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GPL Case Against Danish Satellite Provider
Rohde writes "The number of satellite and cable boxes on the Danish market using Linux has significantly increased during the last couple of years. The providers Viasat, Yousee and Stofa all provide HD receivers based on Linux, and all of them fail to provide the source code or make customers aware of the fact that the units are based on GPL licensed software. I decided it was time to fix this situation and luckily the Danish legal company BvHD has decided to take the case. We are starting with Viasat, which distributes a Samsung box including middleware and security from NDS, and you can follow the case here."
What does the community get out of the fact that YouSee, Stofa, and Viasat use Linux?
All the Danes on Slashdot probably know about Viasat's business practices, which are about as close to fraud as you can get without losing in court, so I don't need to warn anyone against signing contracts with them.
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In some countries, law firms are allowed to sue on the behalf of copyright owners on their own initiative, much like how you can be brought up on assault charges by the state in some countries even if the person you hit wanted you to do so.
Which comes down to just providing them the Ubuntu CD , which most would do anyway.
Unless you really made some changes to the source code , in that case , you also need to provide the source for those changes.
I don't see the problem : if you use GPL , you know this is what you have to do . It's what GPL is all about.
If you don't want to do this , you need another license type. Often , this is a possibility too ( for a modest fee ) . I'm not sure if Ubuntu has it though.
Simply put : GPL favors mainly the end users :
by ensuring that derative products are also open source , you ensure that a product will stay open source.
However , i doesn't favor developers or companies ( who are forced to share their work for free ) .
Slipping shoelaces ?
The company NDS that actually does most of the software on the box and tracked me down actually had 1 month to come up with an excuse for why the box violated GPL. I had direct contact with one of their representatives. They failed to give me any answer. I then contact the satellite provider using certified mail and wait 13 days for their answer. How long should I wait for this to be fair? The Danish providers have ignored GPL for years and I am pretty sure they know it. It would be nice of them to at least contact me and say we are working on it.
Because the device only accepts firmware with the proper digital signature? At least, that's how TiVo did it.
No existe.
Please read my web page as it pretty much answers why they decided to track me down. I'm beginning to think you did not read the prologue? I was in contact multiple times with the security investigators from NDS and made them aware of the problem. We had meetings and phone conversations. It is now 6 weeks since I pointed them to the GPL violations and no comments so far. Viasat distributes the box and is the official offender, but I am pretty sure they rely on the solution bought from NDS. This is why I first tried to talk with NDS.
If you are wondering why NDS sent security investigators it was most likely because I started digging into how the box is tied to your subscription card, thus making it impossible for you to use other brands of satellite receivers.
Everything which you distribute which is GPL licensed puts an obligation on you to distribute the source code
Not quite correct. For example, I bought a router that includes GPL code. If I sell that router on eBay, I am not obligated to provide source code, even though I am distributing the binary code that is in the router.
Only if your distribution requires permission from the copyright owner do you have worry about distributing source code. When you buy a product that contains copyrighted code, and then simply redistribute that particular copy, you do not need the copyright owner's permission.
If they do not comply, regardless of the reason, then they do not have any license to redistribute the GPLed software at all.
If they cannot comply then they will end up having to pay punitive damages to the copyright holders of the software that they illegally distributed and cease any further distribution of the software.
You cannot simply ignore the GPL because it doesn't fit with your other contractual obligations. The copyright holders were not a party to those other contracts and so the existence of them does not free the distributors of their GPL obligations.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
... and I call bullshit on his story of "NDS investigators". What we do, we do well, and what we don't, we stay out of.
As far as technical details: no kernel changes were made; the drivers are non-GPLed, using a small GPL'ed wrapper layer. The NDS software, which on these boxes runs entirely in user-space, is linked against the LGPL'ed uClibc. Busybox is used on the STB. All of the "glue" (such as busybox, boot scripts, etc) are provided by the broadcaster, STB manufacturer, and/or chipset vendor.
The bootloader is not based on any Linux code.