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?'"

Comments

Troll is troll

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Troll is troll

[poetmatt]

Why didn't anyone link to the http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110815131443415 (Groklaw Debunk) .

The writers are soapbox trolls, who have ties to microsoft but have hid them. And they write articles about how GPL violations are in force (which it is the owner's decision to enforce or not)? Say it ain't so!

It is literally Florian quotes Naughton as his source, yet Naughton is basically a FUD machine.

More Florian?

[painandgreed]

I'm beginning to remember the days of Dvorak articles as the happy times.

Re:More Florian?

[PCM2]

But then, in this post-Columbine era, who is?

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you continually link to this sensational asshole astroturder?

Does Slashdot get kick backs from his ad revenue?

Re:WTF

[oakgrove]

I actually like the fact that florian gets linked on Slashdot. If we're lucky, when people google him, the Slashdot articles will be toward the top. When they click, maybe there is the slim chance they will be greeted with highly rated comments exposing Mueller for the fraud he is. Keep +1ing the truth, people!

Re:WTF

[The Dawn Of Time]

I explicitly allow ads on Slashdot, and other sites I enjoy, since keeping them around is beneficial to my entertainment.

You should be thanking me for subsidizing you, but I know entitled assholes like you would never see it that way.

Re:WTF

[andydread]

So is Florian the new Laura Didio? or Rob Enderle, Dan Lyons?

Re:WTF

[Calos]

Actually, it showed up for me not long after I joined. It's not just for long-time participants. It's seems to be for anyone who registers and is semi-active.

Even if he's right

[afidel]

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.

Re:Even if he's right

[afidel]

What if just one branch for a new update doesn't get pushed out on the day of release, technically that's a violation which under a strict reading of the license could terminate your rights. I'm not sure where the line lies as far as compliance and regaining rights goes, but I think that actors who deal in good faith should not be punished disproportionaly to their transgression. In my mind Google's stance on Honeycomb was wrong, their partners don't have the right to withhold the source that they are distributing to the end user until it is "perfected" in the next major version some year down the line, but neither do I want to see anyone's rights effectively permanently terminated because they fell afoul of the license.

Re:Even if he's right

[gnasher719]

What if just one branch for a new update doesn't get pushed out on the day of release, technically that's a violation

I don't think so. You can fulfil the source code requirements of the GPL by giving anyone who asks for it the source code. If nobody asks, you are fine. If someone asks, I don't think there is a definitive requirement how much time you would have.

Re:Even if he's right

[Miamicanes]

It goes against general operating practice and tradition, but strictly speaking, the only parties with the RIGHT to demand the source are parties who are licensed users of the GPL-licensed application itself. In other words, if HTC sells you an Android phone, you have the inalienable right to demand the GPL'ed source code. If I buy a Samsung Android phone, I have no right to demand that *HTC* furnish ME with a copy of the source, because I'm not their customer, and they never licensed Android to me. HTC can't stop my friend (who owns a HTC Android phone) from letting me have a copy, but they themselves have no affirmative duty to lift a finger and make it available to *me*.

Where things get ugly is the fact that HTC traditionally compiles its kernels into a monolithic binary blob, so the source is basically useless if your end goal is a working, fully-functional kernel suitable for a newer version of Android. Samsung, in contrast, DOES keep their proprietary modules neatly separated out as proper loadable kernel modules. A year ago, I thought that was a really big deal, and made Samsung heroes. Unfortunately, back then, I had no idea that Linux doesn't have a stable ABI, and a kernel module built for 2.6.32 is likely to be useless with a 2.6.35 kernel. Sigh. So, it looks like my next phone will be HTC, because (unlike Samsung), at least HTC tends to "unofficially" release new kernel builds in a timely manner instead of waiting for hell to freeze over. Now, if only they could be bothered to compile them with BlueZ HID profile enabled...

Re:Even if he's right

[whoever57]

I have seen companies completely change over from Linux embedded systems to Windows CE or other commercial products because the GPL v3 could be used as a sledgehammer to have all trade secrets handed over.

Linux is GPL3? Perhaps someone shoud tell Linus, because he keeps including a GPL2 license in releases of the kernel.

Re:Even if he's right

[Thomas Charron]

Actually, you can't demand anything. You can ask. If they ignore you, then the COPYRIGHT owners can go after them. But not the end users. The GPL provides no legal recourse for users.

This fails the "5 seconds of thought" test

[jeffmeden]

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?

Re:This fails the "5 seconds of thought" test

[Andy Dodd]

In addition, Samsung is extra careful to put up code BEFORE a device is released in most if not all situations.

The sources for the Rogers variant of the Infuse 4G (SGH-I997R) dropped the Monday before anyone had the device. (Devices showed up two days later on Wednesday.) As I understand it, it was the same with the initial Infuse release on AT&T.

He's wrong?

[Baloroth]

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.

it's complicated

[lkcl]

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

Re:it's complicated

[Thomas Charron]

The Software Freedom Law Center cannot do *anything* without an owner of some of the code requesting they do so. Which, no one has, as of yet. The article is rather correct in this manner. There are moocho, many companies which have not complied. But it doesn't make a lick of difference until the people with the rights, THE OWNERS, decide to do something about it.

What's this got to do with Android?

[Thomas Charron]

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.