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Australian Telco Telstra Complies With GPL
An anonymous reader writes "Late last year, Australia's biggest telco Telstra was sharply criticised for using GPL'd code in several of its new products — but not publicly distributing changes it made to the code when doing so. However, it looks as though the company has now come clean, publishing a source code CD of the files changed in its development effort and acknowledging the GPL and Lesser GPL. It's good to see companies responding to the open source community this way and engaging — makes a change from the past!"
And it's Telstra of all companies deciding to do the right thing. I find that amazing.
How is this anything but an eventual response to an internal snafu which could've resulted in (much more expensive) litigious actions?
The GPL violations, and the resulting denial of compliance (for years, wasn't it?) was nothing but bad press. In contrast, had they admitted to the snafu right off the bat and addressed it promptly (a couple months? 6 on the outside?) it'd have been another thing entirely - the press would've been positive. GNU 'compliance' types just want the (free to the violators) adherence to the GPL - they don't care about the money or licensing aspect of it.
In my mind, this almost says less than doing nothing about it at all - "oh, we've got another release, let's include those license files and source code this time".
(What do you want to bet the code is significantly aged and with numerous vulnerabilities known for a long time?)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yes lets give Telstra a pat on the back for finally complying with the GPL while this should have been expected from day one. The GPL is yet another licence agreement but not a restrictive one, if you don't like it, don't use it.
there really needs to be a way to automatically report adver-spam without mod points.
They're only distributing the files they changed? Then that's not complying with the GPL. The GPL very clearly requires "complete corresponding machine-readable source code". Basically, if you get a product with binaries of GPL licensed code, then you must be able to recreate those binaries from just the files that the vendor made available. Just pointing to someone else's distribution of the source is not allowed (there's only one exception: you got the code in binary form yourself and redistribute it non-commercially).
GPL: You need to comply only if you get caught! (And even in this case, you can wait for a year or two)
Yeah, lets encourage this behavior further...
May Peace Prevail On Earth
GPL: You need to comply only if you get caught!
On the other hand, are US Copyrights relevant and legally binding in Australia? Probably they are by virtue of treaties and such.
Seriously, not a troll, but what's the beef? We're lucky to see the CD at all...
Rather than raking Telstra over the coals for complying (albeit late) , maybe the more constructive thing would be to use it as an illustration to other companies as to how harmless it was to Telstra to comply - it did not hurt them competitively at all.
By giving Telstra POSITIVE FEEDBACK for complying, perhaps it will ENCOURAGE others to comply as well?
Of course you all can SHIT ALL OVER THEM and see how that works, as well...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'd have to agree with the above comments. Telstra doesn't deserve any credit for compliance alone. It's expected. Many people seem far too willing to forgive/forget within a short period of time. They delivered what was expected of them after an extended period of inaction. That is all.
"Telstra profits off software piracy for half a year without repercussions"
Im a local copyright holder and am following this (There are still things that need to be done)
The impression i have is that Telstra just didnt realise what they where getting into, but since then they have made a genuine effort to fix the problem.
I give Telstra credit for accepting their mistake and trying to fix it, which is lot more than happens in other cases. They certainly could have made it more difficult.
Device manufacturers are the biggest problems, they never talk to developers, they already have our stuff... But if we get a distributor like Telstra on our side they have to respond to them because there are ongoing sales at stake.
Exactly this situation arose in the Feist case. Rural Telephone Service compiled a list of its subscribers, Feist incorporated it into their book, and RTS sued. And lost. You can't copyright facts (thank God---imagine a world in which you could). There has to be some creative element, no matter how much ``sweat of the brow'' was expended. An alphabetic list of phone subscribers contains no creativity.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
What upstream changes are likely to come of this? Will we see support for new chipsets as a result of this code release? New Drivers? New interfaces?
If the DRM contract requires you to protect the code by obscuring all of it, then it is incompatible with the licence contract that has been made with the owners of the GPL code that is in the machine.
You make it sound like there is no alternative other than to break the DRM contract. In fact, there are two alternatives: don't use code that is under a GPL licence; or don't make contracts that you cannot fulfil.
Making a contract does not invalidate all the licence agreements you have entered into; if you are going to make a product, you have obligations to all stakeholders, including those people who put effort into the GPL code that you are using.