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Hamstersoft Ebook App Rips Off GPL3 Code, Say Calibre Devs
Nate the greatest submits news of a claim that a recently released ebook application from Hamstersoft is actually built from code lifted from calibre, the ebook library app. He writes "It turns out that one calibre contributor is now reporting that his code was pirated for Hamstersoft. You can find the full details over on John Schember's blog. It's technically complicated and quite long. You can also find a non-technical summary. The short-short version is that Hamstersoft needs to give away a complete source code for the Hamstersoft Ebook Converter because that app uses parts of calibre, which is licensed under GPL v3. John gave Hamstersoft a month to comply and they did not. Now that app is clearly a GPL violation."
Queue the GPL critics praising the BSD license. The short-short-short of it is that if these fuckers didn't want to have to abide by the GPL3 license, they shouldn't have been lazy pieces of worthless stealing shit and wrote their own fucking code.
I hope they get sued into fucking oblivion.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Surely the behaviour of a criminal, stealing code that they didn't intend to obey the licence of?
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
It looks like they do offer the code for the product?
http://ebook.hamstersoft.com/en/support
Link to a ZIP file at the bottom of the page above.
So, is this a non-issue or did the company throw the code up quickly to avoid the DMCA?
Yahoo was the first to respond. They said they get all of their search results from Microsoft via Bing and referred me to Microsoft. So no luck there.
I don't care who they get their search results from. They are the site provider and are responsible for following the DMCA. Failure to do so will strip them of their safe harbor provisions and open them up to liability alongside Hamstersoft.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Well this is still news, not really surprising or important but still news. Sometimes stories like this generate interesting discussions (along with troll and flamebait shitstorms), so I'm ok with it.
I like news that tells me something...new.
Son, I've got some bad news for you. This is Slashdot. We aren't into that sort of thing around here.
But whatever floats your boat.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's not hypocritical to believe in GPL and simultaneously despise the way intellectual property works in modern life.
I believe in intellectual property where it is public property, something distributed openly and protected from corporate schills who want to strangle the path of innovation lest it lead away from their business model. You can be anti-corporate and against 75 year copyright yet still believe in the value of short legal monopolies and in the good of clearly defining (and protecting) public property.
I feel about long-lasting intellectual property restraints the way I feel about jet fighters: in public hands, yes. In private hands, break out the pitchforks.
From their EULA: (http://hamstersoft.com/eula)
RESTRICTIONS
The source code, design, and structure of HAMSTER free software are trade secrets except software licensed under GNU GPL 3.0, LGPL, MPL, BSD-licensed or Free components used to compile. You will not disassemble, decompile, or reverse engineer it, in whole except to the extent expressly permitted by law or except GNU GPL 3.0, LGPL, MPL, BSD-licensed or Free components used to compile HAMSTER free software. You will not use HAMSTER free software for illegal purposes. You will comply with all export laws. HAMSTER free software is licensed, not sold.
---
Sorry guys, you can't have GPL'd code and trade secrets in one piece of software.
assignment != equality != identity
I'm a good friend of John, the blog post author, and have been working with him throughout this process in trying to unravel Hamstersoft's deceit. I want to make a few things pretty clear:
Yes, they posted a zip of code on a hard-to-find link. But they did something sneaky. They included the very short and trivial C# wrapper around Calibre, but they only included a compiled (well, .NET dll) binary blob of the bulk of the application code -- the user interface. And of course, since all the heavy lifting is in Calibre itself, this code is the most important part of the application. They went through pains to extract the source of the UI components and only include it publicly as already compiled. They even packaged it up in a nice Visual Studio Solution so that you can load it up and hit "compile" and you get the software. It looks, at first, like they've complied. But then you dig into the source code actually provided, and it becomes obvious that they haven't provided the majority of the code at all, but only the wrapper code and a few call outs to the provided compiled DLL.
Cheap trick.
The other thing to take notice of in John's post is that in fact the search engines and Facebook have hardly complied -- there are still search results and Facebook pages for this company. Now, you can debate and troll and bikeshed and argue the validity and ethics of the DMCA all you want, but the fact of the matter is that when the big companies want to use it against the small, it seems to work, but when some OSS devs want to take the case up with giant companies, the response is exceedingly lackluster. (Likely, this being on /. will change things, we'd hope...)
The final point to consider is what this all means for GPL and OSS. Hamstersoft is Russian, so good luck trying law suit or anything. But at the very least, shouldn't the OSS community have an army of lawyers willing to work probono, or financed by various foundations, for this kind of thing exactly? John mentioned he tried contacting one such organization, and was unsuccessful. He's told me that at another point, he got in contact with a lawyer from another place who didn't offer to do any work for him but vaguely suggested he send these notices to Google, Facebook, etc. That's pretty lackluster. I don't want to complain to loudly, but instead I just want to suggest that this issue call our attention to the bigger issue -- what institutions do we have in place to protect OSS software effectively as small OSS devs? Do such institutions work? In this case, thus far, they don't seem to be working.
ZX2C4
I approve of the GPL, but the copyright period is FAR too long. Of course, that's not the doing of the FSF, so don't blame them, but they could have thrown the code into public domain after five years. Or maybe ten.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The DMCA take-down notices are to be sent to the providers that are hosting the content. The search engines are not hosting this content, and sending them take-down notices is a heavy-handed abuse of the law.
So either John misunderstands the DMCA or is willfully abusing it. Either way it makes it a lot harder to sympathize with his attempt to address violation of copyright law, when he himself is willing to resort to the very behavior of other copyright abusers.
But at the very least, shouldn't the OSS community have an army of lawyers willing to work probono, or financed by various foundations, for this kind of thing exactly?
What exactly do you expect them to do? The offender is in Russia and is hosted in Russia. How is a small donation-funded organization supposed to enforce copyright in situations where even large well-funded companies like Microsoft have been unable to do so?
People sometimes get away with breaking the law, especially far away countries. It sucks, but it's life and you have to learn to accept it. The people who won't are exactly the ones that drive us further and further into a police state in their unending drive to "decrease crime", not understanding the trade-off they are making.
They can not be forced to disclose the source code. This is a common misconception about the GPL.
If a GPL violation goes to court, the judge can order the infringing party to stop the distribution and pay damages to the copyright owner, but he will not order the disclosure of the source code. The disclosure of the source code is only a gesture that most FOSS developers will accept to drop the charges.
Of course, if the software is only a thin layer of sugar around a core of GPL code, stopping the distribution means closing the business.
On the other hand, the situation can be reverted: the GPL code may be just a small, non-essential part of the software. Think readline, for example: a software is more comfortable with line editing, but it is in no way necessary. In such situation, the violator may decide to pay the damages and remove the GPLed code from its software, to keep in business with its proprietary model.
Surely the behaviour of a criminal, stealing code that they didn't intend to obey the licence of?
They didn't steal anything - everyone still has the original code. No one lost anything. What they did was a copyright violation, not theft.
Isn't that the standard /. argument when someone equates copyright violations with theft?
Of course, this is the GPL so out come the pitchforks and torches...
And this will be moded down by someone who disagrees or dislikes having /. hypocrisy pointed out...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It depends on what you sue for. There is a thing called "specific performance," which is basically forcing the defendant to comply with the terms of the license or contract in cases where there is no adequate remedy in monetary damages. An injunction is also possible, and even likely, in copyright infringement cases.
Well, i would guess less than .01% of all software developers know assembly. So it's pretty rare, and it requires a lot more skill to master.
Don't CS programs still require assembly? I had to take a course in assembly as an undergrad, and also had to use assembly quite a bit in my compiler courses. 1 developer in 10,000 seems way too low. (For what it's worth, I've never met a really good developer who couldn't program in assembly. I don't mean that they recall all of the syntax of a particular assembly language; only that they can map high-level code to pseudo-assembly language.)
As for skill, assembly is actually easy to write, though not that easy to read. It's just a combination of some simple primitives: load something into a register, or perform some arithmetic operation, or test a condition, or jump to another location in the code. Conceptually, it's much easier than a language like C++.
Without agreeing to the GPL they are in intentional violation of copyright. The means (under US law) max statutory damages of several hundred thousand dollars PER distribution (which if they even distributed it a dozen times could be several million dollars) and the court will probably award punitive damages of up to 9 times the statutory damages for intentional infringement. If they sold a hundred copies of the software they could conceivably be hit with a hundred million dollars in statutory damages and punitive awards.
Although you are right they could claim they didn't agree to the GPL, but by doing so they would make the damages much much worse. This is the reason in nearly every single case where legal proceedings are started companies comply with the GPL, because not agreeing to the contract contained in the GPL is a far worse fate then complying with the terms. People forget that this is by design, Stallman deliberately used copyright law (and it's massive damages) to create a license that creates a situation where complying with the license is the least damaging result to an infringer.
Now this is all hypothetical as the company in question is Russian and unless you are good friends with Putin nothing will happen to the people or companies involved..
The EULA for the free eBook converter now contains some extra stuff, such as:
"The source code of Hamster Free eBook Converter inherits GNU GPL 3.0 rights from Calibre. You may all operations with it permitted by law. GNU GPL 3.0 restrictions must be met. You will not use Hamster Free eBook Converter for illegal purposes. You will comply with all export laws. Hamster Free eBook Converter is licensed, not sold."
which looks like it was written hastily, and
"GNU GPL 3.0
Calibre source codes: http://code.google.com/p/calibre-ebook/downloads/list
Hamster Free eBook Converter source codes: http://ebook.hamstersoft.com/en/support
License GNU GPL 3.0: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html"
So, they've included the GPL in their license terms, and have published the source code for the eBook converter. Looks like yet another win for GPL.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
In Russian "hamster" is an internet slang word for a "mindless, unwary and predictable consumer of popular novelty items", a "lemming". Definitely not the kind of name people would trust (as long they know what it means)!