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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.'"
So they got caught violating an oss license? (TBH they were just being lazy by relying on their supplier's word. You've got to know and own the product you sell.)
Imagine how much shit they'd be in if they'd been caught violating copyright on a piece of closed source software. Ask anyone who's dealt with the BSA to comment on how friendly and fair they are.
'A german court thinks so'?
Under very few legal codes is it OK to distribute something that you do not have the appropriate copyright/licence.
Even if you don't investigate properly to find out if you do or don't, that doesn't get you off the hook.
It may alter the penalties, but the fundamental legality isn't really in question, pretty much anywhere.
Raising 'GPL' is a red-herring here - 'Oh - I diddn't realise that machine had an unlicenced copy of windows on it' - is exactly the same case.
A previous employer of mine really really really wanted to offer FOSS support & products as part of their lineup. In the end, the lawyers won, as they couldn't craft a policy that would allow anyone other than a lawyer to make the decisions. This was mostly for GPLv2 and v3, but they got the dev managers completely wound up about all the license types. Mostly this resulted in the company punting on the FOSS idea.
It's not terribly surprising that some small outfit decided to outsource the responsibility, assuming they were in a similar "analysis paralysis" situation. Too bad they did not understand the intent of the licenses and just "do the right thing."
Shit like this. No wonder everything's going BSD.
Did anyone try to work things out with the company?
All stuff like this does is make people afraid of open source.
And why does it seem that all these troublemakers are from Germany?
This isn't a GPL thing.
This is a general IP thing.
If you are not - as a buisness selling software (even if in embedded hardware) requiring your suppliers to state that all software used is compliant with relevant licences, with appropriate penalty clauses or indemnification if they are not - then your lawyers don't deserve to be employed.
Exactly the same happens if you ship unlicenced windows on your systems.
This isn't going to make it easier to convince companies to adopt the GPL. It's not necessarily accurate, since Fantec clearly didn't exercise due diligence with their third-party software, but that's what a lot of upper management is going to hear.
I don't doubt the theoretical potential for this to be FUDed; but it isn't as though Fantec would have been any better off if their shoddy firmware contractor had been out of compliance with code under any other licence... Somehow, the fact that you can get your ass handed to you for violating software licenses seems to be Super Scary when it's OSS; but just part of doing business when it's proprietary; but it's the same principle at work either way.
It appears that when asked to comply with the license by posting the code they actually used, the company lied and said they weren't using iptables.
Contrast that to when I pointed out to Plesk that they were violating the Apache license. They very quickly apologized and posted the code, putting an end to the issue. All they needed to do is post the code that they compiled in order to come into compliance.
The court opinion is six pages, Im guessing three of those are boilerplate. Are there any fluent speakers of German who can read through it and tell us the facts as expressed by the court?
They published code, it got used, they're dealing with it.
What's the problem (apart from them not dealing with it in the way you'd prefer)?
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They didn't adopt the GPL they borrowed code that was GPL so they had to do less work rather than spend tends of thousands of dollars doing the work themselves. It's not the first time I've heard of a company thinking their added code totaling a fraction of a percent of the project is somehow worth more than the rest. It's also not the firs time I've seen willful ignorance on behalf of a device maker.
I few years back I was sourcing some kit for an ISP and discovered the ADSL modems were based on Linux + BusyBox. I asked the manufacturer if I could have the source so we could try some local modifications only to be told "the chipset maker doesn't supply that" and I would have to talk to them (in China) about it. I argued the point but they refused to accept that they had a legal obligation. Fortunately about a year later they entered into a settlement with the gpl-violations.org but by then I was no longer working for that ISP.
Not only did they not exercise due diligence to start with, it appears that when asked to comply with the license by posting the code they actually used, the company lied and said they weren't using iptables. Had they simply said "oops, sorry about that, here's the code we compiled" it would have been resolved with just a few minutes of time.
That second scenario is what Plesk did. I pointed out they weren't in compliance and as an Apache copyright holder I insisted that they comply.
They immediately posted the Apache code they were using, ending the matter. The only effect on them is that now a couple of Slashdot readers know that they did the right thing.
I think that's the big takeaway - when you mess up, don't lie and initiate a cover-up, just fix it and move on.
This isn't going to make it easier to convince companies to adopt the GPL.
That's their problem, to be honest. And it's good for me if they wish to make themselves less competetive by giving into FUD.
The thing is the same issue applies equally to GPL code and proprietary code. If a third party had used someone else's proprietary code, they'd be in an even bigger heap of shit, but no one would be saying that it is going to hinder the uptake of proprietary code.
Basically the rule is you need to do due dilligince to make sure your suppliers aren't supplying you with dodgy crap.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You publish your code. It might get used. Deal with it.
Ah, then by that logic, we can ignore all copyright laws. Eureka!
To be perfectly clear: I would rather a world where labor to create a work is done and paid for once, and the infinite monopoly granted to any who refuse to work without assurance of pay would be applied to content creation as it is in all other labor fields. Yes, I would rather a world where no copyrights existed at all; Where to get more money you would have to do more work instead of sell more copies which are infinitely reproducible and thus valueless: // regardless of cost to create.
Econ101: infinite supply == zero price;
Not monetizing copies but the work which yields their infinite supply instead is actually how the open source model of software production operates. As a car mechanic or home builder or burger joint would: I do an estimate, agree on a price for the new work (code | feature | installation | maintenance | etc.), then do the work once and get paid once for it, then seek more projects to do more work to get paid further. Instead of the insanity of selling ice to Eskimos -- or 1's and 0's to folks with computers -- I get paid proportional to my work.
Conversely, since copyright does exist, I am not free to utilize any other available configuration of 1's and 0's already created and thus in infinite supply. In response to the ridiculous state of copyright whereby I am disadvantaged by my sane work practice and since I do not foolishly work for free then gamble my livelihood in the closed source copyright futures market -- A market where the work can go underpaid or unpaid if the market value didn't match the demand leading to job insecurity, and whereby the publisher middle men can drain the consumers of orders of magnitude more wealth than the cost to create the work (see how that works? The workers are disadvantaged, yes?); In response for being held to these ridiculous laws in order to make a living in society I choose to assert that my end users have all the rights and capabilities granted to any others who would monetize my work. Unable to rid the world of all copyrights, I expect businesses to obey them as I must. I merely expect that the business community enriched with unbounded advantages provided by GPL'd code not disadvantage me by disallowing my future work upon projects such code makes possible.
Now, perhaps you are feckless enough to assume I can simply ignore copyrights if I want. Perhaps you assume a person can have security in their future while their small business breaks copyright laws at will, and allows others to close off future job opportunities by not releasing source code as the contract under which the work was performed would require. Perhaps you would say: "Just deal with bad actors making a less of a viable future for you." Perhaps you would say the blame lies with me for publishing my code in the first place, and ignore all the other compliant businesses which my work bolsters all of at once and I thus thrive upon. Perhaps you would think we allow ever more egregious infringement of the open source copyrights to proliferate while allowing the brutal punishing of end users for minor copyright infringements against proprietary licensors. Perhaps you would say, that I "might get used. Deal with it.", and then ignore that dealing with it is exactly what is being done in TFA...
So you would make speculative IP creation impossible. Before you created any IP, you would have to establish contact with all possible customers and agree, and contract, a price for the IP you would create. This was the way the system used to work in the 18th century: Dr Johnson had to line up a number of sponsors before he produced his dictionary. The same applied for music: Bach needed a sponsor for his cantatas etc. The invention of copyright then produced an explosion of publishing: because people could retain the IP of their putative great works, they could publish speculatively (possibly with funding from a publisher), and if indeed it turned out they were great works, they would be repaid for their efforts,
Your proposal would, I think, destroy the literature and magazine industries. Yes, magazines have subscribers. But why should I subscribe if I can get a copy as soon as the magazine is published? How can the editor of a magazine get enough readers to contract for something that they will receive free once the first user has received it? How can the writer who /thinks/ he has a great book make a profit from it when the first review copy can be Torrented for free? Why create any new work of literature? Music is slightly different: a live performance is different from a recording, and some groups distribute recordings for free in order to get fans at their concerts. But, in the days of the Kindle etc., an e-copy of a book is approximately as good as a hard copy.
Literature and music are not the same things as burgers and car repairs. The invention of copyright had a massive positive effect on human culture. Very little of the music you listen to and the books and magazines you read would exist without it. Of course, I am not saying that the existing system is perfect - very far from it. Its application to programs and code is very defective. But in throwing the whole thing out, you are losing the good as well as the bad.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
> Why is it that you can take literary works and sample from them without violating copyright but GPL'ed code is viral?
> If they are both based on copyright, why can't you take small samples of code and incorporate it into non-gpl'ed code?
You can. Who said otherwise? Just as you can quote a few sentences from a book, you can copy a few lines from a GPL work.
You can't copy-paste several pages from a typical book, under normal circumstances, and you can't copy-paste several pages from a GPL work without complying with the license.
It may be a mistake to get into a discussion involving fair use on Slashdot since quite a few people here seem to think it means you
can take whatever you want, from anyone you want, and do with it whatever you please. As it sounds like you know, fair use has a
very specific definition. Generally, it means you can use a small sample of a work in a way that does not compete with the original
work, such as quoting a book in a review. I've never heard anyone say you can't quote code in a code review.
> Why is is that you create a derived work from a literary work and by just rewriting it, you have to pay no royalties and yet GPL
> advocates want the original author to be able to "steal" all of the derived works even it it almost completely refactored into a new codebase?
I'm not sure what you're on about here either, but you can't refactor a book either. You can write a new book on the same topic.
You can't re-arrange the paragraphs by cut and paste, add a few words, and call it your own. Same with software. Maybe this
will make it clear:
It's illegal to shoot someone.
is it illegal to shoot someone and give them a Coke?
is it illegal to shoot someone and smile at them?
It's illegal to take my code and distribute it without following the license.
is it illegal to take my code and distribute it without following the license and also add your own code?
is it illegal to take my code and distribute it without following the license and also change my code a little bit?
Adding some of your own code to mine is the same as adding a Coke to the shooting. How would that make it okay?
Following the GPL is nothing more than posting your changes, or giving them to your customers. Is that SO hard?
You insist on selling my work, but can't post your own?
I agree that the idea of copyright is a good one. I hope most here understand that people who create something like music or software deserve a chance to make a profit before everyone can just download it for free and give nothing back in return. Open source works because there are enough people willing to give back something whether it's a bug report or a few lines of code. Everyone is better off if the software isn't really the thing that is being sold. Now sometimes the software is the thing that is being sold and those who create it 'closed source' deserve to make some money IF people want to use it. In my opinion the problem with copyright isn't the idea, it's a solid and workable method to encourage people and business to create new things. The problem like most problems is that the populace wasn't paying attention and what was a good idea was twisted into a terrible monster just as patents have been. I'm not saying its our fucking fault but I am saying we collectively need to fucking put in some effort to fix it. I have no idea if that's really possible anymore since government has become just as much a monster as copyright and patents, more so even.
Anyway copyright should be limited, No more than 10 years I'd say. If you can't make your money back in that time frame than you fucked up. Patents I think should be something like 5 years or maybe 7. I don't know but I think a sold per-reviewed study could look at all the various industries and pick apart their profit reports and find the sweet spot for both copyright and patents. We have to wash away the greed and absurdness of both these good idea's gone bad. I can't image anyone who really thinks logically that someone should be able to live the rest of their life because they wrote one song 20 years ago. It just doesn't make any fucking sense. There is nothing magic about making music, movies or software. The only difference is once you have made them you have an unlimited supply of them which some people think means it should be worthless and free but if that was the case than no one would bother putting in the time. Sure you'd have some people doing it as a hobby but that isn't the same as doing it as a business and polishing whatever it might be over and over again because you don't have a day job taken up all your time.
I think the US got copyright right way back when but we all closed our eyes for a moment and greed twisted it into something we all hate and despise. The only other thing I have to add is those caught using something that is copyrighted for personal use shouldn't be bankrupted for it. They should have to pay for the product plus a fine of a grand or three. Now people making bootleg copies should face much hasher penalties and corporations that knowingly screw over others should get their asses handed to them since it's going to be rare to catch them in the act.
I'd like to see these problems fixed because I think it would lead to a new renaissance of creativity. Which was the whole point of these laws to begin with.
I see the liars are out in force today.
As much of a risk as any copyright violation is.
Are you illiterate? They got in trouble precisely because they failed to comply with the license by blindly posting something that didn't actually work i.e. it was missing code.
Or they would be in court for violating someone else's license.
Nope, sorry. The fsfe.org article suggests that attempts were made to resolve the issue with no success prior to Welte seeking legal action. FANTEC made their own bed, and now they get to lie in it.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
We all know that a world without copyright would not work.
Or more precisely: would be a poor world in terms of art and sciense and technology.
Perhaps you have a car, the software in the car costed perhaps about 100 million dollars to be crafted.
Do you really think anyone is able to pay so much money if he can not leverage it on sales of at least a million cars?
How much does a our days movie production cost? A few hundret millions at least. Without copyright no one would be able to make money from a movie, except those who "pirate" it. So bottom line only hobbyists would make movies. They would need a second job to earn their living.
Sure, you could imagine a world where people watching youtube videas click the like button later and pay a dollar. But is that not comunism which you equally hate?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The whole point of GPL is that it's a bargain, you get the code and you share the improvements if you distribute the result. That bargain is not being met if they refuse to release the source code and that's my whole point. We have companies who think the device driver they add is somehow worth more than the rest of the project and so they shouldn't have to follow the rules.
I earn a living writing copyrighted works (software), and I'm still against copyright. And it has nothing to do with not wanting to "pay a dollar for a song" - I'm more than happy to do so (as long as it doesn't feed the RIAA).
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No, that's not the point of the GPL. The point of the GPL is to uphold the four software Freedoms, has defined by rms in the Free Software concept.
The GPL may be useful for saving money, but that's just an helpful side effect, not the main purpose.
And you may not need to adopt its principles, but you certainly need to adopt its requirements.
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