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Does Android Violate the GPL? Not So Fast
jfruhlinger writes "Patent gadfly Florian Mueller's latest post has made a fairly bold claim: that virtually all Android licensees are violating the GPL because of their failure to redistribute the code, and have thus lost their rights to redistribute Android. Mueller here is mostly promoting ideas put across by patent lawyer Edward J. Naughton. But others in the community are skeptical of the claims. Software Freedom Conservancy head Bradley Kuhn says he's never heard from Naughton. 'Don't you think if he was really worried about getting a GPL or LGPL violation resolved, he'd contact the guy in the world most known for doing GPL enforcement and see if I could help?'"
Florian is a net-kook, not of course on the level of some others like JVM and such. Of course the decade is still young and he has plenty of time to improve his kook ranking
I'm beginning to remember the days of Dvorak articles as the happy times.
Why do you continually link to this sensational asshole astroturder?
Does Slashdot get kick backs from his ad revenue?
Even if he's right, do we really want the GPL to be a revokable license where an tiny mistake that might throw you out of compliance requires a Herculean effort to re-establish rights? That would make all GPL code nuclear hot for any and all commercial interests which would probably see 80-90% of all code development on GPL projects dry up.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Who the fuck is Florian Mueller and why should I care about what he has to say?
Patent gadfly Florian Mueller's latest post has made a fairly bold claim: that virtually all Android licensees are violating the GPL because of their failure to redistribute the code,
Hmm, no, actually most (but certainly not 100% of) manufacturers that embed Android comply with the redistribution clause in the GPL. Samsung (one of the biggest vendors) has a web site set up specifically to redistribute code, and others make it similarly easy. Do you really think that the multi billion dollar likes of Samsung, Motorola, HTC, etc didn't bother having a copyright lawyer look over the situation to make sure things are kosher? Surely there are some vendors out there that are abusing the system and not putting up code as required, but if any one of the major vendors did that why not come out and say who it was?
The GPL parts of the code for Android are freely available. Google provides them, and I'd assume any licensee would just point to that if asked for the code (if they don't already make it freely available themselves. Can a redistributor just point to the original source under the GPL if they don't modify it? I assume they can). AFAIK most licensees don't modify the GPL portions of the code, only the front-end etc. which are licensed under Apache. I'm no expert on the GPL, but really this is just FUD created by (as others have commented) Florian Mueller, who just seems to glance at issues and post whatever he "thinks", without actually doing, well, any real thinking, much less actual research.
Now, if RMS said this, I might stand up and take notice. Doubt he would though, he knows well enough that poisoning GPL code like that would mean the death of OSS.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/24402
Call me a skeptic but I don't think companies predicate their use of gpl'd software on what kooks like mueller have to say. As somebody in a company that makes actual decisions, I sign off on the software that will get the job done. Our servers run Debian. Our desktops run windows with some exceptions. For graphical editing, our people use Photoshop. For document sharing and email, we use Google Apps. Our sales people use Android tablets as that's what our catalog/order taking software runs on. Most companies probably do the same. To do otherwise would lend them eventually to being uncompetitive.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
The Android handset makers have to abide by the same rules as everyone else. If they modify the kernel or any other GPL application, then they have to release that code as GPL (and despite Florian's lies they do). If they write their own applications to run on top of the kernel, and don't link against GPL libraries, then they don't have to release their code under the GPL unless they want to. This is no different from running proprietary game on a desktop Linux distribution.
And as an aside the Android Java libraries are all released under Apache and BSD-like licenses, not the GPL, so software that uses those can be released using just about any license they want.
The reciprocal licensing requirement happens when GPL software and other software run within the same process. In Android, as I understand it, only the kernel is GPL; the rest is under an Apache license or something.
Did you have a financial incentive to post this comment?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
He should have waited for Ice Cream Sandwich before going public with his claims. Now he risks Android being killed before its most crucial update.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is being paid by some corporation to do so.
there is a lot of misinformation about this topic, because many people do not realise that chinese manufacturers simply have absolutely no software skills - at all - and get supplied with GPL-violating binary firmware from a very limited pool of software specialist companies in china, completely by mistake. they then turn to those software specialists when asked for GPL compliance, and you typically get a very distorted and standard answer which indicates a complete lack of knowledge of the GPL.
but on top of that, the android source code that comes out of google simply is not enough, on its own. firstly: android is NOT just apache2-licensed applications: it sits on top of a GPL'd Linux Kernel which has had some very specific modifications made to it (mostly in the form of the android "security model"). secondly: many CPU manufacturers have to add hardware-accelerated video and 3D graphics engines in order to meet "cunsumaah dimarnd". these are backed up by proprietary software libraries that qualify - usually - as "System Libraries" under GPL exemption clauses. thirdly: android simply doesn't have a built-in video player nor a video player "API" so it is up to the vendors to put in applications which *do not* come from the android "stock" that comes out of google, and they usually do this by grabbing the nearest GPL source code they can find. fourthly: many software-builders for the OEMs / ODMs simply throw away portions of android source code and utilise the GPL equivalents (such as the GPL version of busybox, not the version that google implemented from scratch just to be able to "cleanse" the core android OS From All Gee Pee Ell code).
so this is the situation. and, as a result, yes, the vast majority of android devices in the world are GPL violating. let's go through a few coments that have made it past slashdot moderation.
baloroth states that google provides the GPL parts of android and that they are "freely available". well, yeah, but re-read the above and you'll see that that's completely irrelevant. he then states that he assumes that any licensee would just point to that if asked for the code. well, yeah, but re-read the above and you'll see that that's again completely irrelevant - not least because the licensee is required to provide the code that THEY have distributed, and it's usually been heavily modified by somebody else that they got in to do the software. he then states that "most licensees don't modify the GPL portions" which is wrong: it is absolutely essential to create an android-specific linux kernel which will support the android OS, on a per-CPU and even a per-device basis.
jeffmeden then goes on to try to state that we should all think that multi-billion-dollar companies like motorola, samsung and HTC don't bother to check if things are kosher? jeff - even a few seconds of checking on the gpl-violations mailing list or even just searching "HTC GPL Violation" would show you at least three GPL violations by HTC within the past year! samsung you're actually right about, and motorola i haven't kept up with but they are just in the process of being acquired by google, which is something that needs to be kept an eye on. it could be good, or it could be bad.
jeff also states "hmm no actually most manufacturers comply with the redistribution clause in the GPL". this is completely wrong. actually, according to an off-the-cuff survey of android tablets done six months ago by a redhat employee, he found that 95% of the 80+ tablets were GPL violating. he's maintaining the list here:
http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/android_tablets/
this list is so long it would overwhelm the Software Freedom Law Centre's resources to tackle them all at once.
so... yeah. it would appear that there is a hell of a lot of ignorance surrounding android. the mistake that google made was to try to combine apache-licensed code with GPL code. apart from anything, this gives people the impression that all
The ggp said not a single word about embedding gpld code in products. He said "using" gpl software. And if he was referring to said embedding then he is just flat out wrong as Linux is exploding in the embedded space.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
It doesn't matter that you didn't modify the source you still have to distribute source yourself if you distribute the binaries. This has come up before in the context of Linux distribution - it is not sufficient to point to someone else's source when distributing GPL licensed binaries.
For what it's worth, most Android companies seem to be taking releasing the kernel source seriously but only after delaying for as long as possible (coupled with the kernel binary driver gray area).
For ages the GPL community has been rightfully baffled by the problem of defining what constitutes a derivative work that triggers the GPL. Copyright law itself isn't entirely clear on the matter, nor is making a binary distinction (derivative/not) particularly easily when there is a continuum of derivative-ness. FM seems to be absolutely certain that Android is a derivative work of the Linux Kernel. I'm not so sure, given that it runs entirely in userspace and access the kernel through well-defined interfaces (and that modifications to the kernel are posted promptly and under the GPL).
This comes up often enough in the context of binary modules for the linux kernel, ala NVIDIA. Their untested claim is that the module itself is not a derived work of the kernel and does not become so simply because it is designed to be dynamically loaded by insmod. Another frequent example is when someone writes a nice UI for a FOSS project, ala the Calibre dustup from earlier this week. This is only getting worse as more projects adopt the base+plugin module where it's nto clear if a plugin is a derived work subject to the GPL or not.
Certainly we can say that dynamically linking to a GPL library or project or calling a GPL utility with input and gathering the output are themselves not enough to mean that the work is derived. Otherwise every shell script that piped to 'cut' or 'tail' or 'awk' would be a derived work of the coreutils project, something we obviously reject in practice. Using 'tail' is not the same as making a work that's derivative of tail in the same way that writing code in Python isn't a derivative work of the Python language or implementation.
Conversely, calling a GPL utility or library, while not enough itself, certainly raises red flags about whether the project is so deeply entwined with the utility/library that it has become a derivative work. This judgment is necessarily one of degree -- a GTK app that uses the library's public API to draw windows and widgets is not as derivative as one that hooks into the GTK callback system and overrides some of the internal behavior.
Where does this leave us with Android? I'm inclined to think that it's a regular userspace application that is not a derivative work of the kernel even though it runs on that kernel but that's not much an argument as it is a judgment call.
And if someone did what you proposed, you'd be guilty of fraud.
I emailed one development house today for having that stupid "if you nevertheless choose to send any creative material or any other information to Behaviour, you agree that it shall be deemed and shall remain the property of Behaviour."
Ownership of copyrighted material is by written contract only, and any other attempt to gain ownership is fraud, same as your attempt to get a buck out of people by claiming that reading a post creates a contractual relationship is also fraud.
Now I know you're not serious about it, but really, can't you be more original in your trolling, Mr. A.C.?
unfortunately your assumptions are incorrect. many of the chinese tablet manufacturers are ignorant of software: they have to get a specialist in, to help them, as they are hardware-manufacturers only, in most cases. so they don't even HAVE the source code! i've repeatedly found this to be the case when dealing with chinese factories. there are many other things that are incorrect about what you've said, and i've cover them here, as well as providing some insight into what exactly is going on: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2380756&op=Reply&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=37100038
It doesn't matter that you didn't modify the source you still have to distribute source yourself if you distribute the binaries. This has come up before in the context of Linux distribution - it is not sufficient to point to someone else's source when distributing GPL licensed binaries.
Fine. They can offer you a link to the google source and we are done or they can wait for you to send a $10 or so check, wait for it to clear, and then burn and mail a CD-R to you. The later fully complies with the GPL. Your choice. Keep in mind that if you want to get letter of the law so can they.
Not true. On Slashdot, everyone who disagrees with the groupthink is a corporate shill. Everyone knows that. It's not possible to see anything Microsoft does as Good without a paycheck from them. It's not possible to see anything Apple does as Bad without a paycheck from Microsoft. It's not possible to see GPL as Bad without a paycheck from Microsoft (or at least one BSD-licensed project curated by the individual).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Idiots quote Florian and idiots post links to his nonsense. He is as close to an expert on patent law as any character on Sesame Street. Any journalist that refers to him seriously is even more of an idiot.
The title of this article of absolutely Android FUD. GPL conformance by vendors has long been a thorn to end users, and Android is no exception. But this gives the inference that Android itself somehow violates the GPL, which is utter baloney.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Now, if you really want to try it, you can get my real name and email address from my user profile. Then you can send me an invoice. Then, when I ignore it, you can try to sue me.
Or is that too complicated?
Now please, stop with the stupidity. If you're going to troll, at least make a half-hearted attempt to do it right.
They mixed code. Another wards, they didn't just call a library. They took the code, line for line, and copied it directly into their application.
GPL code can run alongside applications. LGPL libraries can be used by your application. But taking a purely GPL set of source files, and incorporating them into your application, making your app indistinguishable from the GPL code, is the nono.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Apple is bad now. Actually, Apple has always been at war with, err, bad. MS (M$ for you cool kids) is still bad.
But here, let me reproduce your latest one:
As for your "Eiffel Tower" argument, different jurisdiction, different subject matter, different rules. Apples vs. oranges arguments demonstrates the paucity of your arguments.
And no, the law is on my side in this case. Please sue me. I welcome service. Since you have sent the invoice, I will send you my address at which to serve me - btw, service must be in person, not via registered mail, for this type of lawsuit.
A lot of people make that mistake ... it makes for some interesting times.
Then again, if you're going to challenge assumptions, you don't want people treating you differently based solely on gender.
"They say" is often proved a liar -- Daniel Boone.
Or in the modern vernacular: [citation needed], or you're just perpetuating the FUD.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
In the GPL v2, section 3 reads as follows...note in particular clause C.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
Of course! The point is that anyone who asks must be able to get the GPL'd source of what you built. Bear in mind that shipping the source to someone on CD is almost as difficult for the vendor (imagine the requester turns round and says the CD doesn't work) as ANYONE can ask for said the source and send in their cheques in currency that needs to be converted etc. Failing to get the source to them could result in your products being blocked so it's probably not worth being difficult about it.
Another point is that if you provide GPL binaries on a network server you also have to provide the sources on the network server. This may be difficult to avoid because various people may need the binaries for flashing purposes and once you give out a link...
The GPL allows for certain uses of GPL code without the new code also needing to be GPL. Libaries released under the LGPL can be linked by proprietary code and generally speaking kernel system calls are also free to use(drivers are a different story). The guys from Hamstersoft allegedly directly copied code from calibre so due to the licensing terms of the GPL the software into which they copied that code must also be GPL (or have the infringing code entirely removed). If the software is GPL then you can get the source.
It's possible that Honeycomb uses GPL code or links to GPL libraries which are not LGPL or otherwise dual licensed, but so long as they release the sources for the android kernel(which they do) the kernel itself being GPL does not require the remainder of the OS to be GPL.
In essence the GPL is in a sense viral in nature as many of the anti-GPL folks say, but it's not indiscriminantly so.
Nearly every handset manufacturer has to modify the kernel just to get Android ported to their phone.
That said, I have never in my life seen a single phone model that doesn't have it's kernel released. I don't know what Florian is going on about, but he has obviously never browsed xda-developers.com. Quite often the source for the kernel is released, re-built, and ported to custom roms *before the manufacturer has even released a ROM to the carriers.
In the email following their "invoice", the sender (L. N. Roew - roewin5@gmail.com) claims to be a part-owner of Wikipedia:
Of course, Wikimedia denies all knowledge of this individual.
Tsk tsk tsk. If you're going to troll a troll, at least make it somewhat believable.