Dealing With a GPL Violation?

Sortova writes "For many years now I've been maintaining OpenNMS, a free and open source network management framework published under the GPL. A couple of years ago it came to our attention that a company called Cittio was using OpenNMS as part of their proprietary and commercial network management application. I talked with Jamie Lerner, the Cittio founder, and he assured me that Cittio was abiding by the GPL. However, we were recently contacted by a potential client who was also considering Cittio's Watchtower, and it appears that they are not disclosing that they are using GPL'd code or at least not in the clear and concise fashion required by the GPL, including the offer of source code for all of the code they are including and any changes being made to that code. Since the copyright for OpenNMS is held by a number of commercial companies, the Software Freedom Law Center is not able to help us defend or even investigate a potential violation. I was curious if anyone here on Slashdot had experienced anything similar or has any advice?"

Comments

Asked before -- the answer is the same

[whoever57]

If you want legal advice, get a lawyer.

Bye bye my application

[icepick72]

I understand the joy of coding and excitement of creating your own applications for free, but I can never understand how programmers stand to watch their creations being usurped for commercial purposes. Whether it's abiding by the GPL or not, somebody else is making money from your creation. You would think the original programmer would have the wherewithal to market their own creation instead of leaving it for someone else. Even if you don't take the money for yourself, donate it back to the FSF or to another worthwhile cause. Maybe it's a case of lack of resources to start your product running. Maybe we need a group that can fill this niche for open source products. Maybe they already exist. If so I'd like to see discussion about it.

Re:Bye bye my application

[QuantumG]

Cause selling a solution is just as much, if not more, work than creating one?

And it is something that is done by sales people, not programmers?

Re:Bye bye my application

[GrahamCox]

You would think the original programmer would have the wherewithal to market their own creation instead of leaving it for someone else

Why would you think that? People are usually good at some things, not at others. I think it's very likely that a person good at programming and software design wouldn't necessarily be good at (or even interested in) running a business, accounting, marketing, all the legal stuff, etc. It's also very hard to find people to come in with you who are, based only on your software/coding expertise. I speak from experience.

Re:Bye bye my application

[wolf87]

I recently developed a small package of statistical tools & made it available under lesser GPL. I made the decision to open-source it for several reasons. First, I wanted to make it easily available to other researchers wrestling with the same problem I was. Second, I wanted to see if anyone could take what I had done and extend it into a better set of tools. Third, having it freely available, code and all, helps to get my name out there and build my reputation. There are plenty of reasons to put out applications without making money from it.

Re:Bye bye my application

[theophilosophilus]

So long as they're not making it proprietary, what's the problem? We can both destroy markets and help the world by opening our source, and that's pretty awesome. If someone happens to make some money (maybe consulting, whatever), so be it. Why is destroying markets a good goal? I think a better choice of words would be "revolutionize" or "reinvigorate." OSS doesn't destroy a market - it just makes it more competitive. See this post.

Re:Bye bye my application

[fr0st0]

I agree [GrahamCox]. Also, the ultimate underlying motivation of the programmers and the GPL, CCL, etc. is to increase information. Open and Free programmers are like anyone else in that they do what they do for a multitude of reasons (social, relative notoriety, etc. [see the first few chapters of 'Wealth of Networks']) but at the end of the day it all serves to expand the knowledge horizon of everyone, indirectly or directly. That combination of selfishness(in that more information benefits you) and selflessness (in that it also benefits everyone else) is the underlying sense of purpose that attracts the users and motivates the developers alike.

Re:You don't know they are in violation

[LingNoi]

Not only that, they only have to provide the source code to the person they're redistributing to under the same license if they changed anything, that doesn't include you, because you're not their customer.

If there's something they've changed in your project then purchase a copy and put the changed code in your version, since any modified GPL code must be re-distributed as GPL code.

Re:Check out the SFLC guidelines.

[Protonk]

You you really listen to legal advice on slashdot? I wouldn't. I would not listen to advice that came from someone where I had no means of verifying their credentials, no recourse if they were wrong and no good way to show people later that I operated in good faith.

Re:You don't know they are in violation

[LingNoi]

You're not their customer so they don't have to give you anything.

Only Cittio's customers (the ones receiving the product) could ask for the source code, because they're redistributing to them, not you. Cittio's customers could then re-distribute that GPL code however they wished.

Additionally

[einhverfr]

In addition to getting a lawyer, you also want to get other OpenNMS copyright holders (particularly the commercial companies) in the loop. This helps increase the leverage and the resources available to fight. And they will bring in more lawyers, in all liklihood.

Show and Tell ( ... anyone? )

[remitaylor]

You must have been absent all of those days in kindergarten when they emphasized *sharing*

Typical situation:
  * programmer needs X (to "scratch own itch")
  * programmer makes X and realized that, wow, other people might want to use it or contribute to it
  * programmer releases source
  * FIN

A few things might happen:
  * people contribute to X and make it better, for friggin FREE!
  * companies use X - programmer helped out other human beings
      * depending on license X was released under, if companies make their own improvements, they have to release the source code ... once again ... making your software better for FREE

You can be a douche bag and spend lot of time packaging EVERY projects you EVER make, and charging $19.95 for it ... or you can be productive, not worry about trying to sell every piece of code you've EVER written, and release the code as open source to help other programmers.

Make something seriously cool that's worth marketing and selling ... SELL IT.

But if you don't get how anyone might want to ... I dunno ... share with the community to help others ... then what the friggin Hell are you doing on slashdot? Seriously? Well. Nevermind ... I suppose we all need some flamebait, now and again, eh?

As a side note ... the more open source software you release, the better the chances of someone actually being helped by it, the better the chance of it becoming well known or used ... the more visitors your site gets ... the more you SELL SELL SELL to your visitors ( commercial software or support or consulting )

I follow a lot of what the writers of my favorite libraries do/blog and I'd love nothing more than to, one day, release projects that help others, as I've been helped by so, so, so many open source projects.

Finally, I'd reiterate that a lot of the open source projects our there are there because someone made something to scratch his/her own itch ... then released it. Many of these projects would be VERY hard to sell, and would take TIME to sell ... so, instead, people offer them up to others to use / improve / etc. But, for those of use who prefer licenses like the GPL, the code is offered up such that any improvements need to be open source, as well ... thus, everyone can work to make it better! If you want to be able to sell your own "Professional" or "Advanced" version of your software, release it under a license that lets you do so.

A lot of these projects would NOT SELL on their own. Other people use them because they exist, but, if they didn't exist for free, the companies would likely program it themselves. When a company uses your code in their software, you simply end up getting more exposure and ... hell ... they might even hire you for programming / consulting. Honestly, where's the downside?

People like you would rather have an apple rot than give it away to others. If your apple's ripe and you're not going to eat it ... see if someone else wants it. If you're a programmer, I bet you've got atleast a dozen finished or half-finished project that you're not making ANY money from, nor are you ever likely to. Don't you understand that you could open source them and ... maybe someone'll find them via google one day and you'll have helped someone else? You might even get a patch in the email one day from someone who's dramatically improved your code ... or just from someone thanking you for releasing it! At the very least, it'll make you feel good about yourself whereas, if you hadn't released the code, you never would've felt good about helping that person. It's really that simple.

</rant>

Re:Just write it up

[Jedi Alec]

Also, writing a polite email which details exactly how they are breaking the GPL and which steps they should take to correct the issue, might help a lot. It's sometimes just simple misunderstanding of the GPL. Sometimes on the part of the author, sometimes on the part of the user - but in any case, the act of detailing the alleged breach of license will clarify the issue.

Why go straight on the offensive? By detailing their offenses, you're pretty much saying you're already convinced they're in the wrong, which tends to put people on the defensive.

What's wrong with simply asking "Hey guys, i see you're using GPL'd software, which is great. Could you give me some more information on how you make the source code available to your customers?"

Re:As has been said: They don't have to give the c

[jamesh]

In a commercial hardware product, that means that the company can insist on only distributing the code by sending it to you as a bunch of floppy disks, for all the GPL cares.

This goes against the spirit of the GPL.... To take your example to the extreme, suppose that they made the code available via 3of9 barcode in printed format? stone tablet (mailed to you via overnight delivery at your expense)? 8" floppy disks? download via modem @ 300bps at $19.95/minute? Maybe stone tablets aren't machine readable but the rest are.

It's the "complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code" and "a medium customarily used for software interchange" you quoted that explain it. How many computers have floppy disks these days? Mine doesn't. When was the last time you saw anyone exchange code on a floppy disk?

Re:Check out the SFLC guidelines.

[Kjella]

Oh, I've seen several lawyers here but they always point out that they're not your lawyer and that this is not legal advice. Can't really blame them either, if someone took a fairly unqualified slashdot post and applied that uncritically as legal advice in a specific case I wouldn't want to stand responsible for it either. It'd be like taking a doctor's general advice and applying it as your personal medical diagnosis, what's in general good advice may not be for you.