Understanding the New Red Hat-IBM-Google-Facebook GPL Enforcement Announcement (perens.com)

Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3872. Bruce Perens writes: Red Hat, IBM, Google, and Facebook announced that they would give infringers of their GPL software up to a 30-day hold-off period during which an accused infringer could cure a GPL violation after one was brought to their attention by the copyright holder, and a 60 day "statute of limitations" on an already-cured infringement when the copyright holder has never notified the infringer of the violation. In both cases, there would be no penalty: no damages, no fees, probably no lawsuit; for the infringer who promptly cures their infringement.
Perens sees the move as "obviously inspired" by the kernel team's earlier announcement, and believes it's directed against one man who made 50 copyright infringement claims involving the Linux kernel "with intent to collect income rather than simply obtain compliance with the GPL license."

Unfortunately, "as far as I can tell, it's Patrick McHardy's legal right to bring such claims regarding the copyrights which he owns, even if it doesn't fit Community Principles which nobody is actually compelled to follow."

Comments

can't we all just get along?

[OrangeTide]

The soft stance taken with GPL violators is an attempt for a peace and love approach to copyleft. This is disappointing when copyleft should really be at war with the copyright tyrants that have repeatedly destroyed lives of so-called pirates with violent para-military raids and freezing of personal assets. The corporate world is playing hard ball, and the open source world wants to string daisy chains.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without copyright there is no such thing as the GPL. There is no such thing as copyleft,

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Bruce Perens]

Copyright is not the only possible legal regime. It's just the one we have now. A legal structure supporting openness could exist side-by-side with proprietary copyright.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt many of the people violating the GPL are the same ones holding the other copyrights. Two wrongs don't even make a right if you have the correct target, and you want to play hardball against people who are unrelated?

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is such a thing as copyleft, but, yes, as you mentioned, copyleft is empowered by copyright. The two are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[julian67]

"....This is disappointing when copyleft should really be at war with ...."

The thing about going to war is that you have to win. If you lose you typically lose in catastrophic, irreversible, grossly injurious ways at best and fatally at worst. If you achieve stalemate you may be so impoverished that you dare not assert your rights in future, and may
  find yourself a much more visible and softer target for other adversaries. You have to win, and win unambiguously even if not in every detail. Cheerleading for war from a position of financial inferiority, legal ambiguity and lack of adequate precedent, is beyond brave and well into the realm of foolishness or even suicidal tendency.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[hackwrench]

Copyleft as it stands now is empowered by copyright. There is nothing preventing Congress from passing a law recognizing copyleft as its own thing.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[KiloByte]

Without copyright there is no such thing as the GPL. There is no such thing as copyleft,

Without copyright, there would be no need for copyleft. Somewhat counterintuitively, it's GPL (v2) rather than BSD/MIT that emulates a world without copyright better: we'd have decompilers.

Decompiling is merely an optimization problem: make a front-end that takes x86/etc code (these already exist), output C/etc code, optimizing for human readability; you lose comments and (without debug info) function and variable names. The only reason no one wrote a serious decompiler yet is that cases when using source recovered this way are so niche it's not worth the effort.

For pretty much any interesting program, people would clean up and comment such source, thus there'd be no commercial benefit for keeping the code closed. And, releasing real source means you get better outside contributions, thus cooperating with your users is a win. Ie, we'd have an all-GPL world.

I specified GPLv2, as there exist a way around decompilers: DRM. Of course, doing so on a general-purpose CPU would be mere pointless obfuscation (just run the thing in an emulator and dump memory when decrypted), thus such evil CPU would need to include sealed DRM chips. But, the corp would still have to give the user both the lock and the key: decapping is not that simple, but it can be done, immediately breaking all DRMed code runnable by the chip that got decapped. DRM is physically impossible, it serves merely as a stumbling block. At this point, it'd be so niche that no company would really bother, turning the tables to what we have now with decompilers.

We'd end with a prisoner dilemma world where everyone cooperates, instead of current population of defectors.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Bruce Perens]

The thing about going to war is that you have to win.

If your goal is having as many users as possible, you don't set out to use the GPL. Inherent in that choice you are rejecting some users in favor of gaining a better bargain for everyone else. The Kernel Team still has trouble dealing with this.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon me for going off track but this comment is the best description of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I have ever read. Forget about copy left and copyright for a moment and read this comment from a "Israeli-Palestinian" conflict point of view.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

The prisoner's dilemma doesn't result in everyone cooperating. If it did, then it wouldn't be a dilemma.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[julian67]

Thank you for making that distinction.

War, even if corporate or legal or ideological rather than national, is a state that encompasses the possibility of being annihilated, and also the opportunity to enforce the same on the opponent.

It's very pleasant to be reminded that some people and organisations seek to create frameworks, laws, habits, methods etc. that anticipate and preempt those mindsets and situations. It's also nice to be reminded that pretty much all the software I use to read and to post here is a result of those endeavours.

Free Software FTW!

btw in my mind "FTW!" always auto-translates into "Fucks The World!" but I'm really trying hard to use and understand the TLA in what is, I grudgingly concede, its more commonplace and modern context.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[KiloByte]

The prisoner's dilemma doesn't result in everyone cooperating. If it did, then it wouldn't be a dilemma.

If the reward for defecting is small enough, and the population punishes defectors enough, it's a smart play to cooperate. If the payoffs are (5,0), (3,3), (0,5), (1,1), you can get 5 once then nothing but 1s for the rest of your life -- while everyone else keeps getting 3s. On the other hand, if you're in a population of defectors, cooperation is suicidal. Note that in a world of cooperation, the average person fares drastically better.

But alas, we live in a world where defectors buy themselves draconian copyright laws, and attempt to make cooperation illegal (like FCC rules or Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive).

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Knuckx]

The only reason no one wrote a serious decompiler yet

I'd call Hex-Rays Decompiler for IDA pretty serious. It can do x86/64, PPC and ARM/ARM64; I've only seen output from the x86/64 version and it did a damn good job of making assembler into C. Of course, it also has a pretty serious price tag!

Re:can't we all just get along?

[julian67]

David Ben-Gurion:

"We must support the army as though there were no White Paper, and fight the White Paper as though there were no war. "

That is what one might describe as a nuanced strategy, or deep pragmatism, or farsightedness, or wisdom.

Bear in mind that in the (supposedly) most militant Zionist factions such as Lehi there were people who regarded Hitler and the Nazis as a mere problem but the British as the real enemy. For some of them 6 million murders by the Nazis and 6 years of existential struggle by the British did not change their minds (i.e. Mr Menachem Begin).

The various Arab neighbours of Israel thought they would achieve victory and the opportunity to annihilate Israel in 1948. They quite reasonably estimated that they had overwhelmingly huge resources of manpower, materiel and wealth with which to crush an upstart.

But war is a very risky business. The Fuzzy Wuzzies broke the British Square, the Viát Minh crushed the elite of the French army, the 300 Spartans stymied the almighty Xerxes. You really have to win.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're massively overselling decompliers and underselling the actual requirements people have regarding their software.

First, decompiling is rather difficult. A live example: Just ask people "what does the Intel Management Engine installed on most PCs actually do?", and see the blank stare response. Even when decompiling is successful, there are many cross-dependencies (especially on MS software) and finding out what actually happens is not trivial. And the result is far from maintainable. Many users would pay for a supported 'closed' version when that's the case.

DRM has no need to work forever or apply to all users to be effective. It merely needs to make breaking the software hard enough for most users until the next (or next-to-next) version is released. If we use realistic metric, most cases of 'DRM failure' are actually big commercial successes.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[swillden]

Without copyright there is no such thing as the GPL. There is no such thing as copyleft,

Without copyright, there would be no need for copyleft. Somewhat counterintuitively, it's GPL (v2) rather than BSD/MIT that emulates a world without copyright better: we'd have decompilers.

IMO, there's a better solution than a world without copyright: A world that grants copyright protection only when the expression is published. This is trivially the case in all other areas of copyright: You can't publish a book without letting people read the words that it's made of, thus allowing them to learn and therefore remix your ideas in their own expressions. Same for music, same for everything except software. Only in software is it possible to publish your ideas while simultaneously keeping them hidden.

We made a huge mistake in allowing software distributed in binary-only form to have copyright protection. It doesn't achieve the goal of modern copyright[*], which is to encourage the dissemination of ideas by allowing temporary ownership of the expression of those ideas. (Note that we've also broken the "temporary" part, but that's a separate issue). Binary-only software distribution means that it's impractical to read code and learn from it. The only part of the ideas embodied in the software that get disseminated with it are those observable from outside.

A more appropriate way to apply copyright to software would have been to provide it only to programs distributed in source form. This wouldn't seriously inhibit commercial software. Indeed in the early days of commercial software, licenses usually included access to the source code. This approach wouldn't imply that licensees had the permission to modify or compile the code (that would be production of a derived work), but most of the early licenses I mention did allow modification and recompiling, and I think it would be the norm, because it just makes sense to allow licensees to fix bugs that they discover, or to make enhancements that they need.

For code that really does need to be kept secret, there are other options under the law, including trade secret law. It would be more cumbersome to apply, since every recipient would have to sign a contract including an NDA -- no shrink-wrapped EULAs possible. But that seems fine to me, since it's pretty rare that code actually needs to be kept secret. SaaS would be another option for keeping code secret.

But under such a regime, most commercial software would be source-available, and open source and copyleft licenses would work as well. You could take open source-licensed software and add proprietary bits and redistribute, with the open source license on the original code and your proprietary bits under your own license. Your licensees would have full source code, but would only be free to redistribute the open source-licensed bits. Your parts would be subject to the restrictions in your license. But copyleft licenses would require that all code redistributed with the copylefted code fall under the copyleft license, meaning that whoever you give the combined code to has permission to modify and redistribute all of it.

[*] By "modern copyright" I'm essentially referring to the notion of copyright espoused by the US Constitution, as opposed to the earlier form embodied in the Statute of Anne. The earlier form was mostly about censorship, enabling the crown to decide what could or could not be published.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[OrangeTide]

The point of Open Source isn't really to have source code. That source is a means to an end, but not the end itself. The end goal is to have software that end users can modify to suit their purposes. And even further, the ability to legally share those modifications with other end users.

It is difficult to share modifications with binary patch schemes, and it is difficult to write those modifications. And I say this as a someone who spend a lot of time on 8-bit computers in the 80's where we did this sort of thing.

I wish decompilers were better. I've used them before, and HexRays is the best I've used but it's still sub-optimal. This is partly because the act of compiling discards much of the annotation that we enjoy in source code. You can find many obfuscators for your source code that basically discard annotation and mutate the structure of your code to make it difficult for a human being to comprehend. Distributing obfuscated source code is not really any better than distributing binaries, and is not at all in the spirit of the GPL.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[swillden]

Copyright is not the only possible legal regime. It's just the one we have now. A legal structure supporting openness could exist side-by-side with proprietary copyright.

I'd argue also that we have misapplied copyright to software. The fundamental goals of copyright are not met by offering protection for binary-only software. Just as it's possible to take the ideas expressed in a book and apply them in your own work, it should be possible to read software you purchase and remix the ideas in your own work... but this is impossible (or at least impractical) if you receive only a binary. Binary-only distribution means that you can publish your work while simultaneously keeping most of the ideas it contains secret, thus not enabling progress in the useful art and science of software engineering.

A more correct application of the principles of copyright to software would be to extend copyright protection only to software distributed in source form. This would make nearly all commercial software "source-available", which obviously isn't the same as "open source", much less the same as "free software", but would make the world of software considerably more open. Closed source software would still be possible, but would not have copyright protection so other means would have to be used to protect it, such as trade secret and contract law. But that would be cumbersome, so most software would have source available.

Re: can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ok but why try to even discourage this guy? If the "profiteering" targets had complied with the license he wouldn't even have a case. Are you blaming the victim here? He contributed code under conditions that it will continue to be free. The targets violated the license, now he wants to be compensated. Now that he has done the homework and identified non compliant commercial distributors of Linux, other copyright holders should file their claims as well. Teach them a lesson. We only care that people adopt Linux if they participate in the community. The violators now and in the future need to weigh the cost of developing themselves or buying similar capabilities from a commercial vendor against the downsides of publishing their probably insignificant modifications to free software.

Re: can't we all just get along?

[Anonymous Coward]

We only care that people adopt Linux if they participate in the community.

You nailed the issue here. It's all about "we the community". It's about certain types of folks realizing that their perceived position of social importance in an undefinable group doesn't entitle them to any special power in the government's business of copyright enforcement.

Personally I say fuck whatever 'we' you are talking about. If somebody or manybodies want to excercise their legal right to adopt Linux/FOSS without participating in the community, then good for them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to benefit from FOSS while completely ignoring 'the community', whatever that is.

To be crystal clear, and please let this sink in- The GPL does not compel you to publish modifications to FOSS. It does compel you to make them available to anyone whom you give binaries made from such to. That is a huge difference that many people fail to grasp. It is not a loophole. It is what the license says.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[HatofPig]

Okay but right now legal reverse engineering is allowed on the grounds of proven clean-room reimplementation, right? Like say with the ReactOS people being unable to accept patches from former Microsoft employees who worked on Windows. So wouldn't freely-available source muddy those waters?

Re:can't we all just get along?

[jedidiah]

It makes more sense if you understand or acknowledge that Israel and the Jews are one of the oldest continuously existing civilizations on the planet. They have been struggling to keep and maintain their national identity and native homeland since the beginning of human civilization.

This isn't about yesterday or 50 years or 100 years or even 500.

They've been at it since our ancestors lived in caves and ate each other.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[swillden]

Okay but right now legal reverse engineering is allowed on the grounds of proven clean-room reimplementation, right? Like say with the ReactOS people being unable to accept patches from former Microsoft employees who worked on Windows. So wouldn't freely-available source muddy those waters?

Wouldn't change it at all. In order to do clean-room reimplementation you have to separate the people who do the reverse engineering from the people who do the reimplementation. You have one group analyze the existing code and create a specification document. The specification contains the ideas from the original code, but none of the original code, nor any mechanical transformation of the original code, so it does not contain any of the original expression (copyright protects expressions, not ideas). Then you pass the specification document to a new group of people who implement it. Because they've had no exposure to the original code they cannot possibly copy any of the expression. Any identical portions of the result are purely coincidence, or necessity.

Note that nothing in the above says anything about the form of the code from which the specification was produced. It doesn't matter. Source availability would make clean-room reimplementation dramatically easier, by making the job of the analysts who write the specification dramatically easier.

It's also worth noting that clean-room reimplementation isn't legally necessary. You can actually have the same people do both the analysis and the implementation. The problem is that it becomes hard to prove that identical portions were not copied. You'd have to demonstrate that there are only a limited number of ways to implement the relevant bits, and therefore that the probability of coincidental duplication is high. It can be done, and has been done (e.g. in Oracle v Google, where the judge actually learned enough about Java programming to be able to make that determination himself). But clean-room, done correctly, is ironclad proof of the absence of copying.

The notion of clean-room implementation was created when Compaq decided to reverse engineer the IBM PC BIOS. Compaq was a small startup and IBM was a behemoth well-known for it's willingness and ability to litigate. IBM's legal staff hadn't yet acquired the moniker "The Nazgul" (that came during the SCO fiasco), but Compaq would have understood and agreed with the label. So, Compaq's lawyers devised the clean-room process, and Compaq carefully followed it and documented every step, so that IBM would have absolutely no hope of proving copyright infringement. It worked. IBM's lawyers looked at Compaq's process and documentation and didn't bother trying to sue.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[Bruce Perens]

I don't think it's nearly so bad. If software is published in source-code form, reading it is not reverse-engineering. What you have to do is refrain from cutting and pasting. The way we determine if something is a copy or a new work is spelled out in Judge Walker's finding in CAI v. Altai.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[John.Banister]

What people came up with to encourage the sharing of trade secrets are patents. In exchange for charging people a license fee for a period of time, you show them the better way you figured out how to do something. Current implementation of the patent concept in law also has issues, particularly for software patents.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[swillden]

I don't think it's nearly so bad.

That was part of my point :-)

Of course, if you're a startup stepping on the toes of a juggernaut, clean-room might still be advisable. Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison is great, but you have to go to court to do it. Clean-room tends to make the issue so clear-cut that you don't even get to court. Or, if you do, the only avenue of attack open to the plaintiff is to try to prove that you didn't implement the process correctly. Only if they succeed at that do you have to bother with complex AFC arguments.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[swillden]

What people came up with to encourage the sharing of trade secrets are patents. In exchange for charging people a license fee for a period of time, you show them the better way you figured out how to do something. Current implementation of the patent concept in law also has issues, particularly for software patents.

True. I think the misapplication of copyright to software is much more severe than the misapplication of patents. IMO, the biggest problem with software patents isn't the concept of patenting software designs but the granting of patents for obvious software designs. If the PTO refused to grant for things that are obvious to one skilled in the art, it wouldn't be so bad.

BTW, since you brought up the subject, I'll share my notional "patent system test". You know that your patent system is working correctly when working engineers regularly search the patent database in search of solutions to their problems, because it's more cost-effective to license a solution than to devise one. That would prove that the sharing of ideas is actually being encouraged by the system. In the software world, of course, every company I've ever worked for cautions software engineers never to look at the patent database, because odds are they'll find something they've independently reinvented, and knowing about it makes the company liable for treble damages. That's fairly compelling evidence that the software patent system is broken.

Re:can't we all just get along?

[John.Banister]

My idea for an individual software patent test is: "if you attempt to keep the idea secret, will anyone care?" If the answer is "no," then no patent is granted. I have a feeling that outside of software (where the design is the product), licensing patented ideas is more common.

GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

Are worse than Hitler.

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL is worse than Hitler.

And this is just another example of "We absolutely believe in software freedom --- except when we don't"

If you truly believe in Free Software (free meaning "freedom") then you reject the GPL because it has absolutely nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with forcing specific beliefs on users. Actually, if you truly believe in software freedom you reject ANY software license except one that contains exactly one sentence:

You are free to do whatever you want with this software.

Anything else is hypocritical bullshit.

Re:GPL violators

[james_gnz]

The law is worse than Hitler.

And this is just another example of "We absolutely believe in freedom --- except when we don't"

If you truly believe in Free Society (free meaning "freedom") then you reject the law because it has absolutely nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with forcing specific beliefs on citizens. Actually, if you truly believe in freedom you reject ANY law except one that contains exactly one sentence:

You are free to do whatever you want.

Anything else is hypocritical bullshit.

</moron>

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

All software should be free and no programmers should be paid.

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

im an anarchist and thats what i believe

nobody has any right to tell me what to do. go fu

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

You are free to do whatever you want.

Anything else is hypocritical bullshit.

That seems to have been the POV of Stephen Paddock (Mandelay Bay shooter) as well. But the philosophy doesn't serve the needs of modern civilization, as Thomas Hobbes and others pointed out at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like hyperbole to claim the GPL is worse than Hitler. I agree with the rest of your argument.

Re:GPL violators

[Bruce Perens]

If you truly believe in Free Society (free meaning "freedom") then you reject the law because it has absolutely nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with forcing specific beliefs on citizens.

I understand the sentiment, but without the rule of law you probably get the rule of mobsters. We do not yet live in a science-fictional world where coercion is impossible, regardless of the number of arms borne by one side or the other. This might have to wait for a post-scarcity society, if it is even possible then.

Re:GPL violators

[julian67]

Even Hitler is not worse than Hitler.

Re:GPL violators

[Bruce Perens]

Most libertarians still believe they have a right to keep uninvited guests out of their living room. I think the same applies to GPL software. The developers made the rules for their party. If you don't want to play by their rules, you do still have no limit on your freedom: you are entirely free to write your own software and set your own rules for it.

Re:GPL violators

[hackwrench]

Programmers should only be paid if someone wants to pay them.

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

This is false equivalence. You haven't shown anything relevant to what he was saying, just made unrelated ridiculous claims that are presumably meant as sarcasm.

Re:GPL violators

[Aighearach]

I think it is good for people to remember that science fiction isn't only Star Trek, but also Snow Crash.

Surely we could do better than the current copyright regime, and surely we could do worse too.

What worries me about the "advisory" nonsense is that it muddies casual understanding of what the rules are without actually stopping anything or giving real clarity; to the extent a reader thinks it brings clarity, they're most likely just misunderstanding more!

It is perhaps a good policy, but it is unfortunate that the response is mostly about ideology instead of about the specific terms of license contracts with specific vendors who don't hold the copyright to everything under that license. You won't get sued by these companies prior to the deadline, but you might really still get sued over the same software.

Re:GPL violators

[Aighearach]

I think every single libertarian I've talked to believes that they have a natural right to kill an uninvited guest found in their living room!

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bad situation to be in. It's probably unwise to kill him and it might be unwise not to kill him.

Re:GPL violators

[KiloByte]

Please tell me why I should be unable to defend myself in my own home.

And don't tell me "call the police". Not a single crime I've been a victim of that I reported had been acted upon, even though in two of three times catching the perpetrator would be trivial (unprovoked battery: the bum kept sitting there, cell phone robbery: robbers did not turn the phone off). That's why I don't even bother to report crimes anymore. On the other hand, try to cross the street at a crosswalk with a broken (always red) light...

Re:GPL violators

[KiloByte]

Even Hitler is not worse than Hitler.

Mao, Stalin, Muhammad?

Re:GPL violators

[julian67]

They may or may not have been worse than Hitler, but Hitler is not worse than Hitler.

To be less flippant:

Of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Muhammad it seems that Hitler is the only one who sought to murder millions of people as a matter of policy, on principle as it were. The others murdered millions of people, evidently many more millions in the cases of Stalin and Mao, incidentally. The moral import of this escapes me. To be in fear is to be in fear. To be murdered is to be murdered. The scale of the crimes defies my ability to assess or differentiate.

Re:GPL violators

[Aighearach]

Like most libertarians, you were unable even to tell if I had expressed an opinion or policy proposal, or if I was simply stating a fact.

The answer to your question is, hey dillweed, I didn't say if you should be able to or not, argue with yourself in the mirror not in "reply".

Oh, and if your State's laws tell you to just stand there and die at a broken traffic light, you're really from an exceptional backwater. In my State, a malfunctioning traffic signal is legally equivalent to a stop sign in every direction; which actually means not only that the pedestrian doesn't need to wait for a light, it actually means they can cross at any time and cars are required to yield!

The funniest part is that you agreed with what I said, but demanded I argue anyways. Yeah, happy to oblige, that makes you wrong by definition.

Re:GPL violators

[Cederic]

Please tell me why I should be unable to defend myself in my own home.

Please tell me why you need to defend yourself with lethal force against an uninvited guest in your living room?

I mean, civilised people would offer them a cup of tea, sit down and have a chat about why they're there and whether they're ok.

Re:GPL violators

[james_gnz]

This is false equivalence. You haven't shown anything relevant to what he was saying, just made unrelated ridiculous claims that are presumably meant as sarcasm.

The claim I was responding to, was that if a licence has any rules, then it is not free. My (yes, sarcastic) response is intended to point out the absurdity of equating freedom to the lack of rules.

Re:GPL violators

[james_gnz]

im an anarchist and thats what i believe

nobody has any right to tell me what to do. go fu

Oh really? So I don't have a right to tell you not to commit theft or murder?

Re:GPL violators

[KiloByte]

I mean, civilised people would offer them a cup of tea, sit down and have a chat about why they're there and whether they're ok.

Against a civilised person, no potentially lethal force is required. Such a person wouldn't also break into my home.

Re:GPL violators

[Cederic]

You're making a very large number of assumptions there, many of which could easily be wrong should you encounter an uninvited guest.

However, it's very clear: If I ever find myself in your house uninvited, I must kill you with immediate effect as an urgent matter of self-defence.

Re:GPL violators

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing wrong with the rules, just don't pretend the rules are about freedom as they explicitly prevent freedom.

Re:GPL violators

[james_gnz]

That seems to have been the POV of Stephen Paddock (Mandelay Bay shooter) as well. But the philosophy doesn't serve the needs of modern civilization, as Thomas Hobbes and others pointed out at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

To clarify, my post was intended as sarcasm. Also, my argument wasn't supposed to be about whether or not we should have complete freedom, but only that freedom isn't the same thing as the absence of rules. i.e. We need rules to ensure people respect each other's freedom.

Re:GPL violators

[james_gnz]

I understand the sentiment, but without the rule of law you probably get the rule of mobsters. We do not yet live in a science-fictional world where coercion is impossible, regardless of the number of arms borne by one side or the other. This might have to wait for a post-scarcity society, if it is even possible then.

To clarify, my post was intended as sarcasm. I was arguing against the idea that the absence of rules equates to freedom.

Re:GPL violators

[KiloByte]

Then, depending on jurisdiction, you'd be guilty of murder or at least manslaughter. Homicide during home invasion is no small thing. While this will be no consolation for me (I'd be dead), homicides are a kind of crime that the police tends to actually investigate. In Poland where I live, this is 8 to life if it appeared you were in my home accidentally or with no intention to confront me, 25 to life if it counted as (even unarmed) robbery -- facts don't seem to matter as in practice our courts decide this completely at random, even contrary to elementary common sense.

As for me, in nearly every jurisdiction I have a duty to see what's going on, but usually it's about whether a reasonable person would believe you're either a danger or intend to commit a crime. Poland was until recently one of worst offenders, with about no right to self-defense, but fixing this is pretty much the only good deed of our current government. They're also fixing home invasion law by making defense against such entry immune from prosecution unless I "drastically exceed" what is considered reasonable. I'm only waiting to actually be allowed to own a gun (currently you need quite some connections to get a permit), as currently I don't believe I'd have any chances against even a single weakish thug.

Re:GPL violators

[KiloByte]

Oh, and if your State's laws tell you to just stand there and die at a broken traffic light, you're really from an exceptional backwater. In my State, a malfunctioning traffic signal is legally equivalent to a stop sign in every direction; which actually means not only that the pedestrian doesn't need to wait for a light, it actually means they can cross at any time and cars are required to yield!

I live in no State, thank you. But, pray tell, how exactly a car is supposed to know that green light doesn't mean green?

The problem in Poland is, you get a fine for crossing on red not only when there's not a single car in sight, but even if the road is completely closed. You are allowed to cross a road at your own risk only if there's no pedestrian crossing within 100 meters. Who cares if the red light is stuck, and there was no traffic at the time? There's money to be obtained, catching criminals on the other hand means risk but no monetary gain.

Re:GPL violators

[Aighearach]

The car will know because cars here always have to yield to pedestrians anyways.

I know in a lot of the world people would just get run over in that case, but I live in a more civilized place.

In any case, this story is about US copyright law. Your opinion is out of place.

Re:GPL violators

[angel'o'sphere]

Wow, you must live in a fucked up country that you were the victim of a crime.
More than once.
And: police is not working.
Did you pay your taxes?

Re:GPL violators

[i.r.id10t]

Not everyone lives in a city.

My house is on a back country road that is a back way between 2 small towns, one of which has a bar and the other doesn't. Every 9 or so months, someone misses the curve and ends up in my fence. I call 911, if an ambulance is needed it is 10-40 minutes. Police (state highway patrol) take an hour to show up and give me a report for insurance/etc. For criminal activity, county sheriffs respond. I've only had to call them once (found a gun in the road at the end of my drive) and it took 20 minutes to get 2 deputies there.

No, it wasn't one of my guns - it was a POS plastic Smith & Wesson V40 and totally crushed and useless, so I never claimed it as found property. I like blue steel and walnut.

Re:GPL violators

[david_thornley]

Against a civilised person, no potentially lethal force is required. Such a person wouldn't also break into my home.

Under normal circumstances, no. There are highly unusual circumstances that could cause a civilized nonviolent person to break in. Until the intruder demonstrates hostile intent, or you know why the intruder came in, shooting the intruder would be murder.

Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[gQuigs]

From the article:
Q: Is it true that the principles the four companies announced today are taken from the GPL 3 license, but they are applying them to GPL 2?
A: Yes. If your software is under GPL 3, the same waiting periods that the four companies have promised are required. Thus, it is ironic that when originally presented with the opportunity to apply the GPL 3 to Linux, Linus Torvalds and the Kernel team were quite hostile about it, while the kernel team’s recent announcement attributes the principles they have adopted to the text in GPL 3. Perhaps they’ve learned something since those hostile moments.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Bruce Perens]

To be fair to the Kernel Team, the major thing they objected to in GPL3 back then was the anti-TiVo-ization terms. These would prevent lock-down of the software such that the end user would be blocked from updating it. I am told that a number of products gained a "developer mode" just to comply with GPL3. This is something we should encourage, IMO. But perhaps the Kernel Team are still more oriented to having companies use Linux than keeping it as Free as I would like.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be doubly fair to the kernel team, it's borderline impossible to relicense linux even if they want to. When someone contributes code, they do *not* transfer ownership of the code's copyright to the kernel team, they simply make available their code under the GPLv2 and then the kernel team pulls the changes. The kernel doesn't include an "or later" clause in its license, and neither do most contributions, so the kernel team can't legally relicense the kernel without first obtaining approval from every contributor (or removing the parts for which approval can't be obtained).

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Bruce Perens]

It's not really impossible, and even the Kernel team has studied the problem with a lawyer and acknowledged this. It's not easy either. Remember, Wikipedia did a some time ago. You have to publish the decision for opposition, and then anyone who opposes it who has code in the kernel has the right to ask for that code to be removed before the change.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Anonymous Coward]

The author clearly doesn't understand why the kernel team rejected the GPLv3. There were several issues raised about the GPLv3, none of them had to do with giving a window of compliance. This isn't a case of irony. it's the author not understanding the subject. A developer can like one part of a license and not like another.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Bruce Perens]

Here's the Wikipedia relicensing. Definitely not easy. I objected to GFDL applied to Wikipedia before this, and they knew that, but I didn't play an active role in this change and there must have been many other people who objected too.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Bruce Perens]

The author clearly doesn't understand why the kernel team rejected the GPLv3

The author understands it was mainly the anti-TiVo-ization terms. But you know Linus. Rather than say "we could use GPL3 and grant an exception to the anti-TiVo-ization terms if we really wanted to", Linus gets obscene, calls, names, personally abuses people, the whole "Linus Show" which is a lot less cute now than that he is a grown man rather than a young guy challenging a whole industry.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[tlhIngan]

To be fair to the Kernel Team, the major thing they objected to in GPL3 back then was the anti-TiVo-ization terms. These would prevent lock-down of the software such that the end user would be blocked from updating it. I am told that a number of products gained a "developer mode" just to comply with GPL3. This is something we should encourage, IMO. But perhaps the Kernel Team are still more oriented to having companies use Linux than keeping it as Free as I would like.

Here's the thing - GPLv3 would basically halt all adoption of Linux, period. It's already caused a lot of issues with companies and except for the few whose main line of business doesn't really involve software, GPLv3 software is essentially verboten in use. (The companies who don't care are those like computer makers who pre-load a computer with Linux - GPLv3 doesn't affect them).

Had Linux gone GPLv3, you'd basically see a complete halt to Linux development - companies will stop working on the GPLv3 version and continue to work on the old one under GPLv2. At the same time, you'd see a third party kernel start to take shape - perhaps a BSD kernel. So Linux would likely fork as companies will simply ship ancient kernels, while others adopt a BSD kernel and develop on that.

You have to remember, the GPLv3 is halting adoption of a lot of software products - companies are instead going for GPLv2 licensed products or purchasing commercial alternatives. Heck, one of the reasons why Apple put so much time and effort into LLVM was presumably they saw the writing on the wall with GPLv3 and started grooming a replacement for GCC. This despite the fact that OS X would be largely unaffected by the change (the source is available anyways, and you can always compile and run your own version).

Other projects like busybox have not "upgraded" to GPLv3 for the same reasons - commercial use is a huge reason for their existence.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Bruce Perens]

I don't know who told you this, but it's just not true. A lot of businesses prefer GPL3 to GPL2 because many of its terms are more well written and more fair than GPL2.

Businesses that want to do a TiVo-like lock-down might not like GPL3. That might be some manufacturers or embedded devices. But consider how many WiFi access points allow installation of OpenWRT, etc.

Google is said to have forbidden the Affero versions of the GPL since they effect software-as-a-service. Is that what you're thinking of?

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of issues, one being that where a company inadvertently publishes some code, in GPLv2 the impact is constrained to the software ; in GPLv3 it is not.

A hypothetical example - where the division of a corporation that produces the software may be fine with GPL3, but not empowered to unilaterally grant implicit universal patent rights, and encumber your organization to being a party to patent grants you aren't aware of.

Re:Time to begin a move to GPLv3?

[Bruce Perens]

GPL2 has patent terms as well. And in general, if you grant Open Source software using a license with no patent terms, there is an implicit estoppel under equitable law. The issue is that you can't give somebody something that infringes your own patent, authorize them to use it, and then sue them for infringement.

Say you used the BSD license. No patent terms, right? Estoppel anyway? Yes!!!

So, most sensible attorneys are happier with having that in writing than implicit.

Bad cop

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

Unfortunately, "as far as I can tell, it's Patrick McHardy's legal right to bring such claims regarding the copyrights which he owns, even if it doesn't fit Community Principles which nobody is actually compelled to follow."

I don't see the problem with this. Either way, the deliberately offending party gets held accountable. In fact it would be entirely appropriate for these companies to fund lawsuits like this a la the Gawker case because their interests overlap heavily.

Re:Bad cop

[Bruce Perens]

As far as I can tell so far (not having read the actual cases) it's McHardy's legal right. However, the Kernel Team is bothered that it might turn users away from Linux and don't condone his asking people for money. Nor do any community norms I've seen in 20 years approve of his behavior.

Re:Bad cop

[Aighearach]

It is as simple as this: People against him using his legit enforcement powers want to muddy the moral waters to make him look bad, and even though this harms everybody involved, they're happy to drive users away with confusion as long as they can phrase it as if they have the moral high ground and are fighting the good fight.

They may not have considered the moral implications of their combination of licensing and code-sharing terms, but I sure did, and for clarity: When I release code under a Free Software license, I considered the license terms before selecting the license! I promise! People who want to add moral arguments after the fact should really try harder before the act in the first place; if the license terms were the terms they wanted, no moral addendum would be necessary.

Re:Bad cop

[guruevi]

The problem is that in many jurisdictions non-enforcement of copyright violations makes the license unenforceable. I'm not sure what the statutes of limitations are here (and I also think they are very flexible), but I would say much of the 2.2 and 2.4 kernel code could probably be considered "public domain" in many areas by now.

If there is a "community agreement" not to sue infringers of the GPL licence in connection with the kernel, then I'd say that is evidence that the license is void and any compliance is simply goodwill.

You can't "demand" money for people that are in compliance with the license, you can if they are infringing. I know various vendors that are non-compliant and neither the FSF nor anyone in the community wants to "do" anything about it even though they severely limit the freedom of the product. I have a set of devices on my bench that are simply useless because the Linux kernel modifications on it sits behind an NDA and the vendor nor the producer wants to comply with the license.

That issue has turned me off Linux as a platform recently as it's just another closed source system in many cases, so I might as well use an existing proprietary system that 'just works'.

Re:Bad cop

[Bruce Perens]

Creating a Laches (which is what you are talking about) isn't really the same as placing something in the public domain. Laches means you waited for economic demand for the infringing product to develop before you brought the lawsuit, presumably to enrich your income. It doesn't apply to the next new infringer to come along.

Also, be careful not to confuse it with trademarks going into the public domain.

Re:Bad cop

[david_thornley]

Copyright doesn't go away if you don't enforce it. Trademarks do.

I know of no community agreement to not sue violators. TFS describes one to go soft at first, giving violators a solid chance to come into conformance. If they don't, the kid gloves are off and lawsuits are reasonable.

Re:Bad cop

[guruevi]

There are plenty of examples where copyright wasn't enforced because the copyright holder waited too long to enforce it, usually until a deep-pocketed entity comes along. Pretty much any claim in civil courts is subject to it including trademarks and patents.

The OP stated that the community frowns upon suing someone for copyright because it might turn big companies away from using Linux. There is no 'agreement' as in a written contract but Linus himself has quite publicly stated he doesn't care much about whether or not someone infringes upon the GPL.

Plan With The Law In Mind

[SeattleLawGuy]

The corporate world is playing hard ball, and the open source world wants to string daisy chains.

Community can be great but isn't enough to make sure our code is used the way we want. Making a choice about what license we are going to use isn't the end of our copyright decision-making. If we want our licenses to be effective, we need to plan for enforcement, for inheritance, and for who will "own" the copyright in our code even if we want our code to be free.

VMWare

[Anonymous Coward]

So does this mean, VMWare is in for a world of problems, finally?

Re:VMWare

[Bruce Perens]

So does this mean, VMWare is in for a world of problems, finally?

No. Last I heard (and many people are not aware of this) the VMWare case was under appeal in Germany. Meaning that VMWare could still lose. However, VMWare has been given cure periods far in excess of the ones mentioned here.

Original Article

[Bruce Perens]

In case you didn't realize, the original article is the last link. Or you can just look at it here.

GPL not so good in highsight

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft are all banding together to defend the GPL, maybe the GPL isn't in your interests as much as you had once thought.

Problem with your communism-capitalism dichotomy

[OrangeTide]

Copyright isn't capitalism.. Copyright is protectionism. We had capitalism in this country before we started protecting book authors from book publishers. Our copyright system started off as a social program to protect weak individuals from powerful people.

basic copyright case?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell so far (not having read the actual cases) it's McHardy's legal right. However, the Kernel Team is bothered that it might turn users away from Linux and don't condone his asking people for money. Nor do any community norms I've seen in 20 years approve of his behavior.

Huh? Isn't this about basic copyright enforcement? Party A has copyright. Party A accuses party B of violating that copyright. Party A seeks damages. Party A and B settle in or out of court. That seems definitionally 'norm'al to me. What seems unusual to me is a large, significant group of people that seem to be implying that though they agree with Party A's legal theory, they don't wish Party A to excercise their legal rights in that way, and thus- generate some controversy sold by journalists.

I suspect what may be happening is that the mainstream group is afraid to take the obvious logical action of effectively un-merging the persons code and reimplementing it- because if they did that they'd have to admit to themselves how legally easy it would be for any billion dollar corporation to get away with doing to their subset of that codebase if it ever suited them tactically.

Suing is true enough

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone uses GPL code without following the licence, they're committing copyright infringement. All the contributors should be allowed to sue for damages for their pieces of code

Decompiling?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Decompiling is merely an optimization problem [...] you lose comments and (without debug info) function and variable names.

There are folks working on this: https://github.com/eth-srl/Nic.... The idea: use machine learning to look at t lot of code to come up with plausible variable names (the first demonstrator was AFAIR for a Javascript deminifier from ETHZ).

Who knows... perhaps the thing could come up with some useful comments too... I'd bet it'd be better than the Doxygen comments churned out by many a Java sweatshop.

Backup your bs with proof OrangeTide... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Backup your bs with proof OrangeTide https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11425437&cid=55663429/

APK

P.S.=> See you there (somehow, I don't think I will & you will continue to embarass yourself as you did starting garbage with me - I am going to let YOU finish YOURSELF boy)... apk

Backup your bs with proof OrangeTide... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Backup your bs with proof OrangeTide https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11425437&cid=55663429/

APK

P.S.=> See you there (somehow I don't think I will & you will continue to embarass yourself as you did starting garbage with me - I am going to let YOU finish YOURSELF boy)... apk

Backup your bs w/ proof OrangeTide

[Anonymous Coward]

Backup your bs w/ proof OrangeTide https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11425437&cid=55663429/ provide proof of me picking on you 'for years' as you said in the post parent to mine in that link I just posted - you can't.

(If I had issues w/ you I'd have bookmarked it & I never have before YOU came in calling me a "git" (fool) starting hassles!)

* See you there (somehow I don't think I will & you will continue to embarass yourself as you did starting garbage with me - I am going to let YOU finish YOURSELF boy)

Additionally - CLASSIC & PRICELESS: I also CAUGHT YOU posting UNIDENTIFIABLE AC vs. using your registered 'lusername' yet you point to YOUR POST that was done under your REGISTERED 'lusrname' claiming it too (YOU = FLATOUT-BUSTED -> https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11432439&cid=55667787/ )

SEE YOU DOWNMOD HID THIS 8x TIMES I POSTED IT TOO https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11430293&cid=55668641/ & https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11433711&cid=55669021/ + https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11432725&cid=55669055/ https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11432725&cid=55669519/ https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11430293&cid=55669493/ https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11432483&cid=55666417/ - weak trying to hide it!

APK

P.S.=> This is the 17th time you've done a "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" vs. it OrangeTide - why's that? I caught you lying?? Cat got your tongue??? Yes, obviously - pitiful... apk