Thirteen companies, including Motorola and Acer, have been handed letters claiming they have failed to comply with the GNU General Public License.
Companies accused of violating the GPL
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shooting them with an airzooka – http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/60b6/
Who cares? Is anybody going to sue them? FOSS = No organization, no money, no danger.
This is just the begining. And didn’t Microsoft implement OpenSSH? Did they tell the world about it and included a photo of Theo de Raadt in its campains promoting Windows?
Geek is made to feel like management understands and agrees with geek concerns.
Management laughs at geek as geek exits building.
“When I went to the X-Micro booth, I met the vice-president of X-Micro and we sat down and discussed the issue,” said Welte. “What he said confirmed my impression of what’s going on in Taiwan — people there are not aware of their obligations as they don’t have a tradition of copyright in Taiwan.”
Try China.
I’m sure these companies’ lawyers will crush anyone who tries to file a lawsuit about it.
Where’s the due process? It’s OK for this organization to make wild accusations and confront these companies but when the RIAA and MPAA do this concerning copyright violations it’s bad?
Let’s say one, possibly all, of these companies AREN’T in violation of the GPL.
Don’t they now have a case for slander, harassment, intimidation and lost revenue because they’ve been named as GPL-violators?
A public demonstration is all well and good, but this should have been handled with private correspondence I think.
Also, instead of writing “violating the GPL” you should just write “copyright infringement”.
Basically, the people handing out the notice are Linux kernel developers, and the people they are handing out the notice to are taking their code, putting it in embedded devices, and not complying with the terms. There’s nothing “wild” in the accusation.
The accused parties can remedy the situation by publishing the source code or withdrawing their products from the market, or they can try to fight, but Harald Welte, the guy behind this effort, has already won a court judgment against a company in Germany.
This is just the begining. And didn’t Microsoft implement OpenSSH? Did they tell the world about it and included a photo of Theo de Raadt in its campains promoting Windows?
OpenSSH is under the BSD license, not the GPL. Microsoft can do whatever they want with it if they choose, just like they originally did with the BSD TCP/IP stack.
as long as we completely ignore the existance of the fsf legal team. you guys should google “eben moglen”
I guess those companies are going to start seeing that Linux isn’t a free-ride or a one way street. More and more companies are going to start realizing this as they get hit by lawsuits. But I don’t think they are going to start becoming good members of the community. Instead, I would suspect that more companies will start migrating to BSD’s instead to avoid any type of legal trouble.
They can do whatever they want provided they bring along the original BSD license.
If you use any BSD code in your software, you MUST give credit to the author by distributing the BSD license along with your software, because that license is *still* covering the code you imported.
I think Microsoft complied, btw – I think it would be a useless risk for them not to comply.
Wow, it’s nice to see a lot of anti GPL guys here. NOT. Crawl back under your dodgy Microsoft EULAs which are designed to do nothing but take your rights away from you. And you can shove your BSD licenses as well, which only encourage a non community behaviour.
All of these bastards are big, multinational, greedy corporations, with the only intent of making money and screwing anyone else that gets in their way. We know what Microsoft is like, we know Sun is a bunch of two faced lying cowards, Cisco, how to bastardise open Internet Protocal standards, and the rest aren’t much better.
Now let’s see Novell, SGI, IBM, Redhat put their shoulders together and sue the ass of these bastards for license infringement.
These companies (Apple included) *love* the BSD license, cos they can take, take, and more take without giving a single ounce back to the community that spawned the majority of the code that they’ve stolen. That’s why Apple chose a bsd kernel over a Linux kernel. The GPL is anti business, and I’m quite for one happy with that, I don’t want it screwed over and stuffed up by greedy corporates.
These companies want to take and abuse, but not respect the license. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways. If you don’t like the GPL, get your filthy, dirty, greedy hands off our GPL’d software.
Dave
Reminder — BSD lisence does not make you give your code back to the community. You only have to include the BSD copyright notice in your documentation.
(Apple is not obligated to release Darwin under the terms of the BSD liscence.)
That said, I’m glad that there is somebody being vigilant about the GPL.
But, on the other hand, one must remember that the Berne Convention does not apply in nations who have not ratified it; moreover, there are cultures/nations where copyright is not a concept and *of course* you incorporate the works of others into your own … how else do you show your respect for it?
But where is the due process? Who decides they have violated the GPL and based on what evidence? The GPPL is nothing more than a contract and I’d hope there was some sort of judicial oversight into this process or at the very least lawyers are involved.
Thank you sincerely for not using the Gnu logo anymore. It was applied incorrectly nine times out of ten to “open source” articles. That little symbol is far less inappropriate, and a definite improvement.
The evidence is in the lack of source code being made available to the parties the binaries are being distributed to. And FYI, the GPL is not a contract (and therefor doesn’t use contract law). It’s ability to bind lies solely on copyright law, which is unfortunate. If it were a contract, it would be A LOT easier to go after these GPL violators, as contract law is pretty much universally more enforcable than copyright law.
If you follow the trail of these GPL violation hunters, you’ll see they’ve had legal counsel. Not to mention there’s a whole organization built around providing legal advice for these types of situations, perhaps you’ve heard of the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation, http://www.eff.org)?
is that the legality of the GPL hasn’t even been established yet.
At least people that use BSD for their code aren’t surprised when a proprietary company uses their code.
Little angery there eh?
“And you can shove your BSD licenses as well, which only encourage a non community behaviour.”
Actually when it comes down to it the BSD license is very unbiased about encouraging any kind of behavior.
You are allowed to do whatever you want, ie. build a community or not, around any of the code provided you provide the BSD license with the BSD’d code — since its still obviously under that license. Just because the GPL mandates the existence of a community does not mean that any other license which doesn’t is encouraging “non-community” behavior.
“That’s why Apple chose a bsd kernel over a Linux kernel. The GPL is anti business, and I’m quite for one happy with that, I don’t want it screwed over and stuffed up by greedy corporates.”
Apple, unless I’ve been reading internet trash, has contributed back both through Darwin, and by commiting changes into the FreeBSD CVS branches. Granted, they are not giving back what people would really want like, Quartz, Quicktime, etc. However those were never under the BSD license and there is no reason to contribute them back. Even the GPL doesn’t say that you have to contribute anything cool you make back to the community just because it was designed to run on a GPL subsystem.
Where’s the due process? It’s OK for this organization to make wild accusations and confront these companies but when the RIAA and MPAA do this concerning copyright violations it’s bad?
Ahh, but the RIAA has done much more than send letters. They have sued people, and settled out of court for thousands of dollars. Yes, it was their right to do so since they control the copyrights, although I personally don’t like their tactics (suing your customers). This gentleman simply advised the companies involved that they may be in violation of the GPL and he respectfully requested that they review their practices. There was nothing threatening at all. From the article (emphasis mine):
Welte claimed that the binary code of the companies’ products appears to have used GPL code, but that they have not made source code available as required by the GPL. The letter warned companies that this might be the case, but did not mark the start of legal action, according to Welte.
I’m sure he doesn’t want to sue anyone. He simply wants them to comply with the GPL.
I think this is a lousy way to pursue GPL violations. Going after these companies in any public fashion *before* they have been given a chance to adequately review their own actions and form a response has the undesired effect of appearing to be a public attack, and will get their hackles up. This initial contact should be taking place in private correspondence. Only if that fails should a public communication be made.
My company uses GPL software, and pays close attention to be sure that we don’t violate it in any way. If someone disagrees with us about our practices, or even if we just plain screwed up on something, I would be very pissed to have somebody show up at a trade show booth with a correspondence about it, and even more pissed to have my company’s name show up in an article such as this one. This is a very disrespectful and inflammatory way to go about GPL enforcement.
Saying that the GPL hasn’t been legally established yet is just saying that copyright law hasn’t been established yet. Which is obviously and completely false. If you are just trolling, however, I guess you got me.
“The dirty little secret
is that the legality of the GPL hasn’t even been established yet. ”
Well, if the GPL isn’t legal, then no EULA on the face of the planet is legal either.
When free software came the GPL zealots told software vendors that they would have to adapt to this new reality because people wanted stuff for free and they had to change business model.
Well, seems like the zealots have to suck it up and change to a better license because its obvious that companies don’t like the GPL. My opinion: Adapt to this new reality or die.
Bryant incorrectly stated: “…the legality of the GPL hasn’t even been established yet.”
Mr. Welte, the developer mentioned in the referenced article, has already won a copyright infringement suit in Germany, involving the very same code.
Copyright law is extremely well tested. Shipping someone else’s copyrighted code requires permission. The GPL grants that permission. If the GPL were held to be invalid, then there is no permission, and it would be a clear case of copyright infringement. This puts possible infringers in the interesting position of needing to *defend* the GPL as the only thing protecting them from losing a very straight-forward copyright infringement case.
What’s happening here is that Western companies are buying products from OEMs in Taiwan and China. The OEMs are ignoring copyrights, just as they often ignore patents. The lesson is to do due diligence when buying from an OEM. The copyright holders understand that the resellers didn’t deliberately violate the license terms, and will work with them to get them into compliance. That means putting pressure on the OEMs. Putting your name on something made by a sleazy OEM does have consequences, and the resellers need to do a better job of screening.
When free software came the GPL zealots told software vendors that they would have to adapt to this new reality because people wanted stuff for free and they had to change business model.
You are confusing “free as in beer” with “free as in speech”.
Now, could you provide a link to that statement from GPL “zealots” telling ISVs that they would have to adapt to Free Software?
Well, seems like the zealots have to suck it up and change to a better license because its obvious that companies don’t like the GPL.
Whether they like it or not is irrelevant: if they use GPLed software, they have to conform to the license and copyright law. And obivously they liked the GPLed software, otherwise they wouldn’t have used it in the first place.
Now, they could decide to only use software released under the BSDL, however they don’t get to choose which license a program is released under (that’s the developer’s privilege). So they might end up having to use inferior software. It all comes down to whether they want the best tool for the job, whether they really care if they have to release the source code or not (honestly, I don’t see how the majority of these companies would actually suffer from releasing the code), and whether they will choose to respect copyright law or not.
Now, I can tell you’re an anti-GPL zealot. The question I’m asking myself is: why? As a user, you can’t possibly have any issues with it. As a developer, you’ll only have issues with it if you want to use someone else’s code, modify it and release it without allowing others to do the same (which is a very selfish act in and of itself, and would be recognized as IP theft in most cases).
If you don’t want your code to be under the GPL, don’t use GPL’ed code. It’s as simply as that.
There are some questions about the legality of the GPL in the US, mostly raised by M$. And most people agree that this is just FUD, but you can never tell for sure when millions of dollars are at stake.
“There are some questions about the legality of the GPL in the US, mostly raised by M$.”
Again, if the GPL isn’t legal then the result would be that *no one* has any right to distribute GPL software – NOT that *everyone* has the right to. It is so clear cut you might as well say that “Given the massive repurcussions, one can’t ever be sure that the world is in fact round. MS has suggested perhaps it is flat.”
There is no official translation of the GPL or LGPL into Chinese as the FSF feels that “checking them would be difficult and expensive (needing the help of bilingual lawyers in other countries). Even worse, if an error did slip through, the results could be disastrous for the whole free software community.”
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/translations.html
Interesting.
Its a bit odd, that the FSF won’t commit resources to make its licensing terms easy to understand in the international market, but has no problems distributing resources levying legal threats all over the world.
That’s funny – these guys: http://www.blackducksoftware.com/ are trying to make $$$$ of off GPL license infringements – I wonder if they’re going to succeed.
> Again, if the GPL isn’t legal then the result would be that
> *no one* has any right to distribute GPL software – NOT that
> *everyone* has the right to.
Unless a court decides that the obligation to distribute the source code with the software it is invalid, and hence one can distibute GPL’ed software without sources.
As Matt said: “… but you can never tell for sure when millions of dollars are at stake.” Remember the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
Again, if the GPL isn’t legal then the result would be that *no one* has any right to distribute GPL software – NOT that *everyone* has the right to. It is so clear cut you might as well say that “Given the massive repurcussions, one can’t ever be sure that the world is in fact round. MS has suggested perhaps it is flat.”
Well, if MS said the world was flat, I bet a good chunk of people would agree. At least after they were paid… Like I said, I don’t agree with what they say, because I think it’s very clear. But they say that the GPL can’t force them to give away code that they wrote, even if they are borrowing some of it from GPL code. Basically that it’s unconstitutional to force them to give up what they own. Anyway, I don’t think it’s a really serious argument they’re going to take to court, just more FUD.
… that I hope the GPL succeeds in court. I don’t like it for several reasons, but GPL’ed programs are still a more than fair offer from the developers (unlike many other licenses).
There is no official translation of the GPL in German either……I think the courts (in whatever country) would like something official in the local language written by a lawyer, don’t you?
http://www.gnu.de/gpl-ger.html
Well, seems like the zealots have to suck it up and change to a better license because its obvious that companies don’t like the GPL.
Not liking the GPL is not grounds for violating it. If you don’t like the GPL, don’t use it, nobody really gives a hoot. But if you use it, you have to abide by it. I don’t like Microsoft proprietory license. But you don’t see me posting Windows ISOs online…
Quote: “But where is the due process? Who decides they have violated the GPL and based on what evidence? The GPPL is nothing more than a contract and I’d hope there was some sort of judicial oversight into this process or at the very least lawyers are involved.”
The GPL is not a contract. You are plainly wrong. It is a license, this argument has been argued on groklaw before, get off your butt and do some research.
Dave
And you can shove your BSD licenses as well, which only encourage a non community behaviour.
I’ll ignore for the moment that “non community behaviour” is a rather nebulous term, and just point out the obvious: that a lack of coercion to do “good” does not equal an encouragement to do wrong. And it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
Quote: “Even the GPL doesn’t say that you have to contribute anything cool you make back to the community just because it was designed to run on a GPL subsystem.”
Wrong Vincent. If your code is based on GPL code, and you release it to the public, you MUST release the full src code. If you only use it internally, then you do not need to.
BSD does not entertain a community spirit. There is no basis for corporations to take and not give back. I know Apple gives back, but it’s pretty tardy about giving back code, and it picks and chooses what it wants to give back (that’s been based on a BSD license that is – obviously QuickTime et al are not BSD based in the first instance).
And yes – i’m angry that these bastard corporations dare use GPL software and not abide by the terms of the license. Both IBM and Novell grok the GPL – they do make an effort to become involved in the community, and to return things to the community. It’s called community spirit. Something these large bastard corporations could learn about I think.
A nun, he moos – your post is spot on. Very well said.
Dave
“Wrong Vincent. If your code is based on GPL code, and you release it to the public, you MUST release the full src code. If you only use it internally, then you do not need to.”
I’m actually not wrong. You are correct if you use GPL code or link to GPL’d libraries then you have to release the sources with your distribution. However writing a program that will run on a GPL-based subsystem (probably what I was vague about) is not the same thing. If that were the case, you would be unable to run any BSD, MPL, or other non-GNU compatibly licensed software in a linux environment; which is clearly not happening.
“And yes – i’m angry that these bastard corporations dare use GPL software and not abide by the terms of the license.”
I guess I’m just more apathetic to these kinds of things. If users do it ala win32codecs, and the MS web fonts; I don’t see the large difference since by law a corporation is considered an individual (nice side-effect of making them eligible to apply for patents/copyrights). It just seems like to much trouble to be enraged at every entity that decides IP laws don’t exactly always apply to them.
“BSD does not entertain a community spirit.”
I’d invite you to say this on any of the BSD mailing lists. I have some trouble believing that anyone on those lists would agree with you. The BSDs do have a community. I’m one of them; even if only in documentation help.
“Unless a court decides that the obligation to distribute the source code with the software it is invalid, and hence one can distibute GPL’ed software without sources.”
Hah. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. Courts don’t rip out exactly half of a license, the half that contains all the interests of one party and none of the other, and hand it back as a still-binding license. This is, however, generally the kind of insane false hope held by *both* parties to a suit.
I’ll correct my statement (because I have made an error and very badly worded it and you indeed have correctly pointed it out):
“Corporations using the BSD license do not [by and large] entertain a community spirit with the BSD community.”
If i’ve inadvertently offended any BSD users, developers etc I apologise!
Dave
The GPL (usually for executables) and LGPL (for linking into libraries) DO NOT REQUIRE A COMPANY TO RELEASE THEIR SOURCE if all they are doing is “using” the software.
i.e.
You can partition your embedded project carefully enough that very little Open Source Code (i.e. kernel, drivers, etc.) need to be altered. And if they are… only that code needs to be released. Your “app”, so long as it is partitioned away from the other stuff… can remain closed source.
This… combined with the fact that the GPL/LGPL (plus all other wierd and #@%#% up EULA’s include Microsoft’s) have yet to really be tried in court.
For instance… without a signature.. it is difficult to establish that a contractual agreement has been established. Soooo many legal issues.
It is still questionable in many/most legal juristictions whether or not having a user click “I Agree” on some form can constitute acceptance of a contract.
Anyway…. I believe the GPL and LGPL are fine as is.
HOWEVER, the BSD license is best because well… any layperson can understand it perfectly.
G’night.
Quack! Quack! Quack!
…..is that software that uses GPL code would be more secure and stable. Like how piracy helped Microsoft become the defacto standard. In some ways, FSF should really push for people to violate GPL and use GPL’ed software in their products because it makes software/products that much more secure. It doesn’t take anything away from the GPL code base because developers of freesoftware are always going to be ahead of proprietary software (isn’t that the argument about a 1000 eyeballs?)
Think about it. People who are doing “original” work will never use GPL. Google’s software which isn’t GPL’ed, but companies putting GPL’ed software in routers or wifi access ain’t on the cutting edge of Computer Science and no-harm-no-foul if they use GPL’ed software. I’d rather trust a router with GPL’ed (even if violated) software than something else.
How did Microsoft’s use of BSD’s TCP/IP stack take away anything from FreeBSD’s development?. What it did do is make Microsoft become standards compliant or the internet would have become a hodge-podge of Novell’s IPX and MS’s BlackBird
(precursor to IE).
GPL/FSF are ofcourse fully within their rights to enforce the law but you catch more flies with honey.
I’ve pointed this one out before. If you desperately want to avoid the GPL then you just wrap the GPL library/application with some server code and let it perform functions on behalf of a client which communicates via sockets/pipes/whatever. You’ll have to give up the wrapper code, but you can license the client any way you feel, the GPL doesn’t carry over to it.
Depending on the application and communication method speed wouldn’t be affected too much, but I still seriously doubt it’s worth the effort.
I’m agree with some of the other comments. I don’t particularily like the GPL, but if you don’t want to GPL your code then keep your hand out of the damn jar and bake your own cookies.
Yes, you’re basically right AFAIK, but these companies probably didn’t do it properly as you suggested – they may well have just used GPL code and figured since nobody sees the code nobody will know.
And they would deserve to be dragged over hot coals for that.
It is still questionable in many/most legal juristictions whether or not having a user click “I Agree” on some form can constitute acceptance of a contract
Personally I think it sort of can, but not in the current form – users are encouraged to just click “ok” and not read it. The text is presented in a tiny wee textbox with 5 lines and 30 columns, and they expect everybody to carefully read the whole lot?
I read about somebody having a similar issue recently with a Dell computer – they took issue with the license agreement, but when they called up Dell every single person they spoke to told them to click “ok” regardless.
More questionable are the bits saying “By using this product you agree to…” – I could see a lot of strong grounds for them being thrown out.
HOWEVER, the BSD license is best because well… any layperson can understand it perfectly.
Unless the BSD license isn’t what you want… Any layperson can understand the basic precepts of the GPL as far as they need to. The people who need to know more specifically because they’re basing software on GPLed code should be quite capable of reading and understanding it.
But they say that the GPL can’t force them to give away code that they wrote, even if they are borrowing some of it from GPL code.
Microsoft is actually correct in asserting that the GPL can’t force them to give away code which they own. This is true even if that code is clearly derivative of GPL’d code.
On the other hand, the GPL can be very effectively used to stop the distribution of a program which violates the terms of the GPL. AFAIK nobody has ever attempted, or even seriously contemplated, using the GPL to force the release of source code which belongs to someone else. The remedy is clear: remove the offending code if you wish to distribute your program.
On a side note, I suspect that getting a court issued injunction to stop the distribution of a program which is in violation of the GPL would probably prove to be rather unsuccessful, as standard applied is “serious and irreperable harm” which, given the nature of what the GPL is, would seem to me to be nearly impossible to demonstrate.
Injunctions are pretty irrelevant when US law sets damages at $150,000 *per* *copy* for willful infringment of copyright.
Even clueless managment types will pay attention when you point out that a selling 100 fifty-dollar cable modems with GPL-violating firmware can get them slapped with a 15 million dollar lawsuit.
free.fr also seems to violate gpl with their modem/router (biggest french isp)
nothing is being done and the company says they doesn’t fears gpl or foss
Under the GPL 2 the offenders are going to have to get screwed by a GNU donkey on their second violation or else if they steal more than 100,000 lines of code. If you ask me, this is letting the Mexicans off lightly.
The reaction of GPL- vs BSD-supporters when someone uses their code in another product:
GPL: Aaargh! They used my code!
BSD: Cool! They used my code!
Now THAT’s the difference. 🙂
[quote]
GPL: Aaargh! They used my code!
BSD: Cool! They used my code!
[/quote]
and that is exactly why
GPL : 95 % of the Open source code
BSD : sharing 5 % with the rest
and that is exactly why
GPL : 95 % of the Open source code
BSD : sharing 5 % with the rest
Yeah sure. Take a look at “biggies” like Apache, XFree86, X.org, PHP, Python, PostgreSQL, (Free|Net|Open|DF|*)BSD, …
All of these use BSD/MIT-like licenses!
These companies (Apple included) *love* the BSD license, cos they can take, take, and more take without giving a single ounce back to the community that spawned the majority of the code that they’ve stolen. That’s why Apple chose a bsd kernel over a Linux kernel.
Right. And that must be why Darwing (OS X core) is Open Source, and why Apple gives back patches to several Open Souce projects, the most notable one being GCC itself.
To David Pastern > The GPL is not anti-business. It is anti-proprietary. There’s a lot of commercial GPL’ed software in the world – and a lot of non-commercial proprietary software (freeware).
Geert Hendrickx > About the reaction of GPL-supporters vs. BSD-supporters.
No GPL-supporter has anything against using the his/her code. They do tend to mind not sharing the source back (copyright violation).
A BSD-supporter will also be pissed if a company uses his/her code without giving due credit (copyright violation).
The most widely spread FLOSS-license is GPL (when counting projects – not necessarily when counting lines of code). I’ll recommend you do some research – try Google
—
The GPL license prohibits distributing it without giving the customers the possibility to se the source. Any chances made must also be distributed along the binaries. If not, the distribution is illegal and stopped – or the GPL’ed sourcecode removed. It doesn’t force people to use the GPL-license when modifying GPL’ed software – UNLESS they want to distribute it. AND only _when_ . Read the GPL FAQ (basically… RTFM)
APACHE : Apache License, Version 2.0
PHP : PHP license
PYTHON: PYTHON SOFTWARE FOUNDATION LICENSE VERSION 2
@ Rll: That’s why I said BSD/MIT-like licenses. Take a look at them. They’re certainly not GPL.
@ AQ: BSD-supporters don’t support monopolies, they support standards. For example: MS once adopted the BSD TCP/IP stack. That’s a *GOOD* thing, because now Windows (and hence the world) uses TCP/IP as a networking standard. What if MS would have invented their own (probably proprietary) networking protocol back then??
BSD license is good for creating standards and not having to reinvent the wheel all the time.
Stop being religious over licenses!
Some tasks fits to GPL, some to LGPL, other tasks fit to MIT/X11/BSD new style license or whatever else license.
Different licenses have different strong sides and different drawbacks.
Period.
agree that the BSD is a great way to fool companies into supporting standards, and that is not meant to be an insult, it is correct. The more corporate hands we get into the OGG cookie jar the better, since the competing companies take a vested interest, and won’t be able to patent these open technologies to use against us. What I love about these massive companies is that they are so greedy that they have absolutely no ability to keep their hands out of the open cookie jar that is the bsd. We can use this as an advantage, but I don’t think it is our long term solution to open standards.
Though in terms of software itself I support the GPL as a monopoly busting model, and once the gpl takes the position of power it eventually will, then the people will have the power to defend their own open standards and won’t have to rely on the BSD.
But yes, the bsd serves a purpose for open standards since we can count on the greed of corporations to proliferate them.
On the other hand, I wonder about the problems we run into when a company tries to patent some process dealing with the standard, like the crap Microsoft is trying to pull with XML.
a company to distribute their code, but you can take them to court and collect a LOT of money then (profitting)
they have no right to distribute your code either.
so the choice is to: relase the code, OR stop shipping and fix their code to make it theirs.
if they dont do one of those two things, there is a legal term for it “wilfull”
BSD and BSD-like licenses (MIT, Apache, Python, etc) have a very different spirit from GPL. They make the source available with no strings attached, just requiring the user to give credits where they’re due. It’s a concept of academic sharing – devoid of any political crap like communistic anti-proprietary crusades – that GPL supporters usually find hard to grasp.
Under “Fulltime educators” I’d also toss in “Professional Lecturers”… I still find that one an amazing concept, going around from college to college and convention to convention telling people about things you don’t even actually do any WORK on.
it is entirely capitalistic, just anti-monopolistic. If you associate capitalism with monopolies which stagnate and depress the market by destroying competition by patents and other absurdities, then you believe in dictatorial capitalism.
If you actually believe that competition in an open market builds a stronger and healthier economy based on the merit of your contributions, and that monopolies should never be formed, then you believe in competitive meritocratic capitalism. This is what the GPL is about, and what companies like RedHat, Suse, Mandrake, and others have proven that it is about.
You mean how companies like RH, Suse and Mandrake have made money on other peoples work for no real internal expendature apart from marketing? Sure they’ve added some stuff in-house on each, but let’s face it they are making money off stuff they didn’t even pay the programmers for…
If anything those companies are sterling examples of the GPL being used as the greatest exploitation scam in recent memory… Programming is worth nothing, we can get some kids to do the work for free, then make money off “Supporting” it while not giving them a red cent!
Sline: Wait, your gonna play that type of venue you need the proper exploitation.
Elwood: I know all about that sort of thing, I’ve been exploited all my life.
http://www.gpl-violations.org/
only problem is that the kid can start his company tomorrow with the same product and even take the additions the other company added to it, find a way to differentiate himself and his distribution and compete as well.
In the meantime, everyone gets the benefit of the resulting software if they want to distribute it. Any programmer can make money for service since that is more of a regional issue.
Like many say, a programmer is much like a lawyer. The law is a code based on language which is free to all. I haven’t seen many poor lawyers, even though the results of their work are free to see and use. They are hired because they are able to offer a professional service based on an open a free source.
True, it will be a seismic shift in economy, but it will remain a strong economy, just absent of abusive monopolies.
If I give you a glass of water, should I feel exploited if you drink it? Especially knowing that eventually, after you drink it, when you redistribute it it will be free for all again. (I know, gross thought, but it is a good example.)
People that use the BSD license in their code typically are happy for anyone to use their code which generally means a win-win for everybody.
Take for example, FreeBSD and Apple. Apple fumbled around for years trying to come up with a new operating system and then came up with Mach/BSD. The consumer wins and Apple wins.
The same goes for Microsoft and the BSD tcp stack.
The GPL just happens to be a very unliberal license. The only saving grace for the linux kernel and most libraries are that they have at the very minimum, linking exceptions or the linux kernel would be basically worthless except for a few hobbyists.
The QT dual-licensing scheme is why Gnome will win in the long run.
Something that is being said has no value can build a strong economy… Sounds like the typical naive commie/anarch bull.
At least the so called “abusive monopolies” PAY their programmers.
Ya… free speech has never created an economy even though it is free. Have you read a magazine or newspaper lately? Seen words in it? They find a way to make money off of words even though speech is free.
is based on the premise of no government. GPL, and free speech for that matter, are based on the government protection of copyright, and the constitution.
So peddle your communism misperceptions elsewhere. We only want equal competition in a democracy. Not no competition with no government.
In fact, the gpl is the most liberal license because it guarentees equal freedoms to all who use it, like Free speech does.
If free speech were like the BSD, then I could take free speech for myself, but then deny free speech to others (make it proprietary). The constitution however guarentees an equal right to free speech for all, and the gpl guarentees the same.
The BSD benefits the priveledged more then the powerless, and that is what makes it conservative.
Ya… free speech has never created an economy even though it is free. Have you read a magazine or newspaper lately? Seen words in it? They find a way to make money off of words even though speech is free.
Huh, last time I checked magazines and newspapers cost money and the reporters who write the articles and editors who make them presentable get paid.
The entire concept of GPL – free to modify and distribute so long as you ‘show the goods’ is like printing a magazine, saying people can photocopy it or distribute it online for free, and not paying the reporters.
The entire concept of GPL – free to modify and distribute so long as you ‘show the goods’ is like printing a magazine, saying people can photocopy it or distribute it online for free, and not paying the reporters.
Actually, it’s worse than that because with the GPL you could actually charge for a magazine that someone else has produced.
the gpl is more like the free speech you hear on the radio. You can repeat what you heard to your friends, and they can repeat it to their friends. They can even write an article about it and sell it.
And anyways, the writers here don’t get paid, yet you apparently support it. You can read many news papers for free online.
You can even sell gpl software, as red hat and others do, and they have staffs which get paid, just like newspaper and magazine companies do.
Newspapers can’t say that anything you read won’t inform you to write an article on the same subject and can’t be resold. This is the same thing the gpl does, they let you tell it to others, basically, and they can then tell it to others.
I don’t know what the hell you’re blabbering on about with ‘due process’, but that would be a term that applies to law enforcement bodies and legal cases, neither of which is what’s happening here, yet. Informing a company that you believe they are violating the GPL and you would like them to choose to comply with it is about the lightest step you could possibly take, it’s far lighter than (for instance) slapping them with a suit right away; what possible action do you suggest could have been taken that would have been *lighter*?
And as for “The GPPL is nothing more than a contract and I’d hope there was some sort of judicial oversight into this process or at the very least lawyers are involved.”
It’s not a contract. It’s a license. You don’t sign a license and you don’t get to negotiate with the terms; either you play by the rules or you don’t play at all. And why should there be judicial oversight or lawyers at this point? No one is in court, no one is getting punished, it’s simply a group trying to bring license concerns to the attention of large corporations. As is the FSF’s tactics, first they discuss the issue and attempt to get voluntary compliance – they tell the company’s lawyers about the licensing issue and ask for them to start complying with the GPL in future. If they do, the issue is resolved, and everyone is happy. They only go to the courts if that tactic just doesn’t work. That would be the *next* step, if these companies refuse to recognise their obligations under the GPL.
Honestly, get a clue. Sheesh.
the FSF has nothing to do with these ‘legal threats’ (as you inaccurately characterise them). Sheesh, the level of crap in this thread is unbelievable.
On a different note, I live in Vancouver, you can’t throw a brick without hitting a bilingual Chinese lawyer. I think I need to put the FSF in touch with some of my friends…
“Basically, people with WAY too much free time on their hands.”
You mean, unlike people who do _important_ things with their spare time, like posting on OSNews comment threads?
“You mean how companies like RH, Suse and Mandrake have made money on other peoples work for no real internal expendature apart from marketing? Sure they’ve added some stuff in-house on each, but let’s face it they are making money off stuff they didn’t even pay the programmers for…”
Wow, you’ve just convinced me my employer is evil!
Wait, no, you haven’t. We take a bunch of incredibly cool software that most people could never use if it wasn’t nicely packaged for them, package it up, make it very easy to install, configure and use, write descriptions of it all, translate those descriptions into tens of languages, distribute it for free to those who can be bothered to download it, and contribute back to the development of the software. And then we sell boxes to people and corporations and charge them for the media, the manual and the support they get. Oh my, I can’t live with myself! The sheer evil of it all!
The BSD benefits the priveledged more then the powerless, and that is what makes it conservative.
That’s just an outright lie as everybody with half a clue knows. Everybody is equal under the BSD.
In the same way that everyone is equal under the law, yes. Ever heard the one about rich people never getting arrested for stealing bread and living under bridges?
Continue to babble with offtopic comments. I don’t care.
Everyone is free to a private education, but only the rich can afford it. Homes where both parents have to work full time to put food on the table technically have the same options legally, but they can’t exercise them.
Tell me that BSD doesn’t benefit Microsoft, strengthening a monopoly, which will put whatever it makes from the BSD behind a EULA which restricts people beyond belief.
The BSD enables EULAs, and that is the problem with it.
is that BSD only treats everyone equally at the source… though downstream it could be made to treat no one equally through a EULA or something else.
No, the problem is that you’re just as offtopic as AdamW and you hate the fact that the BSD benefits anybody who wants to do something productive or not with the code. But continue on with your ridiculous analogies, I’m sure I’ll be amused.
that it enables and gives strength to very restrictive regimes.
“and you hate the fact that the BSD benefits anybody who wants to do something productive or not with the code.”
Not hate. But it seems to me to be a weakness in the license in comparison to the later GPL. Simple enough. Anyway, we’ve covered this many times before. Sorry for the offtopic cheap shot, I was rapid-fire-posting and didn’t review myself.
AQ: “The BSD benefits the priveledged more then the powerless, and that is what makes it conservative.”
Lumbergh: “That’s just an outright lie as everybody with half a clue knows. Everybody is equal under the BSD.”
The problem here is that there is a huge difference between equality in rights and equality in everything else. A *huge* class of people in America don’t give a damn about equality of rights; they want equal opportunities, equal incomes, equal quality of life, equal medical care… you name it. They will even happily destroy equality of rights in order to get it.
There is a big difference between the player that wants a clean deck and the player that wants a stacked one. You, Lumbergh, just want a clean one. AQ wants a stacked one. He’s a consequentialist, so pointing out that he has the same rights as everyone else is irrelevant to him. He wants those rights to yield the same results, and if they don’t he feels wronged.
Of why commercial companies should stay away from the GPL. There are about 1,000 ways you can inadvertantly violate it just by using it with other code. Basically, it is a mess and it is way to easy for a commercial company to run afoul of it.
> Everyone is free to a private education, but only the rich
> can afford it. (…)
If this is meant as a comparison of GPL vs. BSD, then it failed. Whatever you do with a GPL licensed program, you can also do with a BSD licensed program.
Note that the GNU project too lists the BSD license as a “free, GPL-compatible license” (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html). The emphasis is on *free*.
As a comparison of GPL/BSD vs. proprietary, it is correct.
> Tell me that BSD doesn’t benefit Microsoft,
Of course it benefits MS. Under the both the BSD license and the GPL, everybody is equal, including MS. Even GPL-licensed programs benefit MS (at worst, don’t affect them), since they are free to use them or ignore them.
> strengthening a monopoly, which will put whatever it makes
> from the BSD behind a EULA which restricts people beyond
> belief.
… and THIS is The Great Anti BSD FUD. Whatever BSD-licensed code MS takes, modifies, uses, and distributes, can still be obtained in original form, including source code, from the original author.
This is not meant as GPL bashing, but power the discussion with facts, not FUD.
> The BSD enables EULAs, and that is the problem with it.
The *law* allows EULAs. The problem must be fixed where it originates, not hidden where it becomes visible.
software companies should stay away from it if they don’t want to accept the terms of its license.
But there are more than software companies out there, as opposed to what Microsoft and some OSnews users would believe.
Any business not using GPL software when they don’t develop software is really missing out on some great functionality for their business, which they can modify to their own needs.
But a software company looking for a quick fix without honoring the gpl, of course they shouldn’t use it, if they are as ethically bankrupt as they accuse “pirates” of being. In fact, companies that do so are software pirates.
Why work for microsoft for free? Answer that question and then maybe the BSD will make sense to people. Why strengthen Microsoft by giving them code that they can make proprietary?
Why work for microsoft for free? Answer that question and then maybe the BSD will make sense to people.
Why work for RedHat or Novell or IBM for free? BSD already makes sense for people.
Your post definitely has some major insight. I agree completely, with one small difference: I wouldn’t say that the stacked deck position is caused by the guy being a consequentialist. For example: I agree with Lumbergh, and I’m pretty much a consequentialist myself. I stick to the equality in rights, but not because other equalities would be somehow morally wrong, but because I think the software industry (and the whole society as well, if you want) that would come out of the “other equalities” would be far worse.
“Why work for RedHat or Novell or IBM for free?”
They aren’t monopolies forcing closed standards and EULAs on me or anyone else. And if they take my code, I get their improvements back as source code if they release it or sell it. Essentially I wouldn’t be working for free, I would get back what I gave and more.
Not even close to being the same situtuation.
The BSD can strengthen a monopoly, the gpl forces companies to be open and compete directly… that’s why you were able to mention 3 competing companies using the gpl software, and one monopoly using bsd software.
“But a software company looking for a quick fix without honoring the gpl, of course they shouldn’t use it, if they are as ethically bankrupt as they accuse “pirates” of being. In fact, companies that do so are software pirates.”
Companies such as Moterola probably don’t intentionally set out to violate the GPL. It’s just that there are so many open source licenses out there these days that licensing has become a nightmare, even in open source. Now if you want to mix open source stuff with closed source stuff, you really have a nightmare on your hands.
Basically, the proliferation of open source licenses and all of the contaminating clauses in the GPL has made this very complicated. You practically need lawyers to figure out. and the GPL is vaguely written anyway and be interpreted multiple different ways.
They aren’t monopolies forcing closed standards and EULAs on me or anyone else.
Nope, Microsoft can’t force anything on you unless you buy their products.
And if they take my code, I get their improvements back as source code if they release it or sell it.
And since they won’t take your code anyway since it’s GPL’d, nobody gets improvements.
Essentially I wouldn’t be working for free, I would get back what I gave and more.
Essentially, the vast majority of open source developers are working for free. It’s RedHat, Novell, and IBM making the money. They love having all these unpaid developers. People that license under BSD know it’s a gift anyway.
The BSD can strengthen a monopoly, the gpl forces companies to be open and compete directly… that’s why you were able to mention 3 competing companies using the gpl software, and one monopoly using bsd software.
The gpl doesn’t force anybody to be open and compete directly. RedHat, Novell, IBM or anybody else can take the linux kernel and throw a completely closed userland on top of it.
In any case AQ, the reason you keep on losing your arguments and everybody keeps on pointing it out is because you don’t care about source code. You care about injecting your politics on a software license.
> Why work for microsoft for free? Answer that question and
> then maybe the BSD will make sense to people.
> Why strengthen Microsoft by giving them code that they
> can make proprietary?
With the BSD license, you share your knowledge with others. Much the same as with the GPL. The difference is that the GPL also forces *them* to share *their* knowledge. However, if you don’t want MS to profit from your knowledge at all, then no free license would fit your needs. MS can also benefit from GPL’ed code.
Lumbergh has put it nicely: “why work for IBM for free”? They are a big corporation like MS is, and I wouldn’t trust them any more than I trust MS with regards to their business practices. The point of free licences is to stand beyond such things. If you use a free license that is meant to benefit *everybody*, then it will also benefit your enemy.
The copyleft clauses in the GPL are meant to *force* others to give something back to the community (as opposed to the BSD license, which only *encourages* to give back). It is an open discussion whether that increases or decreases freedom. It is certainly NOT meant to treat big corporations and especially MS as lesser beings.
> Why strengthen Microsoft by giving them code that they
> can make proprietary?
Exactly how can they make BSD-licensed code proprietary? I’ve never heard of such a case. If this is true then it must be the key to BSD’s destruction: Just take all their code, make it proprietary, and the project is dead (with no free code left to use).
True. The question of whether creating the other equalities would be moral or not comes down to a complicated question about the basis of property rights. But I agree that even if it were moral it would still be a very bad idea.
The reason I called it consequentialist is that (and I’m talking about society/government here) the mentality seems to ignore what is moral, just, etc. and focus only on what the results are. Most people don’t care if they are trampling on someone’s rights as long as they are getting the result they want. There is a quote by a famous black woman whose name I don’t recall at the moment… she was against the civil rights movement back in the 60’s. She said, “My country has already given me everything that a just government can possibly give: equality before the law.”
She believed that if the government tried to “give” her anything more, it would actually be taking something away from her and everyone else. It’s been said many ways; if a government can justly take one penny from you for the good of the community but against your will, then it can take all your other pennies too. The only defense then is to make sure you are part of the majority so you can dictate whose pennies get taken, and what gets done with them.
Exactly how can they make BSD-licensed code proprietary? I’ve never heard of such a case. If this is true then it must be the key to BSD’s destruction: Just take all their code, make it proprietary, and the project is dead (with no free code left to use).
That’s the little fact that the GPL evangelists would like you to forget – that BSD code can’t be “closed up”. Obviously, anyone with half a clue knows it can’t be “closed up” until the last hardrive, CD, etc…with the source code mysteriously disappears.