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

You don't know they are in violation

[QuantumG]

For a start you claim:

When I brought up the fact that parts of Watchtower are based on OpenNMS, the client replied "I could not find one ounce of mention on their website to OpenNMS or any other Open Source code that is running on this product. That really irritates me." So what's all this then?

You also make the claim:

I should also mention that this client is in final negotiations with Cittio (they dropped their initial price considerably) so we're not talking a first contact cold call here - they are ready to close this deal without a single detail concerning their use of open source. Yes, and? They are not required to make any such disclosures. The GPL requires them to provide the source code or an offer to provide the source code when they distribute the software. As they haven't distributed any software yet, they are not required to provide any source code or offers to provide the source code.

FAIL.

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.

Re:You don't know they are in violation

[mysidia]

This is not entirely true.

For commercial distribution, the source has to either be included with every copy of the binary, OR the GPL requires a written offer which to any third party, including third parties who are not their customers.

If they chose option (b) for distribution of their source code, then they do have to give something to non-customers, in order to avoid violating the GPL.

That way their customers can re-distribute the binaries and pass along the offer to others.

See the GNU General Public license version 2 section 3.b: b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

Asked before -- the answer is the same

[whoever57]

If you want legal advice, get a lawyer.

Check out the SFLC guidelines.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

The SFLC's Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects covers this. You probably want to give it a read.

Still, if it's really important, ask a lawyer, don't ask Slashdot.

Re:Do a little digging yourself, get a lawyer

[QuantumG]

He's already screwed himself by posting to Slashdot. If he is lucky Cittio will just ignore him. If he's not, they'll probably sue him for libel. His only defense then will be to show that he is right, and that will be pretty hard to do after Cittio have cleaned up any discrepancies they might have had in their distribution.. which they are sure to do before calling the lawyers.

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.

You've achieved your desired goal

[Bruce Perens]

You got your concern on the front page of Slashdot. That means that the company will make sure they're doing everything right, because all of their customers are going to ask them about it now.

That said, it's not at all clear that you had anything to complain about. If SFLC won't help you for the reason you gave, that means you don't have any standing in the matter. You can't sue anyone about it. So, there's not much use in complaining.

IMO, you should make real sure that you at least own the copyright of your own work before you contribute any more.

Bruce

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

[Anonymous Freak]

...out on the web. Nothing in the GPL says that a licensee has to freely offer the code to absolutely anyone free of charge, to anyone that asks, in the manner the asker chooses. It says that they have to offer the code, in a manner of their choosing to anyone that asks.

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.

Now, once someone has the code, that person can then re-distribute the GPLed code however they feel.

One example: My Toshiba HD DVD Player (don't laugh, it was a present,) contains GPL code. Toshiba doesn't make this fact obvious. It's buried in the manual for the product. Toshiba doesn't make the code available on their website, because they're not required to. To quote the GPL 2.0 that my Toshiba uses:

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
        years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
        cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
        machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
        distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
        customarily used for software interchange...

The internet isn't the only medium customarily used for software interchange. And they are allowed to charge a reasonable fee for duplication and distribution. (See GPL section 1.) If they really felt ornery, they would be perfectly within their rights to charge you for the physical cost of a bunch of floppies, and the time (at minimum wage, or even higher,) some flunky had to spend copying onto those floppies.