German Court Finds Fantec Responsible For GPL Violation On Third-Party Code

ectoman writes "Are firms responsible for GPL violations on code they receive from third parties? A German court thinks so. The Regional Court of Hamburg recently ruled that Fantec, a European media player maker, failed to distribute 'complete corresponding source code' for firmware found in some of its products. Fantec claims its third-party firmware supplier provided the company with appropriate source code, which Fantext made available online. But a hackathon organized by the Free Software Foundation Europe discovered that this source code was incomplete, and programmer Harald Welte filed suit. He won. Mark Radcliffe, an IP expert and senior partner at DLA Piper who specializes in open source licensing issues, has analyzed the case—and argued that it underscores the need for companies to implement internal GPL compliance processes. 'Fantec is a reminder that companies should adopt a formal FOSS use policy which should be integrated into the software development process,' he writes. 'These standards should include an understanding of the FOSS management processes of such third-party suppliers. The development of a network of trusted third-party suppliers is critical part of any FOSS compliance strategy.'"

Comments

Re:Premptive STFU to GPL haters

[Desler]

But copyrights are bad and copyright infringement is okay, right? Oh wait this was over copyrights on GPL code so we have a double standard. My bad, I seem to have lost my head.

GPL go away

[optikradio]

One day, we will be free from tyranny of GPL. One day.

Re:Premptive STFU to GPL haters

[hairyfeet]

Wow check out the FOSSies above you, if you dare say ANYTHING other than "Gee isn't GPL great? why it sure is Skip and RMS' farts cure global warning" they literally foam at the mouth like rabid dogs...too bad they can't seem to parse a sentence or understand basic language.

Since yours seems to be the least batshit reply let me spell it out...okay? if a company is NOT a FOSS company and are building proprietary devices its fucking STUPID to use GPL, why? Because GPL and proprietary don't play nice with each other, again that is by design as it was designed to further RMS political agenda, just look at how TiVo was named in GPL V3 because by following the license to the letter they still pissed off RMS because they didn't follow his agenda.

Now is the GPL bad? Not really, like any other license it depends on its usage as just like languages it can be abused, but if the license works for you? Fine and dandy but what everyone here seems incapable of grasping is that not every company wants to be a FOSS company, in fact the majority do NOT want to be FOSS companies because if your business doesn't fall under the "blessed three" you are screwed (which is why a FOSS game with the quality of the Bioshock or even the GTA series, because games don't fall under the blessed three and thus they can't survive) and its pretty damned obvious since this was NOT THEIR FIRST OFFENSE that this company does NOT want to be a FOSS company so...why? Why do these coders keep risking the companies they work for by taking GPL code when there is no need?

THIS is what I am having trouble understanding because if you aren't a FOSS company and in fact make proprietary stuff as this company does its not only dumb to use a software licensed to be as anti-proprietary as it possibly can but its pointless as some of the biggest names on the planet are running on BSD so its not like BSD has crap code dude, the whole thing makes no fucking sense.

But if FOSS OSes and software make you happy? Its a free country and I support your right to choose, just as I hope everyone would support my right to choose proprietary OSes and software for my customers as I find it has more polish and works better for the particular niche my business occupies. Where FOSS makes sense I have NO problem employing it, if a company needs a webserver there isn't any point in using anything but a premade LAMP stack, and I used to hand out Libre office to my home users until i found Google Docs works even better for that use case, but unlike the dumbass company in TFA I do NOT try to build proprietary solutions using FOSS software and THAT was what I was trying to point out, you have these coders that insist on sticking a square peg into a round hole and it makes no God damned sense!

All I can figure is its one of 3 things, 1.- The coders are in China where IP means jack shit so they don';t care about no steenkin licenses, 2.- They are lazy and grab the first thing they find, again with disregard for the licenses, or 3.- they are "fellow travelers" that are trying to force their company to become FOSS by tying major projects to FOSS code to try to force their hand, in which case they should be fired. But it just makes no damned sense otherwise, if you aren't a FOSS company trying to mix FOSS and proprietary is just asking for shit, just ask TiVo.