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Suit Claims Diebold Voting Machines Violate GPL
An anonymous reader writes "Diebold Inc. and its subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions, is using Ghostscript in its electronic election systems even though Diebold and PES 'have not been granted a license to modify, copy, or distribute any of Artifex's copyrighted works,' Artifex claims in court papers filed late last month in US District Court for Northern California. The gs-devel list first brought up the possible GPL violation a year ago."
The GPL is pretty strict about any distribution requiring source being made available. Embedded devices are no exception.
They are probably not distributing the software outside their own company.
Considering they *sell* the machines to the government, that most certainly counts as distribution.
Just because it's loaded on closed hardware doesn't mean that it's not being distributed.
For one of the people who will be running the election hall on election day, when they get delivery of the election machine, is that counted as receiving a copy of the software?
Unless Diebold is
A) a part of the US government
or
B) running the election
that's pretty much irrelevant. They're distributing the machine to the government, who sends them to the election halls, and *that* is what counts as distribution.
Look, the GPL gives Diebold the explicit right to use that software, so long as they distribute it themselves.
What? The GPL gives them the right to use and modify the software, as long as they don't distribute it. If they distribute it (say, by selling a voting machine that runs a copy of the software) they have to provide the source. They have not provided any source.
all they've done is establish that the free software movement is really free subject to arbitrary whims and conditions.
The conditions are not arbitrary. They are clearly spelled out in the GPL, which is much easier to read and obey than any proprietary license.
At least if they had used Microsoft Windows internally, they would have been free of any political considerations for license compliance.
Read the second link in the blurb. The voting machines in question run Windows 2000. Guess what, GhostScript runs on Windows too.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's my understanding that anyone who has "object code" is also entitled to "source code."
This means the owners of the voting machines have standing to sue. If the machines are leased, depending on how the courts determine what distribution means when a lease is involved, the local governments may or may not have standing.
The copyright owner might only have a claim of "license violation" if an owner asked for and was denied the source code.
There's also the whole issue of "how viral is viral." If the printing code is done as an independent program, then Diebold might only be obliged to release it. After all, if I publish a BSD LiveCD that contains some GPL programs, I'm obligated to publish the GPL source but not the source to BSD-licensed code. The same would apply if the PDF-generating code were in a self-contained application in the "rom filesystem" in the firmware.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"The routers are mean to be as locked up as a voting machine, but because of the GPL they are forced to distribute the source"
..
No one is forcing Diebold Inc. to use Ghostscript in its electronic election systems
davecb5620@gmail.com
Based on the totally inadequate summary it seems like there is no violation, except perhaps the minor one of Diebold not having their own ftp site with the normal GPLed gs code available (which they could fix in an hour).
I mean if Diebold didn't modify gs but merely used it on their machines they are only required to distributed the standard gs code. The mere fact that gs runs on the same machine doesn't make the rest of the diebold code a derived work. It's all about what is a derived work of the gs code.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
After RTFA (which does not even mention GPL) and the gs-devel post, it would seem that the lawsuit most likely centers around their in-house "AFPL" which apparently forbids commercial usage (regardless of source availability). One would have to find the actual filing to know for sure.
Sigh. The GPLv2 makes it perfectly clear that the "offer to provide source code" method of binary distribution can only be passed on from a third party for non-commercial distribution.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
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,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
It's pretty straightforward english.
How we know is more important than what we know.
From what I understand their ATM security is just fine.
uhh what?
Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems (GES), the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years[7]
The code was already found on a public FTP site by the founder of blackboxvoting.org
The code is totally insecure, and has many vulnerabilities.
Rest assured, there are multiple ways to rig the voting machines.