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Court Case To Test GNU GPL
ciaran_o_riordan writes "Tomorrow, a German court will hear the case of AVM, a distributor of Linux-based routers, which seeks to block Cybits from distributing software that modifies the routers' software to add content-filtering functionality. Free Software Foundation Europe explains: 'AVM justified its position using three arguments. First, they stated that their whole product software must be regarded as an entity under AVM copyright, and that this entity must not be modified. The position Mr. Welte [founder of gpl-violations.org and copyright holder of several parts of the Linux kernel] took was that the whole product software would in that case be a derivative work according to the GPL, and thus the whole product software should be licensed under the GNU GPL. AVM then switched to a second argument: that the software embedded on its DSL terminals consisted of several parts. According to Mr. Welte, AVM could then not prohibit anyone from modifying or distributing the GPL licensed software parts. The final argument by AVM was that the software on their DSL terminals is a composition of several different programs, which, due to the creative process, would be a protected compilation and thus under the copyright of AVM and not affected by the copyleft of the GPL.'"
I've been making my software GPLd since 1991. If someone uses it, for free, and makes a derived work, and then tries to stop others from sharing that work, they are ethically and intellectually challenged.
This is not a test case for the GPL, it's a straight-forward copyright violation case, where AVM is taking the work of tens of thousands of people, using it under a license that permits remixing, and then attempting to ignore those license conditions.
Take them to the cleaners, Harald!
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I think he's half right. Either the company is intelligent yet ethically challenged, in that they know that they are violating the GPL yet do not care, or they are ethically sound but intellectually challenged, in that they don't know they're controverting the license. I believe one of these scenarios is the case.
1. This violates the GPL over the GPL-licensed parts of the whole, and therefore the GPL-licensed parts have to be excluded when the whole is distributed. The same reasoning applies if the restriction is due to a compilation copyright over the whole or a license regarding use that prohibits modification.
2. Irrelevant: the GPL parts continue to be licensed under the GPL or they can not be redistributed. The GPL permission for compilations does not weaken the GPL license for GPL components so compiled.
3. All a compilation copyright means is that no one else can redistribute the compilation. However, it can not restrict redistribution of the GPL licensed parts.
About the only case that can be made is that modified routers can't be sold, but routers could be sold along with the means to modify them. Or a router could be sold, and someone hired to modify it.
Of course, I am not a lawyer, and would welcome one correcting any error I made above.
In Liberty, Rene
Why? There's one on the side of the bad guys, and there's on on the side being bullied, and there's one more on the side protecting our rights.
Seems like 2 out of 3 of the lawyers (or teams of them) are fighting for the cause of the good guys, or fighting against the bad guys at least.
*ANY* copyrighted work derivative must comply with the expectations and terms of the original copyright holder. How, exactly, is using the GPL any different from this?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Ironically, by preventing others from enacting the rights granted by the GNU GPL, AVM itself is in violation of the license terms. Therefore they have no right to distribute the software" says Till Jaeger.
Because the "features" may, in fact, introduce bugs, for which the customer may try to hold AVM responsible.
But, that is a warranty issue, and easily addressed.
In Liberty, Rene
It amazes me that companies feel justified in not paying for their software. The GPL's payment is in openness and code changes. So many companies try this (and get away with it). It would be similar to companies using cracked warze and then trying to justify it in court as their own works.
I think the case hinges on the right to sue of the parties.
A contributor to the GPL'ed software would have the right to sue.
The defendant, Mr. Welte, might not have the right to sue AVM to put their code under the GPL, but luckily he is the defendant.
AVM is the plaintiff. They have admitted that their released work is a mix of their original work and GPL'ed work. In my opinion they still may assert their copyright for their contributions, but do not actually have the right to distribute their work.
That is why I think the defendants primary cause, although I'm sympathetic to the defendant, is lost.
However as a countermove, (I'm assuming the defendant owns an AVM router), I suggest he countersues AVM for damages, since they set him up with a router that cannot be operated legally since they don't own the rights to the software, and for wasting his time he spent coding in good faith that AVM actually intends to secure the rights to the software, which is hard to do without GPL'ing the software.
IANAL, and not yours.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Perhaps you should work on that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The cognitive dissonance between this story and the countless (pro-)piracy stories is astounding.
Only if you fail at logic. The pro-Free-Software stance is "it's good to share, and to those ends, we're going to share our stuff with you (as long as you share it with others in turn)." Given that "sharing is good" is a bedrock principle of that opinion, it's unsurprising that a somewhat overlapping set of people also believes that it's OK to share other things.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In addition, a compilation is a derived work
Not legally, no. To create a compilation, you do need rights to publish each part, but you do not need permission to modify or prepare derivative works. And even if that weren't the case, the GPL explicitly has an exception.
From v3: "Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate."
From v2: "In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."
I think that is the clearest explaination of what's going on here; making a compilation of copyrighted materials does not terminate the copyrights of those materials.
Also, as far as I know the whole "copyrighted compilation" thing only goes when significant and non-trivial effort has gone into compilation, neither of which is the case here.
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No. I've come across your argument or a variant of it every time I point out the above.
The problem is that even if an organization is pro-sharing, the way the GPL accomplishes that is by putting *restrictions* on what you can do with the information/software/etc. that they produce and release. If the pro-sharing groups believe it's okay for their group to restrict how someone uses their information by requiring distribution of source for derivative works (i.e. copyleft/GPL), they *have* to be okay with a different group restricting how someone uses their information by prohibiting redistribution or derivative works entirely without licensing/royalties (i.e. traditional copyright). They are all restrictions.
Now you might argue that one set of restrictions (copyleft/GPL) is better than another (copyright), or that copyleft/GPL would be unnecessary if there were no such thing as copyright in the first place.
To the first point, I will ask
To the second point I will argue that without copyright, everything looks like a BSD license or public - that is, a "here's the code, do whatever you want with it" license - so why don't people just use the BSD license? It's precisely because the authors of GPL software want to put restrictions on how people use their stuff.
Addressing the first point is another gigantic discussion, but the quick version goes something like this: if you don't pay people to do stuff, it won't get done once people have to start doing other things to pay the bills.
More likely, the features means the router competes with more expensive products.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I still think he cannot force them to release their code under the GPL. They can just say "no", and then he has the right to sue them and will win, making them pay damages and making them stop distributing their product.
I think the logic is thusly:
The gadget is either using GPLed code under a valid license (which means they can't prevent others from modifying it, thus they lose), or they are not using it under a valid license (which means that they're vulnerable to infringement claims themselves, and depending on exactly which bits were being modified, they might not have standing to protest in the first place).
According to the article, the defendent is not distributing code containing GPL code. Rather, they are distributing a program that reads from a DSL router and modifies the (perfectly legal) GPL code on the router, reinstalling the modified code. The defendent doesn't think this is a violation, since he does not distribute any GPL code to users, only the binary "diffs". The modified code is never "distributed", only installed on the individuals own router. Since the GPL limits distribution, but doesn't affect "internal" use, there is an argument that the GPL is not violated. However, there is a further section in the GPL that takes up just this point, which is quite orthogonal to any of the arguments posted here. Even if this section of the GPL was not enforced in Germany, it wouldn't be the end of the GPL, as this is an extremely inconvinient way to distribute software, and the liklihood that the "diffs" didn't include GPL code is very small.
Because AVM sells other products, at a higher price/profit, which contain those additional features. They want to protect their revenue stream.
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