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Why the GPL Licensing Cops Are the Good Guys

Posted by timothy on from the they've-got-a-good-track-record-too dept.

Reader rtfa-troll writes: "'GPL enforcement by Software Freedom Conservancy puts electronics makers on notice, leaves business users untouched,' says Infoworld, going on to explain 'You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be raided by your proprietary suppliers, in the form of the Business Software Alliance, than to ever hear from SFC, let alone face any action. License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the case concerns an end-user license agreement (EULA), not a source license.' The article gives a good summary of why having GPL licenses enforced helps everybody, except for 'hardware manufacturers — typically those creating low-cost consumer and business electronics' who need to verify that they pass on the same rights to others as they received with the original code."

4 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Oracle vs. Google and the GPL -- by Bookwyrm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Out of curiosity, If APIs cannot be copyrighted, does this mean they cannot also be covered by the GPL? This would seem to be a fairly major implication of the Oracle vs. Google case. (Speaking strictly about API definitions/header files.)

    1. Re:Oracle vs. Google and the GPL -- by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For a loooooong time the MySQL team were claiming that any library which implemented the API required to talk to MySQL also fell under the licensing terms for MySQL - you didnt have to link to anything provided by MySQL, you just had to use the same structures and names.

      Then they quietly stopped claiming it and all traces vanished from the MySQL website.

  2. Re:so the avg slashdot commenter by oiron · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, the "average Slashdot commenter" is a fictional entity - an average between trolls, spammers, real commenters, with massive variation in how informed they are. There are all kinds here - conservatives, liberals, die-hard anarchists, windows users, mac users, linux people, and most importantly for this discussion, supporters of every single license ever made by man or troll!

    If you could show a statistical correlation between the people here (or elsewhere) who advocate GPL and those who advocate infringement of proprietary software, I'd accept your point. Until then, it's hearsay and borderline slander.

    Anyway, by "serious", I meant people like Stallman and Eben Moglen, who are actually doing the advocacy in a long-term, sustained manner.

    Most importantly, the people running this operation are SFLC, FSF and others, who are definitely in the "use free alternatives, don't pirate" camp.

  3. Re:Piracy not disavowed by FrangoAssado · · Score: 4, Interesting

    OK, let's try to understand the point of the essay, since reading the title is not enough. At the beginning of the conclusion, he wrote:

    As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright.

    If you stop reading there, you might get the impression he's advocating breaking proprietary licenses. But if you keep reading, you see that, immediately after that (in the same paragraph!), he wrote:

    But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying no to proprietary software.

    Is it too hard to see that he's not saying that you should help your neighbor by violating proprietary licenses, but instead that you should not use proprietary software in the first place?