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In Israel, Class-Action Plaintiff Requests Waze Source Code Under GPL
jonklinger (1166633) writes "A class action lawsuit was brought against Waze (a community-based traffic and navigation app), claiming that their source code and map data were licensed to Waze by the community under the GPL. The plaintiff, Roey Gorodish, requests a copy of the recent source code and map data. This is (as far as I know) the first ever GPL class action suit, too bad it will be quashed by bad facts later as I see it."
Google seems to do a credible translation of this source article.
Google owns waze.
The article linked is really quite good. According to the article are 2 prongs to the suit the code and the data.
Waze version 2 was GPLv2. Wave version 3 was proprietary. Waze claimed it rewrote the code. Roey Gorodish wants to examine the code to prove there was a violation but Israeli law doesn't allow discovery without some evidence. As an aside I also have question in that as as I know if Waze owns the code they can multilicense it. Roey Gorodish IMHO would have to find his code not just any code.
There is also the question of map data. Freemap’s data was released both proprietary and GPL and then only proprietary. I'm not sure what the basis of the claim is.
"Under US law you have no right to the source code. "
Ahem... if Mr. Gorodish is correct, and Waze was licensed under GPLv2, then we do in fact have a right to the source code, and Google would be breaking the law by not providing it.
GPL v2:
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.)
. . .
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License."
In this particular instance, "you" would mean Google. If, that is, Waze was GPLed.
Actually gnasher is correct - you have no *right* to the source code, you only have a *right* to either insist they abide by the licence terms or be in violation of copyright, and if its the latter then you need someone whose copyright is being violated to bring suit against them as no one else can do it in their stead.
Two Technion students reverse-engineered Waze's method for detecting a traffic jam, then created a network of fake clients that reported traffic patterns that caused Waze to mark as jammed what was in reality a perfectly empty road.
Sources: Jerusalem Post, Wired.
Ahem... if Mr. Gorodish is correct, and Waze was licensed under GPLv2, then we do in fact have a right to the source code, and Google would be breaking the law by not providing it.
No, you don't have the right to the source code. _If_ there is GPL licensed code and the code is licensed under the condition that Google should give you source code, then Google has the free choice of complying with the license (giving you the source code) or committing an act of copyright infringement (not giving you the source code and having no valid license).
You can't force Google which of these choices they take. And if you are not the copyright holder, then you have no standing to sue. Even if you _are_ the copyright holder, you can't force Google to give you any source code. You could say "give me the source code or I'll sue you for beeeelions" and they can say "Ok, sue us", lose the case, pay billions and keep their source code.
Not at all -- I've updated the summary to include that.
I get the GPL issue. If they took GPL code and modified it for their own use, they may be required to provide source, but what I don't get is the data. How are they justifying asking for that? Most "data" of that type that I'm aware of is licensed under the Creative Commons license (or similar).
For mapping applications, the *real* value is in the data. Where much of the data is freely available in raw form, there is significant effort required to process the data available and put it into a format to be doled out to handheld devices in small chunks. I don't see how they can claim that GPL entitles them to the raw data from Waze.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Objective-C is a message passing language. As such, it needs the message names you are sending to exist. They cannot be simply stripped out, they would have to be replaced which is a process that no-one I know of goes through.
Even if you strip debugging symbols, the names of the methods are all still there.
You can dump the class info for all of the Apple frameworks, do you really think they send those out un-stripped?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's basically google maps with a different skin, and you can report things like speedtraps and accidents. And you get points, so there's a game aspect I suppose.
That's it. It's one of those "tech" companies that seem absurdly overvalued based on how little they actually do. In no sane world would it be worth the billion google paid for it. And on top of that, although the interface for reporting stuff is designed to be as minimal as possible and they prevent you from typing and driving, there's no way it's safe to use. I've used it, so I'm a hypocrite there, but it is a driving hazard.
Riiiight - just a map overlay and gaming aspect. No mention of incident reporting, showing aggregated speeds of waze users, the ability to share your location/trip,nope. None of that takes coding or infrastructure I guess.
Waze is more useful than google maps, apple maps, or navigon for me in estimating my commute times - it simply works. It even noticed a traffic disruption that had only really lasted for about 1 hr, showing me an alternate route through residential streets such that I got to my freeway onramp with only a 5m loss rather than what I guess would have been much longer.
I don't like that Google bought it - I don't trust Google very much, but I can't stop using Waze (I kill the app when I get home/work).
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A few articles on this. First of all, why not link to the actual article rather than this guy's blog?
http://www.themarker.com/technation/1.2281212#
Google translate works decently well, but I am happy to translate if anyone cares.
Secondly, as someone who knows some of the parties on both sides (directly and indirectly - Israel is a "small" place), I can tell you this claim has a lot of credit from what I have seen and heard so far. The founders of Waze clearly were after a money grab for a long time and would do anything to get it.
Regarding Waze itself, the app became popular in Israel mostly because everything else including a lot of GPS devices had the worst maps of Israel you can imagine. Waze built its entire business here in Israel (where it took off initially and spread to the rest of the world) on the basis of having better maps than everyone else. That was always the #1 thing they said and selling point, so to use other people's code and data is very serious here. As for the app itself, it had huge problems with zooming, spamming, and all kinds of things. I think everyone was a sort of reluctant user if not for the maps. For example, people love spamming police still, putting stupid things like "snow ahead" in the middle of the summer which is obviously moronic in most of Israel, and so on. Not to mention the map itself becomes a litter of icons and stupid things if you don't turn tons of things off, and it eats your battery.
The idea of "social" mapping and a map out without any real possibility of a revenue stream that won't piss off users is ridiculous. I am shocked Google paid anything for it other than to crush it, and yet they are hiring heavily for Waze in Israel right now. They have always been a pretty cocky company here and if the allegations are true which it seems, they deserve everything they get and more.
"if Mr. Gorodish is correct, and Waze was licensed under GPLv2, then we do in fact have a right to the source code, and Google would be breaking the law by not providing it. "
Only if it contained code not written by Waze (or Google, who is now the copyright owner). If you write a program, and release source under any version of the GPL, you're perfectly free to not release source for any future versions - you're the copyright owner, you're not relying on the GPL for your rights. The GPL terms are effective on _others_, who may modify the source and are then required to release the modified source when the distribute their version.
The attempt to tie map data into the situation is like trying to claim that a word processor must be open sourced if it is used to edit open source code.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
it's not really like google maps -- at least, not the data in question. in israel, at least, the maps were 100% generated by Freemap, based on data contributed by the users as they drove the roads. (israel is a small enough country that you can pull that off.) the location and path data was uploaded from the client phone apps (which ran GPL'ed code, based on RoadMap) to a central server (which was always private code). so what's interesting is what the initial terms of service for the user-contributed map data was. i'd bet that this is like the CDDB case, where they were free to take the user-contributed CD database private at some point. as for RoadMap -- i'm a principal author of RoadMap, and am still the underworked maintainer of the mostly inactive sourceforge project. i looked into the GPL issue when the waze complaints started, and convinced myself at the time that certainly none of my code was in the current client. and frankly, i'd be shocked if any of the original code was left at all.
The fact that you once released a product under any particular license does not require you to continue to release the product under that same license. As the copyright holder, you're free to change the license at any time.
Have they pulled the source code for the GPL version? Is it no longer available?
If it's still available, they haven't got a case to stand on.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.