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Software Freedom Conservancy Wins GPL Case Against Westinghouse
fishthegeek writes "The Software Freedom Conservancy has received a judgement against Westinghouse Digital Electronics for $90,000 in damages, $50,000 in costs plus a donation of all of the offending HDTV's that were using BusyBox in violation of the GPL. Given that WDE is nearly bankrupt it's likely that most if not all of the cash will disappear in a legal 'poof,' but it is a victory regardless."
It helps explain all those crappy 37" Westinghouse TVs that were being blown out by retailers on the cheap last year.
Isn't this the first proper test of GPL in a court of law?
As has been discussed in the million other websites that jumped on this news earlier in the week:
It wasn't so much a win as a "no contest":
- The company that's gone bankrupt, went bankrupt (in a real, non-SCO fashion) and couldn't have afforded to fight the case.
- The people handling the bankruptcy don't want the lawyers who were working the case representing them any more (presumably they stopped paying them).
- The lawyers handling the case stopped defending it because they were asked not to provide any further representation.
In many senses it was a "win by default" - it was unchallenged, they couldn't afford to challenge it, and they were bankrupt anyway. In terms of legal precedent, this is like saying "I *do* own an acre of the moon because I presented it in a case against NASA and NASA went bankrupt before they could file any defence whatsoever" and then using this as a legal precedent that everyone with the same paper as you owns an acre of the moon. It's not a "win", it's not even a "loss", it's just a "nothing" in legal terms.
..but what matters is that a judge has issued a ruling on the matters before the court.
Its a common practise to start with little guys to get precedents and then work your way up to the bigger fish; the bad guys (eg, patent trolls) have been using this technique for ages, so its no biggie if the Good Guys learn from them,
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I had to RTFA to find out that WDE is Westinghouse Digital Electronics.
Westinghouse is currently in General Assignment, an alternative to bankruptcy under California state law
I don't get this at all. The US Constitution says bankruptcies are in Federal court and not a state matter. Is there a better FA somewhere?
Free Martian Whores!
plus a donation of all of the offending HDTV's that were using BusyBox
Huh, WDE has to give away their HDTVs? Where do I sign up?
To clear things up a little, from TFA:
SFC has also secured the right to compel Westinghouse to hand over all unsold products loaded with BusyBox for donation to charity.
That sounds cool, but the cynic in me believes that won't happen for a variety of reasons ("we don't have any unsold products! The last ones went on eBay for 1$ each!")
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
I have always wondered how these GPL folks determine that a product contains GPLed code. How do they do it?
Having been around computers and electronic equipment for a while, I know that we users only receive a working piece of equipment and a manual probably. Now how one delves into getting to establish that GPLed code [or firmware] is contained withing the equipment troubles my mind.
How do they do it?
The GPL vs BSD license argument never gets old for some folk does it?
Some say BSD-like licenses are bad because they permit people to use the code in a closed, non-free way.
Some say GPL-like licenses are bad because they forbid the same behaviour.
Each to their own, but the GPL allows people who contribute to the public good to make sure that their work is not abused (as they see it), by taking their effort, profiting from it and not sharing back. If that's not the way you roll, so be it, but it gives freedom to users that the BSD license does not.
I know! Distinguishing between different situations is so hard! It strains my brain cell.
The enemies of Democracy are
> EFF Wins GPL Case Against Westinghouse
Give proper attiribution, please!
Neither SFLC http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
nor SFC http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
are EFF, and as far as I can see, they have no relation to EFF.
So why is EFF in the title?
I cannot figure out why the headline says that the EFF won this case. This case was brought by the Software Freedom Conservancy, with the Software Freedom Law Center acting as the Conservancy's legal counsel. The EFF was not, nor has ever been to my knowledge, involved in anything to do with the GPL.
Also, winning the whole case is probably inaccurate. What's been achieved here is a permanent injunction and judgment against one of the violators. Thus, the case against Westinghouse has been won, but there are other defendants in the case as well.
— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy
Slashdot readers might be interested to read the actual judgment as issued by the Court, which is available Conservancy's announcement of the decision. I also wrote a blog post about the decision that may be of interest.
— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy
Simple public domain will do...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
And the 47" units that were discontinued within a year of them being sold, including no service/warranty parts being available.
I purchased a 47" 1080p Westy 3 years ago or so and was pretty happy with it, until it died 30 days before warranty expiration. (I also had a BB service plan due to making the calculation that this model with a so-so reliability rep plus the cost of the service plan was less than the cost of a model that had a good long-term reliability reputation.) It took almost a month for BB's service contractor to determine that it was not possible to obtain ANY service parts for this unit. End result is BB gave me a free upgrade to a brand new Sharp Aquos (Smaller screen but better contrast and MUCH better reputation, and at that point a lower MSRP than what I paid for the Westy.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Or, you could say, it TAKES freedom from users (ie: developers using a library) that the BSD license does not.
Not saying BSD is better, just saying GPL doesn't give "more freedoms" on a whole, it just assigns them to different people.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Please tell us how one would magically put their code into the public domain without first dying and then waiting a few decades. I think you can just release it with a statement that says something along the lines of "This software is public domain. I, the author, hereby forego any copyright on it." Or you could write it as part of your job while an employee of the United States government. There is a fair amount of numerical software that is public domain for that reason.
IANAL, but ... My guess would be that public domain is actually quite simple. You forego copyright on your code, thereby placing it in the public domain. And then anyone can do whatever they like with it. I also guess that whoever wrote that pseudo-license on that (unlinked) NASA website had a very shaky understanding of both software licensing and of copyright law and has written something which is self-contradictory. If he wanted to retain some control over the code he should not have placed it in the public domain. By placing it in the public domain he has foregone any right to tell people what they can and can not do with it. (Can any actual copyright/licensing experts confirm my guesses?)
It takes the freedom to take away freedom.
I will never, ever, feel any sympathy for anyone who thinks they are actually less free as a consequence.
The enemies of Democracy are
Or, you could say, it TAKES freedom from users (ie: developers using a library) that the BSD license does not.
Wrong. It takes freedom from those developers only while they are wearing their distributor hats. They can use GPLed libraries as much as they like. They are just limited from distributing in a way that takes freedom away from users. Their freedom as _users_ is not harmed.
Not saying BSD is better, just saying GPL doesn't give "more freedoms" on a whole, it just assigns them to different people.
You are right here. It takes freedom away from distributors, and gives it _all_ to users. Just they are not necessarily different people, just different roles.
Have a beer. That should take care of that final, pesky cell.
Believe me, there have been many such attempts on its life, and it has survived them all and come out stronger and more resilient. Following the Cliff Clavin Theory of Drinking, this is the most lean, efficient, and bad-ass brain cell in history. It is equal to a hundred normal brain cells. If my brain was a computer simulation, it would be The One.
It's still just one lonely brain cell though. Back to trying to kill it with beer!
The enemies of Democracy are
Each license has different goals. Since it applies few restrictions on how the code can be used, the BSD license is sorta like putting the code into the public domain without giving up ownership of it. The GPL, on the other hand, seeks to keep the original code and any improvements made to it as open source. It also seeks to insure that anybody that gets a product containing the original or modified code can get the source to it without having to go on a wild goose chase. If you use the BSD license you are keeping your original work open source, but not any fork of it and only in your original distribution of it. If you use the GPL you preserve the open source nature of your code everywhere it gets used, not just in the original distribution that you make.
The real problem with the GPL is determining what constitutes a modification and what is an unrelated new application not part of the original, but making use of the original, that's why the LGPL exists. I personally disagree with static linked GPL libraries with user code as involking the GPL provisions of requiring the user code to be released under the GPL as well. Using a dynamic linked library solves the issue, but in the end there is no difference between the linking being done in memory by the kernel at load time, or on disk by the GCC link phase. Certainly the GPL'ed libraries need to be identified and their sources provided with the distribution of the user application. However the user application did not require any of the library source code to compile (only the prototypes in a header at the most), so use of the library is on the same level as running under the Linux kernel (which you can do with closed source applications under the GPL). The LGPL for libraries removes this issue, but I think it shouldn't be necessary.
And yet reciprocation forms the basis of all civilization. If we want to form a stable software society, it must be based on reciprocation; otherwise, we will maintain this current state of disjointed, warring software fiefdoms led by dictators indefinitely.
All copyrights good. Taking public domain material, slightly modifying them, and then suing anybody who tries to use the material (which is what Disney does, and sort of what Microsoft does) bad. RIAA do have a right to enforce their copyrights, preferable through take down notices. What we hate about the RIAA is their sleazy methods, e.g. suing children and old ladies that have never used a computer. Apple intellectual property protection good when it covers their actual innovations, bad when it covers stuff they stole from other people (anybody remember Xerox PARC?) See, it's not really as hypocritical as you make it out to be.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No, it explicitly does not. Freedom is, if anything, the antithesis of civilization.
Who is truly free? The loner who lives out in the wilderness by himself, or the cosmopolitan city dweller?
The loner, of course - he is free to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, restricted only by the requirement that he provide for his own needs. He is unbound by social restrictions, by financial needs, by the necessities of cooperation. Indeed, depending on how he supports himself, he probably even "works" far fewer hours than the city dwellers - I believe nomads need to spend something like three or four hours per day hunting and gathering to provide enough food for themselves, depending on the environment.
The city dweller, on the other hand, is far less free. In order to provide for his own needs, he must spend far more time working; in order to maintain his social status, he must perform social activities. He is restricted in innumerable ways - wearing the wrong clothes might reduce his status, being a jerk will make his job harder and in fact risk losing it, killing and skinning a squirrel in public will almost certainly get him arrested - but as a tradeoff, he can call upon the powers of his civilization.
The loner doesn't have electricity; the city dweller does. The loner doesn't have access to reliable medicine; the city dweller does. The loner doesn't have access to other people, but the city dweller does. The city dweller has men with guns who enforce his property rights; the loner must do that himself. The city dweller has access to goods from all over the world; the loner only has that which he makes himself.
And why does the city dweller gain these extra privileges? Because he sacrifices of himself to further his civilization. Judging from your signature, you're something of a Christian; surely you understand that sort of self-sacrifice for the good of all people, even if it is only on the scale of eight hours per day? After all, the city dweller might work in a shipping concern that brings foreign goods to other people, the city dweller might work at a power plant that provides power to his neighbors; he gives up some of his freedoms and some of his time and ability in order to provide something for other people, and in return they give far more back to him.
When we become civilized, we give up a great many of our freedoms - but in return, we gain the ability to call upon and rely upon the abilities of our civilization. That is why reciprocation is the fundamental unit of civilization; I give part of my time and energy and freedom to my people, and they give back to me; the benefit we get in return is far greater than the initial sacrifice, but we still must give up that initial investment. For some reason, people seem to forget that - they forget that you can't just take back those freedoms you gave up initially, and expect civilization to still work. It's like saying "well the table is in place, so I'm going to take the table legs back and use them for myself".
Keep in mind that I'm not saying we give up all our freedoms, or even that it's necessary to subsume yourself in the civilization like some mindless drone - however, the freedoms we give up (like the freedom to be a douchebag and not cooperate, or the freedom to keep all of everything you make, or the freedom skin squirrels in public) are freedoms we can't just take back and assume civilization will remain standing.
I have to wonder if they did something completely insane like link their TV application software straight into the busybox executable because I can't think of any other reason to withold it upon request. If they did straight link then more fool them.
Might explain why Panasonic is replacing Linux with FreeBSD in their VIERA TVs (see license agreement at http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/tv/download/2010/down_navt.html).