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Bruce Perens Explains That 'GPL Is A Contract' Court Case (perens.com)
Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3,872. Bruce Perens writes:
There's been a lot of confusion about the recent Artifex v. Hancomcase, in which the court found that the GPL was an enforceable contract. I'm going to try to explain the whole thing in clear terms for the legal layman.
Two key quotes:
Two key quotes:
- "What has changed now is that for the purposes of the court, the GPL is both a license, which can be enforced through a claim of copyright infringement, and a contract, which can be enforced through a claim of breach of contract. You can allege both in your court claim in a single case, and fall back on one if you can't prove the other. Thus, the potential to enforce the GPL in court is somewhat stronger than before this finding, and you have a case to cite rather than spending time in court arguing whether the GPL is a contract or not..."
- "Another interesting point in the case is that the court found Artifex's claim of damages to be admissible because of their use of dual-licensing. An economic structure for remuneration of the developer by users who did not wish to comply with the GPL terms, and thus acquired a commercial license, was clearly present."
If I'm reading the summary correctly, we would be wise to officially offer dual licensing, even if we set the price so high that nobody would actually license the code under those terms?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Cuz the circuit courts and/or SCOTUS are going to rip that finding to shreds.
Rule of acquisition #17: A contract is a contract is a contract.
#DeleteFacebook
Columbia University law professor Eben Moglen wrote the GPL.
Because Bruce was getting "picked on" the site was changes so UID is emblazoned on everything.
It is not my fault.
My guess is that there is a HUGE amount of GPL code compiled into numerous closed-source applications being sold or otherwise distributed in ways that violate the GPL. Good luck finding it all...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Looking at the initial comments, I would think you might want to weigh in on some points/questions coming up here.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Low UID prestige is quite legitimate. It means we have been around since the beginning, when there was nobody on here but true nerds who almost all knew their stuff. While it is true that a high UID does not prove ignorance and incompetence there is an almost zero chance that a low UID holder will be anything but a person with a lot of experience in the field, a solid understanding of Linux or at least lots of experience with it, and almost zero chance that they are a Microsoft weanie. In other words, we were here when Slashdot was a tech site, and more specifically a linux and OSS tech site.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
And yet when the site began, people got along fine with the interface where you had to go out of your way to find out if a commenter had a low number or not.
The person who told me about this site back in 2000 was a Mac user, btw. Also a highly skilled programer who coded DSP chips in Assembly Language.
To the point about what sort of a site Slashdot has become, it's chock full of IT types now. The diametrical opposite of a nerd.
Bruce Perens .... Slashdot Newbie. /now get off my lawn.
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
I've been here since '97 and I don't recall a time when your UID wasn't shown blatantly next to each post. I admit I could be wrong on that, as at the time I had a high UID :-) Nobody cared that I had a high UID either, as I recall, but again that is because the influx of incompetents hadn't yet started, not because of any difficulty determining it. Also, as far as your friend the Mac user you should probably learn what the phrase "almost zero" means, as well as what qualifies as anecdotal evidence and how much value that kind of evidence has here.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Please take your hate speech elsewhere.
Ethical BSD developers don't need GPL code, they write their own because they respect the fact that anyone who wrote GPL code is not okay with the idea of not getting back any improvements made to that code.
On the same note, ethical GPL developers don't relicense BSD code they happen to use, so that any fixes local only to the BSD source can be also shared with the BSD-only world. They both respect the idea that the original author who used BSD for the license doesn't mind if people use that code on closed-source products, and *also* stay true to the idea that one should always give back any improvements made to that code (by keeping it BSD so that the BSD people can use the improvement as well).
Copyrighted works require permission to copy them... the GPL is simply a written permission to copy the work it covers to anyone that will agree to the terms. Nothing more, and nothing less. If you agree to the terms, implicitly, by not acting in contravention to those terms, then you have permission to copy the work, but if you act in contravention of the terms then the default status of copyrighted work applies and no such permission is granted by the GPL.
Full stop.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That may well be true, but I am a low-UID AC, and this site always had the "News for nerds, stuff that matters" motto.
Even if it had a large slant towards Linux since the very beginning, and an idiotic meme about beowulf-clustering everything (it got worse with hollywood actress tits memes later, when the imbecile-to-nerd ratio went too high), it has never been ONLY about Linux.
It is just that quality Windows nerds were rare, and sincerely, anyone will fell an absurd need to joke the shit out of the likes of Windows 95 and Windows ME given how bugridden and badly designed they were. Newer windows users have no idea just how far windows has improved over the last decade and a half...
That said, it also had proper editors back then (the whole *two* of them), so...
Thanks to Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and their ilk, what you call "plagiarism" when applied to software becomes both a civil, and a criminal offense with jail time both in the USA and the EU and goes by a different name ("software piracy"). That is just how things are. I don't know how it is in South Korea, though.
As for entering a contract, you better read the details about Artifex v. Hancom. Really.
Nobody is forcing you to use the gpl. If you don't want to use it, don't.
But if a project is under the gpl, you don't get to simply ignore it's terms simply because you don't like them.
Hmm, corporate greed detected. I donate far more than that as an *unpaid volunteer*, although I do it with upstream work, not money.
I'd say you are donating a little bit of what you make off the hard work of others to feel better, but not giving back nearly as much as you should. And if you are a typical example, that's why the larger BSD projects are always operating ultra-starved. Make it an US$ 20k yearly donation to OpenBSD (which are far more starved than FreeBSD), and you will *start* to make sense.
When you dedicate *one* good engineer to work on *upstream* BSD or MIT-licensed projects for at least 25% of his *paid* work time (assuming a 40 work-hours week), THEN you get to claim you are "giving back". Because if it is just money, US$ 1k would not have paid the work I did for free in the last two weeks (in US wages). Since I am not in the US but rather on a poor third world country, it would have paid the work I did for free in the last month in local wages, I guess.
Are you saying that you think it is fine for author to prevent copying, unless they allow copying on the proviso that those who copy also allow copying?
There may well be contributors who wanted to make a proprietary derivative that locked in users, but I dare say there were none who wanted someone else to make a proprietary derivate that locked in users.
Anyway, this is rapidly becoming a moot point. If you get your users to access stuff "in the cloud", then you can use all the GPL code you like (AGPL aside), and never have to release a line of source.
It is a nasty game they play. A GPL library will be "Standard" more and more until there really is no alternative. How is this any better than places like Microsoft?
Wow. Last I checked, Microsoft was closed source pure evil in a box with a huge price tag, and you're asking how Free/Open Source GPL'd code is any better than Microsoft?
Somebody needs a whap upside the head with a clue by four.
Lawyers call an agreement a contract.
The court has just affirmed what you said, Hancom publicly stated that they had agreed to the GPL. Thus there is a contract in place.
The contract has terms, defined by the GPL that Hancom agreed to. These terms were not complied with. Now we have a breach of contract.
Once a breach of contract has been established the case becomes much clearer, lots of existing case law which covers how it should be dealt with.
Often you will see GPL projects that "allow" a corporate license.
The unwritten detail that you aren't seeing is that a GPL project that dual licences is almost exclusively developed by one company. It isn't a collaboration, because contributors provide their code under the GPL and that can't be included in the commercial product. This means that the GPL code is a gift by the company to the wider world with conditions which allow the company to continue to profit, they typically don't request significant contributions such as donations. The difference with a purely closed source company like Microsoft is that you, as the consumer, have a choice you otherwise wouldn't. For example you can use the GPL version for early development work and switch to the commercial license when you are sure you want to use the library and distribute a final product. The library development process closely mimics a standard closed source company.
Collaborative GPL products work very differently and are never dual licensed. The GPL provides a guarantee for each company contributing that every other company must also contribute. This allows direct competitors to cooperate on a product knowing that they aren't putting themselves at a disadvantage. These projects work very differently to the dual licensed ones, the development process is open to allow communication across multiple companies. They also take code contributions and sometimes financial contributions, often to maintain infrastructure.
I regularly have my company donate to many open source projects. These donations are pretty good (1-5k each) but we all fully agree that never in a million years would we donate to a GPL project or any over arching project ever.
Companies I have worked for have supported projects vital to our work. The license influences libraries we use and the way way we use them. If you are adamantly opposed to the GPL and don't rely on their work then it would make perfect sense not to direct your money or time there.
Not supporting a collaborative GPL project because of a few non-collaborative GPL projects just shows off your ignorance.
Note that is a good point, which many OpenSource developers will recognize:
While companies like BSD-style licenses better for pure use, MANY companies prefer a GPL-license for code THEY contribute (GPLv3 may have changed that a bit though). Thus proving the statement "BSD is preferred by businesses" wrong. It's mostly preferred when they do not have the PRIMARY intention to collaborate or contribute (though they may end up still doing that though).
The logic of the court case isn't specific to the GPL, any licence you choose to distribute source with, or even a straight binary distribution would probably involve the creation of an implicit contract.
You shouldn't be scared of contracts, they are just a way for lawyers to formalise agreements. Buying a coffee - a contract. Buying a bus ticket - a contract. Agreeing to terms and conditions you never bothered to read - a contract.
It's hard to look down on anyone who writes a bunch of code and releases it for free, whether it's under the GPL or the BSD license, it's still fairly generous.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Columbia University law professor Eben Moglen wrote the GPL.
Eben Moglen contributed to GPL v.3, the original version was written by Richard Stallman.
/. refugees on Usenet: news:comp.misc
does my 5 digit id make me cool?
Yep. We know people like you exist. That's why I boldfaced "almost zero". (And yes, I get the irony that you have a lower UID than I do but are the one saying stupid stuff; it simply isn't funny.)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
ROTFLMAO. You truly are a boring person.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Nope; It's your broken shift key that does it.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It makes you cooler than the dirty 6-digit claiming he's been around since the beginning. It's gonna hurt that 6'er to know this 5'er typed this out on a Surface Pro 3. I'm such a "Microsoft weanie".
Is a software licence a contract? This question is easy to answer, because YOU can answer it and you cannot do the wrong thing.
Two options.
1) You decide it is. You use the software and follow the terms of the licence
2) You decide it is not. Then you're not allowed to use the software, as its copyright protected and you have absolutely no permission to use it, while there is no binding contract which allows you to use it. So you don't use it.
You cannot do the wrong thing.
The article by Bruce Perens, like all pro-GPL writing, is nothing but Orwellian double-speak, constantly talking about freedom but at the same time insisting that freedom means "you must do exactly as I say".
That's exactly how freedom works. In free societies, freedom means you cannot murder, you cannot steal, you cannot disparage, you cannot do a lot of actions, deemed bad. You should know that, Hobbes already talked about it a few centuries ago.
The GPL is a license until parties profess mutual assent.
Which you do by redistributing the IP in question, per the terms of the license.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since I do not wish to have a contract with random people on the Internet that download my software, then I should probably stop releasing my software as GPL at this point.
The contract doesn't obligate you to do anything (you've held up your end of the contract already, by producing something and distributing it) but it does obligate them to do something, so there is no drawback to entering into such a contract.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Stallman and his ilk don't do GPL so that their code can be free. But so they can have power over other coders. Often you will see GPL projects that "allow" a corporate license.
Sigh. The GPL protects freedom from users. If you don't like a dual-licensed project, then don't contribute your code to it, which requires assignation of ownership. Problem solved. Hope this helps!
The key here is that most of the people who probably contributed to the project didn't want it GPL but it was the only project in town.
They had a choice. They could work on their own project, or they could benefit from the labors of others. If they took the latter route, then they really don't get to complain.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It makes you cooler than the dirty 6-digit claiming he's been around since the beginning. It's gonna hurt that 6'er to know this 5'er typed this out on a Surface Pro 3. I'm such a "Microsoft weanie".
I was around since five digits but didn't make an account until six digits and hey, guess what? This isn't even my first account, the first one was 11xxxx. But I think his point stands. The earlier six-digit UIDs are often referred to by the noobs as "low" now, since the UIDs have gotten so very numerous.
Personally, I don't give a shit whether people think I've been on Slashdot for a long time, since that plus five bucks will buy you a cup of coffee. But yeah, 1xxxxx UIDs are "old" now. Kind of like people who were born in the 80s have kids now. *shudder*
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The article by Bruce Perens, like all pro-GPL writing, is nothing but Orwellian double-speak, constantly talking about freedom but at the same time insisting that freedom means "you must do exactly as I say".
This keeps coming up, and I've never received a proper reply, but maybe this potty mouth anonymous coward will surprise me.
Licensing code under a non-copyleft free license means you are fine with someone taking your code and building a commercial product with it, and never giving it back in any way or form. If you're okay with that, how come you're not okay with someone who does give it back, except in a way you can't use?
Intuitively, GPL ought to be more free than completely closed off no matter where you stand, and yet you're okay with the later but not with the former. Please explain.
Shachar
I can use a license grant you give without agreeing to a contract with you. In that context, it is only a license - I am merely using what you have already given free license to do. Until I affirmatively state in some form that I am agreeing to the terms, all you have to stop my use would be the copyright that I am infringing, because no contract was formed.
No. A license is basically a permanent contract offer, rights are granted if and only if someone forms a contract by agreeing to it. There is nothing you get "for free" by the mere existence of a license that exists independent of and outside a contract. Even the BSD license has terms you must agree to, if you don't agree to the terms you're in violation of copyright law. If you claim to have rights under that license then that means you claim to have entered into a contract by agreeing to it, in which case you can be sued for breaching that contract. Of course you could try to claim that your use is legal because it isn't actually violating copyright law or is protected by fair use etc. but in that case you can't invoke the license at all.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How do you violate a contract you never agreed to?
The defendent agreed to the contract by stating publically on their website they licenced the code under the GPL. They could argue that they were lying when they said that and they were merely wilfully infringing copyright but I doubt that would end well for them.
If you possessed a third grade reading comprehension level you would know that I never stated or implied that registration was ever required. The AC facility is, however, quite misunderstood. The reason for AC originally was that in certain rare cases a person might want to post information that was "inside information", or say something controversial bit apropos, and the AC facility was in place so such people could do so without fear of reprisal. Nobody ever said "What we really need is a facility so people can troll and feel like it is acceptable behavior to berate our members like little children and offer nothing of value to the discussion." So no, Creimer, the AC facility is not in place for you to abuse it the way you do. Also, you don't know what the definition of troll is, which is ironic since you are one of the most idiotic and incompetent ones on Slashdot.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You truly are a boring and incompetent troll. Thanks for making me smile though! :-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The defendent agreed to the contract by stating publically on their website they licenced the code under the GPL. They could argue that they were lying when they said that and they were merely wilfully infringing copyright but I doubt that would end well for them.
In Germany, some laws are a bit different from the USA, and as a result the GPL has always been a contract. Except one side didn't care whether you agreed to the contract or not. In court, you had the choice to either claim that you agreed to the contract (and therefore were bound by it) or didn't agree to the contract (and therefore committed copyright infringement). This didn't quite consider a dual license case.
The GPL puts no obligations on the receiver that aren't already there because of copyright. If you receive a copyrighted work, the only obligation that is placed upon you by receiving it is that you need to get the copyright holder's permission in order to copy it (typically written permission).
The GPL only grants such written permission to copy the work that it covers to certain people, indentifying the people that it is granting permission to copy the work as anyone who implicitly agrees to its terms by not doing anything which contradicts those terms. It does not require an arbitrary recipient to follow those terms *AT ALL*, as a contract would. If the recipient doesn't follow the terms, the GPL doesn't give them any permission to copy the work, and if they do abide by them, then it does. Simple. If someone distributes the work and does something that contradicts the terms of the GPL, then they aren't breaking any contract, because they never agreed to such a contract in the first place, the person is committing copyright infringement by copying a work that they have not been granted permission to copy. The only thing resembling a "contract" when it comes to the GPL is the "contract" that copyright law already covers, which is the agreement that you would not copy the work without permission.
Done.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Just to be safe, I am releasing everyone from the contract. And I refuse further participation in the contracts.
That will make things a bit complicated for me on LKML though.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm not the AC, but I have some commentary on the issue.
My position is that the GPL is inherently toxic to the economy, specifically to the portion of the economy that consists of opportunity to earn from creating software. That very economy is important to those of us who can program at a level where we can create commercial products. My tiny sector of said economy shall not be poisoned thus.
And before someone says "yes, but you can charge for support", the way I see it, the optimum path is to write software that doesn't need support. Why?
First, because that's best for the consumer: good docs, good performance, high reliability, minimum bugs, secure. I prefer to charge for the product, fix it for free if it breaks (after all, I sold it with the idea that it did X under conditions Y...Z; I maintain that's an obligation I must address if I possibly can), and charge for actual new features V...W. Likewise, if I write proper documentation (which I also maintain is my obligation), I don't need to be telling people how to do X, because I already told them how to do X. Not that I don't end up pointing people to the docs on how to do X, but that's not a failing of mine I have to be concerned about having foisted off on the consumer.
Second, because it's very good for me. If my users come to think of my products as reliable, well documented, fixed for free quickly if broken, and overall functional as advertised, they're a lot more likely to come back to me than if I continually charge them for doing the above things poorly. I'm not guessing here: This has worked extremely well for me.
What isn't good for the consumer is when Joe(anne) programmer looks at an idea, runs into the GPL, and goes, "no, not going to give my ideas to my competition" and wanders off elsewhere.
You contradict yourself. The opportunity to get a return is absolutely there. If Joe(anne) builds a commercial product, I have the opportunity to purchase that result; to encourage and benefit the programmer(s) who built the product in direct return for the benefit they provide me, and perhaps to benefit yet again further down the road as they consider the opportunity to earn more. Likewise, if it's me doing the programming, I'm one heck of a lot more likely to consider it if it means my family and I get to eat because I created something useful to someone than I am if my earnings are now compromised by having handed my work to the competition.
Because it represents an opportunity to earn; because it represents an incentive for the earner to make something for me, right along with a reason for them to do it. And I can use their work. Commercial products are usable. Writing code isn't the only use of code. Using the programs the code is incorporated in is a significant benefit. I can't be writing every program I use. Commercial products have been a huge boon to my career and my family.
Now, none of this means that I object to someone else's decision to license their stuff under the GPL; that's their code and they are absolutely free to license it any way they see fit. What it does mean, though, is that spotting a GPL license means I'm going to walk away from whatever it is. It won't benefit me in my commercial applications unless I give away my own inventions, and it has the potential to harm me by giving my work to my competition, so: not having any.
Personally, when I make code public (which I've done a bit of), I make it public, as in, you want to use it, copy it, learn from it, incorporate it in your commercial product, you just go right ahead, and I am
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It isn't "not getting back" it is "whoever gets it next needs to have the same freedoms, as does the person they give it to and whoever they give it to and whover they give it to .... for forever."
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I LIKE SPROUTS!
smacks head with 2x4, eats paint chips
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If the terms were not complied with, then they weren't agreed to, regardless of any claiim to the contrary, since the GPL grants permission to copy only to people that do not act in contravention of its terms.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you must write a flimsy rationalization of your prejudices, be concise.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
This post deserves more visibility.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I don't necessarily like you or agree with you terribly often, but you're a better person than you're showing in this comment. I don't know what your disagreement might be, but I think you should offer an apology for this remark.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I find that user IDs have a lot of meaning.
Accounts are useful for reputation purposes.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you want to complain no one has answered your take on things, you should bring reading skills and capacities above the third grade level (and I may be being unkind to many third graders there) in case someone actually, you know, answers you.
It is the height of rudeness to press for a response, and then fail to bother to read it. I'm absolutely unwounded – this is a profoundly obvious case of consider the source – but I certainly know better to continue engagement with demonstrated social cripples.
That's /thread. Anything further is just aimless scratching of itches.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's really simple. If the software you want to use has license terms you don't like, write your own. You're no worse off if a GPLed project exists that does what you want than if no such project existed. Stop bitching about people who do creative stuff that doesn't appeal to you.
You also seem to do a lot of projecting of motives on other people. If most of the people on a project want it to be permissively licensed or proprietary rather than GPLed, they'll do that instead.
A bit of history on Stallman: he was working with a new printer, and he wanted to fix some of the problems with the software in it. He found that he couldn't, due to licensing. He believes that you should be able to modify and redistribute software you use, and that's what the GPL is about. This isn't about controlling other coders, and he's made that clear over the years.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Different username, same story. I never realized how much I would care (and then finally not care again) that I didn't register an account on slashdot for a couple of years. I lurked for a really long time.
Still - the more things change, the more they stay the same... and now the only time six digits isn't cool is when the four digit folks come out to play and remind us they're still here and haven't all left for reddit (yet).
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
No.
don't be so hard on the noobs...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.