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GPL vs. Skype Back In Court
mollyhackit writes "Hackaday reports that the GPL vs Skype case is going back to court today. This as an appeal to the court's decision Slashdot reported last July. The original case was brought against Skype for the Linux based SMC Skype WiFi phone. The court upheld the GPLv2 and decided that Skype had not gone far enough in meeting section 3 which details how to provide the original source. This time around Skype is apparently trying to argue that the GPL violates anti-trust regulations."
Or you could use that free thing, add value to it and post the source code like you are supposed to. Then you save money and help out the public good all at the same time. That is how GPL is supposed to work.
This case is being tried in Germany, so a different set of anti-trust laws apply than in the IBM case. The original case was brought by people involved in the gpl-violations.org project, who have a good track record of ensuring companies follow the principle of the GPL for products released in Germany. (IIRC, IANAL in Germany anyone can bring a copyright case to court, it doesn't have to be the actual owner of the copyright)
GPL vs Skype is being held in Munich, not in the US. And the GPL has been successfully tested at least once in Germany.
Your head a splode
Igb, I'm assuming that you're talking about the sources with this. As long as they're the sole copyright holder, they don't have to release the source for those changes, as they aren't a licensee of their own software. If I as the author of some GPL'ed software choose to release a binary-only version of that software under some other license with a feature not encompassed in the GPL release, I'm free to do so. I certainly won't get much standing in the community for it, but I am free to do it. MySQL had plans to do this before Sun reversed that path.
You don't know the alternative and call yourself a geek? Or, maybe an AC is no a geek!
The alternative is to use SIP phones. And then if you don't like one provider, you get another. For example,
http://les.net/
is one provider I've had experience with. But you can get lots more if you want,
http://www.sipcenter.com/sip.nsf/html/Service+Providers
With SIP you can use ANY provider and not waste money on substandard service. Heck, with SIP *you* can be your own provider with Asterisk PBX software.
There is probably more real phones available for SIP than the proprietary protocols like Skype,
http://www.grandstream.com/products.html
Very good phones from my own experience. Skype has been an obsolete VoIP solution for years now. Anyone seriously looking for a flexible VoIP solution, will only look at SIP.
This is a common myth and it's false. If the GPL was invalidated all the code would be owned by it's authors and thier would be no legal way for anyone to use the code without the authors permission. The only time something becomes public domain is after a very long time or if the Author intentionally and legally releases it.
according to this site (in German) the appeal has been withdrawn and skype has retreated with its tail between its legs.
...
until they take a few minutes to understand
it.
http://www.linux-magazin.de/news/
It seems - as usual - lawyers think they can beat down the "amateur made" gpl
That's not how it works.
Both Germany and the U.S. have ratified the Bern Copyright Convention (of sometime in the seventies), which made the default all rights reserved if there is no license, not public domain.
If a GPL term were found to be unlawful, it would be severed from the rest of the license, and the rest of the license would stand.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Actually SCO was not only laughed out of german court, they were asked to shut up or be fined for libel, because their statements was so absurd the court could only find them deliberately malicious.
Linking, even dynamic linking, doesn't get you off the hook if you distribute all of the pieces together and they don't work separately. It doesn't necessarily get you off the hook in other cases either (avoiding a long legal discussion).
However, the Skype code, at least the important part of it, isn't in the Linux kernel. It's a user-mode application and the GPL of the kernel doesn't apply to it.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
"The terms of the GPL prohibit charging for GPL code ever"
This is a horrible misconception.
You can charge whatever people will pay for GPL code.
You just can't sell it to them without also granting them the code and the right to redistribute. That's it. Nothing says no money may change hands.
This is the difference between "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer". GPL code is free as in freedom, not beer.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
The Skype case is in Munich, Germany, a US court does not exactly set any precedent here. But I doubt the decision will be much different to how it would be if it was, as the GPL has been upheld quite often in Germany as well.