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SFLC Finds One New GPL Violation Per Day
eldavojohn writes "In July, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) leveled the finger at Microsoft for a GPL violation but how often does this actually happen? Sunday, Brad M. Kuhn (tech director at the SFLC) stated in his blog that since August of 2009 he has been finding about one per day. So why is it that we have only covered a handful of these cases in the news? Brad offers sage wisdom; surprisingly, he recommends, 'Don't go public first. Back around late 1999, when I found my first GPL violation from scratch, I wanted to post it to every mailing list I could find and shame that company that failed to respect and cooperate with the software freedom community. I'm glad that I didn't do that, because I've since seen similar actions destroy the lines of communication with violators, and make resolution tougher.' Public shame is evidently not always the best answer. Ars has a few more details and notes that (in accordance with Brad's advice) lawsuits are usually a dead last resort."
Ever consider that the latest and greatest feature in the latest and greatest, multi-million unit shipping product may be using code you developed?
Ever wanted to maybe boost your pay by jumping to a new company, based on that?
Tough shit. They don't have to say you had anything to do with it. They can just collect the bounty and laugh all the way to the bank. They might have a toast in your name for being a baffoon. Hell, they can even say they developed it themselves, as long as they can read what you've coded. If you're happy with that then fine, amazing, how altruistic of you. I applaud you.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
In U.S. culture at least, we have little notion of how to let the "other side" save face. Saving face, or not 100% embarrassing folks when they've obviously messed up, is critically important in many negotiations, both exactly political, and locally among friends. The old adage "it's not what you say, it's how you say it," still rings true. People aren't stupid, and most would rather not be insinuated as such. People do, however, make mistakes, either semi-intentionally, unknowingly. (Analogous to driving, right? That's why they call crashes "accidents".)
Ridiculing folks gets folks nowhere. In the long run, most would agree that having businesses around and prospering is a good thing. (Let's not get into a debate about size of businesses for now.) A healthy business affords jobs to the local community, a service to those who need it, and acts as a community partner. A dead business does no such thing. A friendly reminder is often more than enough to get someone to clean up there act. I know it sure is for me.
Who can sue over a GPL violation? Doesn't it have to be the author of the code?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
What freedom are end users losing if a company includes public domain code in their software? Please provide realistic and practical examples that prove you've thought about the concept longer than 15 milliseconds.
Comment of the year
You don't want to be held by the GPL? Then don't use GPLed code. Is it really that difficult?
Yes, sometimes. Here's a concrete example. I library that I wrote uses libavcodec. My library is MIT licensed, and someone who uses my library also uses an Apache licensed library (I can't remember it's name; something for parsing MPEG-4 atoms) and released his code under the BSD license. Libavcodec is normally LGPL, so this is fine. Unfortunately, there are half a dozen or so optional files in libavcodec (e.g. some MMX optimisations) that are GPL'd. Some distributions include these in their binary versions. They then can't distribute this application as well without violating the GPL (because the Apache license is not compatible with GPLv2).
The GPL'd files are not included in the build of libavcodec on my machine, nor on the machine of the person who wrote the application using my library, but his code can't be shipped with Debian because the person who maintains an upstream package chose to incorporate some GPL'd code into their stock build of a library.
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"It's OK to violate the GPL because ..."
The GPL has a patent clause because the intent was to build an ecosystem of patent-free (or freely redistributable) software. Software patents suck, but simply ignoring them just pushes the problem farther down the line.
The result is a bunch of pseudo-free software that can only be legally distributed in some vaguely unspecified countries in "Europe" where software patents aren't enforced. And that causes problems for end users and distros because it's not exactly clear which OSS is intentionally violating someone's patent (beyond the obvious sound/video stuff).
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Not as cut-and-dried as you might think. First, it is not just modifying that is a problem, it is linking with. Here is a real example. My company developed a fairly large system for internal use, which linked to some GPL components. This system contains some trade secrets. All perfectly legal under the GPL, and not evil. Several years go by, and the company decides to contract out some work. This contracted work means the contractor needs a copy of this software: extremely big problem. Because of the GPL'ed code, we must provide source to the software, including the trade secrets. Furthermore, unlike normal business deals where we have confidentiality agreements with contractors, we can't stop them from releasing the source code. This resulted in two things: a delay in the project while the software was recoded to remove all GPL components, and a new company rule saying no GPL code, period.
It's very incomplete. Part of the story is how the WineX developers and such promised that they would contribute work on DX to Wine, which is discussed in detail on the mailing lists. This lead to a huge amount of developer stagnation in the area as everyone was just waiting on the "patches" that would bring all this new functionality.
Years pass and it ends up becoming obvious that the WineX/cedega developers had no intention of keeping their promise despite their continuous reassurances, thus causing a huge amount of stagnation in development in Wine's development in the Direct X area, during this time a lot of the developers felt that this was a catalyst that should push the licensing changes to prevent something like this (and other events noted in Wine's history) from ever happening again, where it took them more years to get where they are today which, in many ways, is still lacking compared to Cedega who had a large head start due to deceiving the WineHQ people who are still playing catch up.
A lot of these events are not documented on the website and other places except in discussions on the WineHQ mailing lists as it doesn't help very much with a 'professional' image of Wine by ranting on about all the booboos Wine had.
Had Wine been licensed the way it is today, quite a few negative incidents could have been avoided and Wine would have been better off today.
It's all there, I just don't want to spend a few hours looking through the archives, but I'm sure there are those on Slashdot that do 'obsess' enough over this to do so.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.