has)
Their lawyers will make sure that it gets posted as they ship a license with every product that says it will be available. i.e. They could be in a boat load of legal trouble if they don't, not to mention class-action lawsuits, copyright violations etc.
Any finally, here is company that has come out with a full Linux sub-notebook (just 25 days ago). Instead of floating the latest conspiracy theory, how about giving them the benefit of the doubt. But, then allowing/helping a company to do the right thing, does not make for interesting blog headlines. It is all about the page views.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
It would be nice to think that Microsoft put Asus up to selling a small low powered laptop with one of their pet Linux distros on it.. And deliberately breaking the license in the hope that the next Steve the Monkey Boy show could point and laugh at the Linux people being anti business. But I doubt it.
Thanks for the mental image though. I like the idea of the Microsoft upper management seeing the sales figures and the internet buzz over a trojan horse project that was never meant to succeed selling out and a new market that Microsoft can't really compete in being revealed.
A far more likely scenario is that Xandros delivered the distro customized for the Asus machine, and somewhere in the various legal departments, someone didn't bother following the terms of the license fully. I'll wait until Xandros and Asus respond before I start seeing malice where bureaucratic oversight is a good enough explanation. The product hasn't been out that long, so give them time to get the source properly organized and published before calling foul.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
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.