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How Hardware Makers Come To Violate Free Software Licenses
H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "Veteran violation chasers Shane Coughlan and Armijn Hemel have summarized how license violations are caused in the consumer electronics market under time-to-market pressure and thin profit margins: 'This problem is compounded when one board with a problem appears in devices supplied to a number of western companies. A host of violation reports spanning a dozen European and American businesses may eventually point towards a single mistake during development at an Asian supplier.' They also discuss the helpful organizations which have sprung up and the documents and procedures now available."
like those DVD players that used mplayer but didn't release mplayer's sourcecode?
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Many of the chipset SDK suppliers don't tell their customers of their obligations to provide the source when requested by a customer.
So while the hardware manufacturer might be at fault, its the chipset maker who is more often the failure.
Cisco/Linksys using Broadcom chipsets. Did Broadcom tell them about using Linux & their obligation under the GPL to release the code.
Humax with their PVR - now they're less reliant on the chipset as the Cisco situation so are more at fault for not releasing the code when asked.
That reminds me of this classic, hivemind confusing post
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6823&cid=886346
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Woohoo.. I love doing stuff that is bad for me, it's the best kind of stuff.
Why is copyright bad in pro-piracy articles and good in free software articles?
Uhhh.. because its being used for different purposes? Why are automatic weapons a good thing in armed resistance to tyranny but a bad thing in shopping mall shootings? Are you so seriously retarded that you can't tell the difference between a goal and the tools used to achieve that goal?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Come on, bonch. You are either hopelessly confused or an intentional troll.
Copyright infringement is that, copyright infringement and *not theft*. It is still an infringement -- whether it concerns a work put under the GPL or the newest song by the Spice Girls.
No sensible person here is contending that. It's just this meme of "intellectual property" which we are contending. Copyright, trademark and patents are basically fine (although not as they are now. Especially: copyright terms are too long, patents shouldn't apply to software, maths or business methods, yadda, yadda).
(I am able to imagine a society without copyrights, patents and even trademarks: we wouldn't need the GPL there. But that is open to lots of debate, I know).
Clear now?
Slashdot isn't in favour of or against anything. It's a whole bunch of different people with different opinions. Although I suspect quite a lot of us agree that it's clueless to mistake the opinions of individual posters for the opinion of /. as a whole.
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I am assuming that you use "software industry" where you mean "Closed Source Software" as the software industry includes a lot of OSS software and even companies.
If that works two ways, then I am with you. If OSS can use the software protected under licences of Closed SOurce, it would be great. It would mean that there is NO copyright on software. Not from the industry and not from the OSS front.
Otherwise you are a hypocrite for doing the "I am against the use of this tool but I find it useful and so can use it in my fight" reasoning.
I could easily say:
In my view the OSS community should start lobbying individual countries to declare Closed Source invalid and fair game for incorporation into any product. See, it works both ways.
The only difference is however that OSS asks to have the source open and CSS asks to have the source, well, closed. I rather have the second then the first.
With Closed Source, everybody stands on the bottom of the pool and everybody drowns. With Open Source, you can stand on the shoulder of giants.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not all open source fans are pro piracy.
I'm in fact against piracy, if someone asks me a free copy of office he will get Openoffice.
If he insists on getting Microsoft office I'll tell him to go buy it.
To protect its IP, the CE company that I work for does not allow the use of GPL or LGPL code in production software. It's a good thing that Linux system calls are excepted from the normal GPL rules, otherwise we wouldn't have seen its massive success in embedded devices.
The reason why they "violate" is because they just do not care.
It has nothing to do with deadlines or politics or competition or margins.
The code they are using is seen as "some free stuff I downloaded which happens to work - cool for me".
The point of a company is to make money, not to further ethical causes. If it doesn't SEEM like a massive no-no I don't think it would enter the head of even one person in this supply chain to question it. And by the time anyone does, its already 3 generations of products later and they are wondering why someone is bothered with a product that is nearly ending its life cycle.
I mean, if asked, they would probably ask if there is any tangible heavy institution that is likely to find out, or even to care if they did.
Ultimately, you need to also ask if it really matters at all. How often do you think this provided source code is really going to be useful to a mass audience? As you say: the products in question have a very short life span, and the changes must be small to be able to be completed in time.
FreeBSD benefits enormously from user contributions (both commercial and hobbiest), yet has no requirement to make changes public.
Oh it MUST matter you say - it's the PRINCIPLE.
Well it's YOUR principle.
The title should be rephrase:
"How Hardware Makers Come to Comply With Free Software Licenses" These are the extremely rare cases, and in truth any company that is spending time worrying about little things like this has probably so lost focus it won't be around for long.
This is precisely what can happen when a western company outsources "engineering" work to countries with little or no respect of copyright or intellectual property.
You imply that western countries respect copyright or intellectual property.
Perhaps instead of blaming countries or cultures it could be simply be that companies dont have a reason to obey open source copyright until they are forced too.
If a company gets caught violating open source licenses the community is very willing to accept it was an accident, even blind ignorance is easily forgiven.
When a company is caught violating open source licenses it just means they have to pay for a lawyer to explain their rights and obligations to them, something they would have had to do anyway... so there is a chance that violating open source licenses will save the company money.
Until violators (and people like Darl McBride) are treated as severely as RIAA defendants then nothing will change, these people need to face bankruptcy or jail, there should not be a profit motive to destroy a public asset (which is what open source is).
We have different words for these things because they are not the same. This does not make either of them right or wrong, or justify doing one but not the other.
If you can't hold more than one idea in your head at a time then you're the moron.
...that those companies usually did not intend to break the license in a bad way. After all there's next to no cost in doing it the right way.
So please contact them in a friendly way, and remind them that the rules to get this software for free, is that you have to continue letting others getting it for free. In case of the GPL, even if you modified it. If they don't want that, which is also OK, they have to use another, possibly commercial, product. Or perhaps BSD (which, when you look at Windows, works also well).
But remind them, that the reason they can actually get it free, is that others gave their code away for free. If everybody would do it like them, and not give away the code, then nobody, including themselves, could get any free software anymore.
Only if they then ignore you, and deliberately continue to do it, sue the hell outta them with no mercy whatsoever.
Sun Tzu already recommended this strategy in the 6th century BC, in his book "The Art Of War".
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Just the ones who think using the term "piracy" for sharing something you already paid for is bullshit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This specious argument has been bandied around by shameless pirates for a long time and it's simply not true.
At least in the UK, the courts have held a clear difference; in the case of Oxford v Moss, the courts ruled that under the 1968 theft act information is not necessarily intangible[sic] property, and therefor cannot be stolen.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Punt the whole idea of OSS to the curb and go with closed sources solutions.
But hang on, if they don't care about violating licences, then what happens when they do this with a closed source solution? I think a commercial company is far more likely to be aggressive at pursuing a lawsuit, than open source authors.
and not worry that some program was mis-licensed somewhere in the chain.
How does this follow? Are open source authors more likely to mis-licence? This is especially a surprising claim, when we're talking about a story where it's the open source software that's being infringed, not the other way round.
Every western company has to step carefully around the Chinese market. If you're working on a proprietary product, you NEVER license source over there. If a Chinese company decides to rip you off, you've got no recourse.
When you sell software in China, no matter what type, you can only sell a single seat license-- they will break your protection and run it on a hundred.
China's government protects its companies from fair business practices, anyway. Many of the malicious hacks that come from the Chinese government are purely economical- just stealing plans, prototypes, and source code from prominent western businesses.
So, good luck, guys. If these big powerful multinational companies can't get China to pay for what they do to our IP market, I'm not sure what you GPL folks can do. They will say anything they need to say to avoid respecting your license.