GPL Violators On The Prowl

ravenII writes "GPL Violations.org are looking after the GPL. Warning letters were personally handed over to companies at their CeBIT booths by Mr. Harald Welte, free software developer and founder of the gpl-violations.org project. It seems big boys like Motorola, Acer, AOpen, Micronet, Buffalo and Trendware seem to violate GPL. Please visit the site for more information on GPL enforcements and violators."

Ooohhh.. Leters!

[Kenja]

That'll show them!

Whats next, rude phone calls? Or how about ringing the door bell and then running away?

Sorry, but its not like Motorola is going to stop because a group they never heard of handed them a letter.

Re:Ooohhh.. Leters!

[tabkey12]

Well, actually if you looked at their site you would find that they have already had considerable success against companies such as Asus [gpl-violations.org] & Sitecom [gpl-violations.org]

Remember kids, read before you post!

Re:Ooohhh.. Leters!

[flumps]

yup.. FTFA:

In this year, the project managed to conclude more than 25 amicable agreements, two preliminary injunctions and one court order.

Re:Ooohhh.. Leters!

[tabkey12]

BTW, Site is down: So to read the article, check out MirrorDot [mirrordot.org]

Re:Ooohhh.. Leters!

[dr_dank]

Remember kids, read before you post!

Ahhh, I remember being a young slashdotter once...

Re:Ooohhh.. Leters!

[Speare]

In many cases, the letter will likely be forwarded to the internal legal department for review, which may spark questions and conversations internally. In many other cases, the letter will likely be found in some rarely-used briefcase several years after the earnest, booth-attending middle-manager has left the company.

Seems to be working though.

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

FTFA:

Since more than one year, the gpl-violations.org project tries to bring vendors who use GPL licensed software in their products into license compliance. To achieve this goal, it uses a number of measures, ranging from warning letters over public documentation of GPL violations, up to legal proceedings. In this year, the project managed to conclude more than 25 amicable agreements, two preliminary injunctions and one court order.

Sounds like some folks are paying attention to this guy.

Re:Ooohhh.. Leters!

[suso]

Whats next, rude phone calls? Or how about ringing the door bell and then running away?

Heh, that would be kinda funny actually. Like in one of those made for TV movies, could you imagine someone calling some female CEO of company X in the middle of the night and saying in a dark voice:

Dark voice: "We know where you got your source code, so you better put it back."
Female CEO: "Who is this?"
Dark voice: *pauses*
Female CEO: "Who is this? You better stop calling me"
Dark voice: *click*
Child: "What's wrong mommy?"
Female CEO: "Its ok honey, go back to sleep."

--
suso.org website/email hosting [suso.org], no disk space quotas and personalized support.

Re:Ooohhh.. Leters!

[Rude Turnip]

That's irrelevant. This is between the software author and the violator. If a company is violating the copyright of a software author, their infractions must be dealt with.

Re:Perhaps

[networkBoy]

Actually, many of these companies (as a Corp) may not know about the violations. As soon as the letter gets to legal the practice will stop.
I work in a very large Semiconductor manufacturer and we have the policy that all uses of OSS _MUST_ be reviewed by legal before proceeding. It's a simple matter really. If you don't ask legal and you screw up then you are disciplined up to and including termination, depending on the infraction and whether or not you should have known better. I look to OSS often to see how something is done. If I like how it's been done I ask legal, usually they say no and I go code it myself and then find that I did it some obscure way that doesn't weork as good.
-nB

Don't worry

[ad0gg]

As long as you don't redistribute you have no problems. At my old job we used to use openh323 stack because it saved us 1/2 million in licensing fees for a commercial voip stack. Problem was it was pure shit, we had to put 3 developers on it for a year to get a workable version. I don't think we ever released what they did, for fear our competitors would pick up our changes and actually get a workable voip stack for free.

Re:Why?

[FuzzyDaddy]

you don't have to abide by the terms of the GPL

Actually, you are abiding by the terms of the GPL if you just use it in house. (As opposed to attempting to reverse engineer Windows, which is against the terms of the agreement, even if I do it by myself and don't tell anyone.)

"Seem to"

[grasshoppa]

We don't know?

If someone is acting on "our" behalf, I think "we" should know fully what is going on before hand.

For all we know, this could be a scare tactic by MS to worry people back to their side of the fence.

Re:"Seem to"

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

GPL-Violations should GPL their processes.

In any case, I doubt this is an MS tactic. They've actually settled the majority of the cases amicably. Microsoft does nothing legal amicably.

Also, where's Groklaw when you need it?

Re:"Seem to"

[rekoil]

They are not acting on "our" behalf unless you are the author of the GPLed software being used in violation of the license. Remember, the GPL does not bequeath ownership of the code to the public domain. If it did, then the code would no longer be subject to the GPL.

Re:"Seem to"

[NanoGator]

"For all we know, this could be a scare tactic by MS to worry people back to their side of the fence."

I wouldn't rule out Romulan involvement...

Re:"Seem to"

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yeah, that 'innocent until proven guilty' thing's a real bitch, ain't it?

Man, I'm glad I don't live in a country where you can't just throw unproven accusations around all willy-nilly.

Apropriate action

[JamesP]

It'll be good to see GPL violators being held responsible. We can start with CherryOS.

Paraphrasing:

Violators will be shot
Survivors will be shot again

Re:Apropriate action

[Alwin Henseler]

Violators will be shot
Survivors will be shot again

Missing the last line: "Unless you've got really big boobs."

Re:Apropriate action

[mattyrobinson69]

That was obviously implied.

Re:Apropriate action

[Crayon Kid]

Not if they're manboobs.

Held accountable? When?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

This is good. I wrote in a previous comment that I thought the GPL had no teeth, if the FSF where the only people looking into GPL violations, because they don't really do a Hell of a lot about violators (sorry, it's a fact), and most FOSS developers don't have the resources to seek a legal solution against violators. None other than Bruce Perens took me to task for this opinion, but I still stand by it: The GPL might as well be a blank sheet of paper for most FOSS developers, what do they intend on doing w

Re:Held accountable? When?

[Ioldanach]

what do they intend on doing when some Taiwanese hardware manufacturer embeds their code?

Get an injunction from having the manufacturer's products distributed in the US, and have the products seized by customs when they enter the country. I.e., direct financial loss.

Only trick is in detecting what manufacturer is embedding it.

Re:Held accountable? When?

[Animats]

Get an injunction from having the manufacturer's products distributed in the US, and have the products seized by customs when they enter the country.

That's easier than it used to be. The National Intellectual Property Rights coordination Center [ice.gov], a unit of Homeland Security, handles this. There's even an online form. [ice.gov]

Before you can enforce a copyright, you must register it with the Library of Congress. [copyright.gov] This costs $30. So that's step one.

Court?

[j.bellone]

If nobody is going to take these people to court then there is absolutely no reason to hand these people warning letters. They have no intention of changing their practices unless they are taken to court: they are no better than Apple or Microsoft.

RTFA

[soft_guy]

I know this *is* slashdot and all, but according to the article, the group last year reached 25 amicable conclusions, 2 preliminary injunctions, and 1 court order. That would lead most *readers* of the article to conclude that in fact they do take people to court. That is the usual way that you get injunctions and court orders.

Often companies start with warning letters too.

Re:RTFA

[Reziac]

This *reader* of the article concluded that there were 25 cases of "Oh, sorry, let's fix it", two cases of "Who's gonna make me?" and one case of "Fuck you".

Re:Court?

[MrLint]

Which GPL license violations are Apple and Microsoft alleged to be guilty of?

(I think this needs clarification instead of my mod point on it.)

You're making the mistake of ...

[schon]

.. assuming that there is willful infringement in every case, and that the companies involved will not comply with the letters. This is a pretty big assumption.

I guess you flunked out of charm school, and I guess you've never heard of the old adage "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar", so I'll spell it out for you here:

Making threats against a neutral party will usually make them a hostile party.

If they are neutral and you threaten them, you're damaging your own cause, because you'll be souring them on OSS and the GPL.
If they're hostile and you threaten them, then you don't gain anything.
If they're neutral and you ask them nicely, they just might comply.
If they're hostile and you ask them nicely, you haven't lost anything.

By sending the letters, the companies who are doing this understand that we're not all rabid loser anti-corporate zealots. Making threats will do nothing more than sour them on the GPL and open source in general.

Re:You're making the mistake of ...

[quantum bit]

That's why we're the good guys, and they're the bad guys.

Later that same day

[jaymzter]

GPLviolations.org was served with a patent infringement suit from the BSA

Re:Later that same day

[Rude Turnip]

That gives me an idea...what if a bunch of GPL authors got together and formed a non-profit whose sole purpose was to become a member of the BSA? If armed federal marshalls busting down your door won't make you comply with the GPL, then nothing will!

Re:Later that same day

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

That gives me an idea...what if a bunch of GPL authors got together and formed a non-profit whose sole purpose was to become a member of the BSA? If armed federal marshalls busting down your door won't make you comply with the GPL, then nothing will!

This is the most sensible thing I've seen written on this subject thus far. It's a good point: WHY does FOSS not have representation in the BSA?

Re:Later that same day

[antiMStroll]

Because the BSA hounds users, not developers. Everyone is free to use GPL'd software.

Re:Later that same day

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Because the BSA hounds users, not developers.

The BSA hounds whoever it's masters tell it to hound.

Re:Later that same day

[big_gibbon]

I'm UK based, so had to google for BSA

It took a good couple of seconds to work out that the Boy Scouts Association of America was unlikely to have armed marshalls . . .

P

Re:Later that same day

[SuiteSisterMary]

Only in wartime.

Civil Procedure

[Anita Coney]

Giving a legal letter to some booth lackey at a convention is NOT how you get a company's attention. Send it to the CEO, the resident agent, the law department, heck ANYONE who won't simply throw it away.

Re:Civil Procedure

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Yes, it's not like getting on the front page of /. gets anyone's attention.

No teeth

[Tony Hoyle]

They can't do anything but send letters.

They have no standing - only the copyright holders have this, and if they don't do anything then nothing will happen.

They might be able to whip slashdot into a frenzy though.. maybe that's all that it's all about?

Re:No teeth

[gl4ss]

actually they do have teeth.

they've gotten some injuctions, iirc(seems slashdottted can't confirm).

gpl sort of gives teeth to even those who are not the original writer.

Re:No teeth

[why-lurk]

If you RTFA, you would see that Harald Welte is a developer and copyright holder of netfilter, which is used in a number of commercial firewall products. He also has license to prosecute the copyrights of some other developers.

So yes, he has standing to both warn and sue the companies he has given notice to (as well as the companies that have settled with gpl-violations.org).

--kirby

Re:No teeth

[fsmunoz]

When it comes to GPL'd software, who IS the copyright holder? Sure, one person starts the code. But when other people submit patches, improvements, branch the code, etc, etc. . . are they ALL copyright holders? If somebody, for instance, ripped off the Linux kernel, would only Linus Torvalds be eligible to sue, or would every single developer who'd submitted code to it be able to start up a suit?

Yes, they are all the copyright holders, and this makes it more difficult in case of GPL infrigement. This

all negative

[fr1kk]

Is all the feedback going to be negative? Everything has to start somewhere, and frankly I applaud the efforts of this guy to at least start enforcing a license that many companies do not take seriousley. If nothing else, it brings to light the face that many legit companies in fact do not care to honor the GPL, but benefit from the software that is covered by it.

Re:all negative

[ajs]

If goal is to enforce licensing, then handing flyers to booth-babes isn't the way to go about it.

Score 0 for the geeks :-/

Mirror link

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it looks like GPL violator's website is down, here's a mirror:
http://mirrordot.org/stories/c00f3d2fd6588c34ae25f f3409b0475e/index.html [mirrordot.org]

What do the GPL thugs look like?

[British]

Let me guess.

1.2-300 pounds
2.black duster or trenchcoat
3.t-shirt with either Star Wars or some free 4.computer-related shirt acquired from a trade show
5.big beard. Mandatory
5.telltale fedora
6.2 cellphones on belt pocket. One might be a Treo.
7.Lifetime membership to RenFair

You don't want to mess with these guys. :)

Re:What do the GPL thugs look like?

[hsmith]

They run up to the booth yelling "lightning bolt lightning bolt lightning bolt lightning bolt lightning bolt"

Re:What do the GPL thugs look like?

[pete-classic]

If you weren't a poser you would have said "magic missle".

-Peter

Re:What do the GPL thugs look like?

[DeathFlame]

I belive thats really only good for attacking "the darkness"

Re:What do the GPL thugs look like?

[The Darkness]

I belive thats really only good for attacking "the darkness"

What did I ever do to you?

Wait

[northcat]

Before making nonsense, worthless comment, wait till the site gets unslashdotted and READ it. Most of you question might be answered there. Many other questions being asked are just stupid or have obvious answers. Like, how can you prove that the violaters are indeed using GPLed software. Many of the violaters are openly using GPLed software. Like using the Linux kernel. And then some question are very silly/small minded. Please.

Re:Wait

[mvizos]

Whoa Whoa Whoa...You know you're on slashdot, right? And yet you expect people wait to read an article before commenting? WTF. Again, I state, this is slashdot. People don't read. The ones that DO read DON'T comprehend. It's just pretty characters on the screen.

Re:Wait

[swillden]

a big part of the problem (the problem that people don't RTFA before posting, that is)

The bigger problem is that young geeks tend to assume that everyone other than them is stupid. A more sensible person who is unable to read the site might presume to give Mr. Welte the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he is not doing the absolute dumbest thing possible.

In general, I find that assuming that people are intelligent, and sensible, and have reasonably good reasons for their actions makes me more oft

I'm just waiting...

[Deep Fried Geekboy]

... for him to serve one to SCO.

How can they tell?

[fitten]

How can they tell that a binary has GPL code in it? I mean, do they use strings or something? If that's it, then it's pretty easy to defeat their GPL detection. Looking at the assembly isn't telling because some simple algorithms will be written the same and produce similar assembly, and optimizations will mangle all that anyway.

Re:How can they tell?

[Omnifarious]

If people worked enough to change all the strings in the code to be different, they'd probably just write their own software and not deal with the hassles.

What's probably going on in most of these places are lazy engineers using code from the net and not pushing the whole thing through management to get buy-in on using GPL stuff. They aren't going to bother to change all the strings around.

Won't last

[saddino]

It'll take just one serious error/mallicious report/misidentification to be cause for libel and bring a suit that takes this site right out of commission.

Re:Won't last

[Entrope]

A private letter to the party involved is not libel. Remarking on indisputable facts[1] is not libel. Publicly claiming somebody infringes your copyright before you have a court ruling generally is libel, but I see no evidence that GPL-Violations.org does that.

[1]- Examples that are defensible in the US would include "We found strings in Xyzzy Router that almost exactly match strings in our software" or "We believe it is unlikely to produce this machine code without using our code as the source." Europe

What about Iomega

[nberardi]

I have seen violations at places like Iomega for there NAS drives. It was one of the issues that I brought up durring beta testing. And they said it wasn't an issue that they were using Linux with out releasing the source because their firmware developer for the embeded Linux told them it wasn't a problem and they weren't going to release the source. This little product only costed about 200.00 for network storage, and it has the potential to hit the market like the Linksys WRT54G did with custom firmware.

If anybody is interested in pursing Iomega about this let me know because I will sign a petition.

Re:What about Iomega

[oliphaunt]

It's too bad this is happening, but give it some time- evolution will stop them from distributing the product without the source, becuase Iomega is a dead company that just doesn't know it's dead yet. The best thing they could do for their investors is close up shop, fire everyone, and start selling off their assets. I mean, come on, Zip disks? That was a great idea, 10 years ago when CD burners cost $500 and blank CD's were $5 each.

Now the zip disk format is the storage equivalent of the green-screen V

Re:Heard on CNBC

[nberardi]

No they aren't they are releasing the code for each release. They just aren't releasing the beta releases. They have got the okay from the OSS councel or what ever the governing body of GPL is.

GPL for Patents?

[pherthyl]

I wonder if some company may eventually say:

"We won't sue you for infringing on our patents if you don't sue us for infringing on the GPL"

Also, would that even be legal to accept an agreement like that? Nevermind that it would probably be a bad thing for OSS.

Re:GPL for Patents?

[swillden]

I wonder if some company may eventually say: "We won't sue you for infringing on our patents if you don't sue us for infringing on the GPL"

That license would only be possible if all of the contributors to the project, aka all of the copyright owners, agreed. That much is obvious.

The interesting question is whether or not the company would have the leverage needed to get them all to agree. If I write an application that infringes on a patent, and Bob and Alice contribute small UI enhancements to it

I Am GPL, Hear Me Roar!

[blueZhift]

This opens up another front on the OSS battle so to speak. While some posters here question the value of informing companies that they may be in violation of the GPL and claim that they can simply ignore it, companies that ignore such warnings do so at their own peril. Why? Because from a legal standpoint they can't be sure who will hit them with a suit or when. There are all sorts of questions about who would have legal standing to bring a suit, and this itself would vary from state to state and country to country. If I'm a company bent on violating the GPL, defending that could be difficult especially if a GPL backing company like IBM or Novell decides it's in their best interests to get involved and bankrolls the lawsuit.

Given this, I think few companies will intentionally violate the GPL. So I think that most smart companies if informed of a problem, will probably rectify it one way or another rather than risk an uncertain threat of liability. Certainly any high profile organization with a smart legal counsel would. The not so smart ones are another story!

weaseltronics

[Doc Ruby]

This is one of the instances in which geeks are naive to the weaselly, successful ways of lawyers and politicians. The geek instinct is to first survey the complete territory: "how many violations can we grep across the Net?" The lawyer or politician would first identify a few highly vulnerable violators, and take them out, before hinting that perhaps "everyone does it". They'd build momentum, gaining mindshare for the idea that "you better not do it". By the time they did their "complete survey", they'd have already shrunk that population through intimidation. Before creating more, by promoting the idea that it's widespread.

Geeks have to start thinking more about "social impedence" feedback problems. Maybe all the recent work by programmers in modelling social networks, filled with live normals, will create some conventional Usenet-style wisdom. We've got to learn through data what the accomplished weasels seem to know by instinct: defining the scale of the problem prematurely can increase its scale. Computers are sitting ducks - solving people problems requires a much more dynamic approach.

How about smaller violators?

[russotto]

sveasoft (gpl-violations is slashdotted, so maybe they are listed)

Re:How about smaller violators?

[McFly777]

Parent implied Sveasoft is violating.

IIRC, Sveasoft cleared their current distribution policy with the FSF. In other words, just because you may not like it doesn't mean that it is violating.

For those who don't know, Sveasoft charges for support and access to their latest product. Under the GPL you are legally allowed to redistribute said GPL'd Sveasoft product, however doing so cancels your support contract with Sveasoft (and access to the latest from Sveasoft).

I believe that this hinges on the point that while you are required to provide source to anyone who you distribute a binary to, you are not necessarily required to provide binary to anybody in general.

Re:How about smaller violators?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sveasoft has a history of misrepresenting the facts and deliberately misinterpreting the GPL. He invented the "in development source need not be released even if the binaries are out there" bullcrap. The FSF did not have access to the whole story and clearly did not see that James Ewing is not willing to have "his" software redistributed. The FSF's approval appears to be solely about Sveasoft's direct duty: Whether or not they have to provide source to anyone. It is clear that, under the assumption of source and binaries being delivered together, they are not obliged to provide source to anyone but their subscribers. That is not what the debate is about. The GPL is about freedom of reuse and redistribution of modifications which are not entirely in-house. James Ewing does whatever he can to restrict that freedom. He does not provide source in time (before the pay scheme he did not release the source to certain versions at all), he only provides source that compiles to binaries which are deliberately different from the ones he distributes, he threatens users who use their GPL given distribution rights. If that is not breaking the GPL, it's an utterly useless license.

Harald Welte at FOSDEM

[dolmen.fr]

Harald Welte did a very interesting presentation about GPL Enforcement [fosdem.org] in Germany at FOSDEM [fosdem.org] two weeks ago.

He is one of the few, with Theo de Raadt, who really fight against proprietary software. See this Kerneltrap.org feature about OpenBSD fight against closed source drivers for wireless [kerneltrap.org].

What about Open Source violators?

[Amadawn]

It is good to see someone doing something about GPL violators, but what happens when the violators are other GPL developers?

I contribute (a little) to a project called AutoIt3 (http://www.autoitscript.com/ [autoitscript.com]). They make a really useful scripting language for Windows.

Until recently they were using the GPL license. However some people took big chunks of the code, ripped it and repackaged with a different name. They only mention "based on AutoIT" or something similar on the Readme.txt but not in the code and of course they do not mention the original authors of the original work nor on their web page.

Some of the AutoIt developpers were so pissed that now they have changed the license (for their newest releases only, of course) and do not distribute their code until some months later.

Perhaps what these guys did is legal, I don't know, but if GPL developpers dishonor the heart of the GPL, then why use it and how can we expect for commercial companies to abide to it?

GPL problem

[gr8_phk]

"they are required to keep the original copyright attributions in the code.

I've often wondered about that. If I keep the original copyright notice in there, and make modifications (perhaps significant) and release my changes under the GPL, how do I label it? I have to keep a copyright notice that attributes the code to someone else? What about my contributions? What if it's a complex mix where I can't nicely label just my parts? The GPL tells you what you're allowed to do and what your obligations are, it

Got a GPL license with a TV!

[netringer]

The GF bought a Sony HDTV [sonystyle.com] which of course, the resident geek BF set up. I was amused to see a full printed GPL license in the included paperwork. I gather it uses a GPL-derived photo viewer program to display the content from media inserted into the Sony-proprietary (irony!) Memory Stick slot on the front.

I wonder if should I ask Sony for the source code for the TV.

I searched for some kind of adapter that would plug in the Memory Stick slot and take a Compact Flash card with no joy. There is an adapter that goes the other way, fitting the Memory Stick into CF slot, but the BF hesitates to recommend buying a memory stick just to make the TV happy. *sigh*

Re:Got a GPL license with a TV!

[muonzoo]

It's not likely just the photo viewer software. Some SONY TVs boot linux for the control / UI portion of the interface. [Or so I've been told].

Shoes on other feets

[Brandybuck]

What about GPL developers who violate the BSD license? Why does the GPL using community tolerate members who violate other licenses? What makes it's okay to violate the copyright and license of non-GPL software? Why does the GPL community tolerate such behavior in its members?

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4l.html

Re:Sigh

[PhilHibbs]

Yes, information wants to be free, and this guy seems to be helping to keep it free, and prevent it (i.e. information-processing logic that is based on someone else's IP that released it under the GPL) from being locked away inside closed-source products. What's your problem?

Re:Sigh

[BenjyD]

That's a blatant misrepresentation of his point - a straw man. Free-as-in-GPL doesn't mean "do not touch".

The GPL attempts to ensure that modifications to licensed, distributed, source code remain available to users. Whether that is a worthwhile cause is a matter of opinion; personally, I believe that for community OSS projects, the requirement for companies making modified versions to also make source available is generally good for the project.

Re:Sigh

[Leo McGarry]

But that's exactly my point, don't you see? That's the contradiction. You guys want everybody else to play by your rules when it comes to computer programs (those rules being fairly complex and confusing, from my point of view), but you have absolutely no desire to play by other people's rules when it comes to things like music and movies.

And those rules, by contrast, are incredibly simple: Pay for what you take, and don't give people copies. But any time somebody like the RIAA or the MPAA try to enforce t

Re:Sigh

[dash2]

"You guys?"

What, everyone who writes GPLed software is a music pirate?

Unlike all those Windows users who, undoubtedly, have never broken IP laws by, say, borrowing somebody's copy of Office or downloading a Dreamweaver zipfile?

Dear me.

Re:Sigh

[Entrope]

You're making an entirely unwarranted assumption: That GPL developers routinely infringe others' copyrights. Most developers I know are very respectful of any copyrights on a work.

I suspect the fraction of free software developers who infringe many copyrights is lower than the fraction of general internet users who infringe many copyrights, just because the former tend to be more familiar with the law and what it takes to produce a copyrightable work.

Don't confuse GPL developers with file traders just because they both read Slashdot.

Re:Sigh

[antiMStroll]

You completely miss the point by refusing to look beneath the surface. Open access to information is the guiding principle in both cases. The GPL is a license brilliantly designed to rest on copyright law such that the stronger the latter becomes the easier it is to enforce the GPL. There's no contradiction at the level of intent, only the method gives that impression.

"Pay for what you take...."

"Take"? It's 'copy', not 'take', one source of the confusion.

GPL vs RIAA

[wurp]

I've written GPLed code. I've protested what the RIAA and MPAA have done. I'll tell you why on both counts.

I write GPLed code as a step towards making someone else's life better. I like writing software, the code I GPL I would be writing anyway, and making it GPL doesn't harm me in the least. I make it GPL instead of BSD or public domain because I want to see the amount of freely available software increase as rapidly as possible, and I think the GPL promotes that.

Now, what's wrong with the RIAA and MPAA trying to enforce their copyright? If it were that simple, nothing. But I'll tell you what... these guys have successfully lobbied to take the vast majority of what would be in the public domain, a part of common culture expected to be commonly available, and made it their private property. Companies like Disney are founded on public domain material - Grimm's Fairy Tales, Pinnochio, Sleeping Beauty, you name it. They didn't pay a dime for those stories, stories that someone else wrote and the culture validated, because those stories had passed into the public domain.

Since then, Disney and other MPAA companies have successfully lobbied a 28 year copyright period into *120 years*. They go back and lobby for another 20 years every time their oldest works, the ones they built on public domain material, are about to fall out of copyright. This is no less than organized crime - bribes given to lawmakers to steal our culture from us. That's item 1.

The MPAA and RIAA are working very hard to make general computing illegal. A general computer is fantastically useful - it has transformed the lives of billions. Open systems based on simple principles can yield unbounded potential. The internet is a new testament to that fact, if the prior success of general computers weren't enough. But the MPAA and RIAA believe that general computing is a danger to their revenue, since it allows copying without flaw any information you have available to you. So the MPAA and RIAA, whose members' revenue is a fraction of that of the computing industry, but who control access to public attention and famous figures, lobby governments continually to make computers without DRM illegal. Have no doubts about it, mandatory DRM *will* cripple your computer. It *will* end up in a place where all of your personal information is available to "reputable" companies, where use of programs written by "unreputable" companies will be illegal to run, and where government sanctioned monopolies will charge exorbitant fees to vendors so they can release programs that actually run under DRM. You will see programs that cost money each time you use them, and more money to use them in more sophisticated ways. And using them in innovative ways that the creator never thought of? This will be simple impossible. This is the future if mandatory DRM is allowed to pass. That's item 2.

Finally, the penalties for copying the mass marketed tripe they produce are ludicrous. Charging 10 times the value of the illegally copied goods might be reasonable, both as a penalty and to account for the offenders that you can't catch. But the penalties are 100s or 1000s of times the cost to buy legal copies in stores. The penalties are totally disproportionate to the offense. That's item 3, minor as it may be in comparison to the other two.

That's why some of us get outraged when organized criminals call us communists for happily giving away our works, and name people who copy material that should have been part of the common culture after brigands of the sea who rape, murder and steal.

Re:Sigh

[shark72]

"From my (albeit limited) understanding of the GPL, it just wants you to give credit to the original authors of the code. When someone downloads a song, they are not in any way claiming that they wrote the song. There's the difference betwen the two."

The forms of art are inherently different. The average pirate doesn't incorporate a downloaded song into their own work without credit, and the average GPL violator doesn't listen to the code. The implicit rationale here is "I follow this certain set of rules for one piece of media, and if another medium has different rules, then they're wrong and can be ignored." Different media have different uses, and thus, sets of rules.

In situations like this, the golden rule still applies: treat others as you would like to be treated. If a software developer -- big or small -- wants you to honor their wishes and respect their rights, do so. Likewise, if a musician -- or even a record company -- wants you to respect their wishes and respect their rights, you should as well. Because some day -- whether you're a musician or a programmer or a painter or an author -- it may be your own rights that somebody has taken the libery of ignoring.

Re:GPL too restrictive

[stevens]

f I was a developer, I'd be very wary around GPL'd code.

Good thing you're not. We don't need any more ignorant developers.

Those like me who've read and understand the license, use it to make sure the programs we distribute are not redistributed without source. We *want* that restriction. If you don't like that restriction, feel free to not use the code and go the hell away.

Re:GPL too restrictive

[FLAGGR]

benifits nobody

Guess what, most companies don't want to give back source code, and its apperant by how many companies are violating the GPL. Having the restrictions the GPL does, it causes the companies to give back, which helps the community. Take PearPC for example. CherryOS has (obviously) ripped the code from them, and claimed that they wrote it all (in a few months or something, by one man, with no programming experience, which is bullshit) Nowadays, PearPC doesn't get many updates, because everytime they do, CherryOS does too. It's dampened the whole thing for the developers. If CherryOS was forced to obey theGPL (which they will eventually, some organization like the EFF or something will take them to court) then this wouldn't happen. Now tell me how limiting restrictions would help this case.

Re:GPL too restrictive

[Homology]

If I was a developer, I'd be very wary around GPL'd code. I believe the GPL is unnecessarily restrictive, and OSS would be better off without ANY restrictions on use.

If a company does not want to show their source code, they should use a BSD (or similar) licensed software or quite simply write their own. Some manufacturers of wireless access points would not have been on the recieving end of the GPL stick if they'd used something like OpenBSD with their own drivers.

Re:GPL too restrictive

[Hiro Antagonist]

I'll second the other poster who said, 'Good thing you aren't a developer.' See, development takes work; lots of it, in fact. Writing a program doat does anything more than put 'Hello, world!' on the screen takes a measure of effort that you, as a non-developer, can't really comprehend.

See, writing programs, especially *good* programs, isn't easy. It takes skill, patience, and experience, as well as a certain type of mind that isn't very common. And, before you tell me that even your seventy-two year old mother knows how to program, ask yourself this -- does she know what an eigenvector is? How about maxtrix transforms? Relational algebra? Multivariable calculus?

Why are these important? Because programming requires a high level of mathematical ability, at least if you want to have any understanding of why you are writing code a certain way.

So, all of this together makes a programmer, and people who do this sort of thing pour hours into their work. This is something they have created, and honestly, they should, and do, have the final word over what happens to their works. Some people are generous enough to release their works under a license like the GPL, which enables anyone else to use the program which the programmer has created, but with the caveat that the program can't be stolen and sold.

As a programmer, I'm happy the GPL exists, because there are a lot of ideas I've had for 'open-source' programs, and while I am happy to write them, I don't want to spend months coding, just so that some asshat can try to charge money for something I, as the creator of that thing, have released for free.

Finally, information doesn't 'want' anything -- it's an intangible concept, like 'santa claus' or 'income tax reform'. People want information to be free, and while that's all and good, there are far too many people demanding free information, and far too few people willing to work to provide it.

Re:GPL too restrictive

[mattyrobinson69]

i personally think the GPL is the best license currently available (except maybe the apache type licenses because of their patent clauses).

the spirit of the gpl is that the code stays open. if you want people to write code for you to sell, use bsd software.

Re:GPL too restrictive

[thelexx]

Bullshit. The GPL only prohibits taking open software, closing it and selling it as your own with no source available. You are free to use GPL libraries in your proprietary code without releasing your code, and to sell your closed code. Try again.

Re:Four Questions

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

1.) You look at the code, and gee, it looks the same. 2.) See above. 3.) No one because most FOSS developers are dirt poor. 4.) No.

Re:Four Questions

[Pofy]

>1.) You look at the code, and gee, it looks the
>same.

Which of course is easy if you have access to the source code of course. What about otherwise? Even if one would in some way be able to compare compiled code, how to handle those that thik EULAs are enforcable which normally prevent any way to actually look at the code.

Even with no EULAs, many copyright laws only permit for example reverse engineering for specific purposes, not to see if the code is the same as another one.

Finally, countries wit

Re:Four Questions

[mrsev]

Im a biologist so I see things from a functional point of view.

Lets call my code X and their code Y.

Imagine I have a system that uses Code X. I know all about Code X and how it works. I know that with stimulus A, Code X has a bug that causes it to crash and burn.

I can take code Y and see how it handles stimulus A, if it crashes and burns too then I form a hypothesis. Now I keep doing this with stimuli B C D E and see what happens. If you get the same results with both stimuli all the time the codes are

Re:Four Questions

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

"I'm not writing buggy code, I'm adding tracking technology to detect theft of the intellectual property!" :)

I'll keep that one in mind next time I write something that breaks. :)

Re:from the neither-rain-nor-snow-nor-hail-nor...

[dtfinch]

Sure they can. They just did.

Re:How can you enforce a non-contract?

[mikeplokta]

If the violator doesn't accept the GPL, nothing else gives them the right to use the code -- it's not public domain, it's licensed under a specific license. It's not a matter of contract law, it's copyright law, and no contract is required, any more than New Line Cinema needs to have a contract with you to stop you from selling a remixed version of The Fellowship Of The Ring.

Re:How can you enforce a non-contract?

[spitzak]

You can't write such a license, as that would be a contract, because it specifies restrictions that are not required by copyright law.

However you can write a GPL-like license that says "you must chew green gum while *redistributing* this software". Normally redistributing the code would violate copyright laws. However you have now stated that they may violate the copyright, *if* they chew green gum. But you have not said anything about redistributing it without chewing green gum, thus that is illegal because it is still a copyright violation.

However if they just write software using your code they are not violating copyright law. Unless you get them to sign a contract saying they will chew the green gum (in which case they are violating contract law), you have no power over them.

Copyright does not need a contract

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were to sell copies of Star Trek DVDs that I made myself, Paramount would be all over me for violating their copyright. I have no contract with Paramount. That's the point - I have NO right to sell someone else's copyrighted material without permission. You must have permission to distribute ('publish') someone else's copyrighted material.

That permission could be given by a contract. Or it could be given by a license, such as the GPL. When the author places his work under the GPL, he grants permission to copy to those who adhere to the terms of the GPL. If someone doesn't follow the terms, then they DON'T have permission to distribute the copyrighted materials. It's a simple case of copyright infringement.

The GPL is far simpler than the usual EULA. The GPL makes no restriction on use, but most EULAs do. Most EULAs prohibit copying, but the GPL encourages it. The GPL is a license granting you permissions that you wouldn't otherwise have under copyright law. You don't have to accept the GPL, you just fall back on standard copyright law if you don't. No contract is needed.

Re:Free != Freedom

[SirTalon42]

"If you create /new/ code, but it depends on a GPL item, then you can release your code under whatever license you see fit - open or closed source."

Thats true /only/ under the LGPL. Only GPL code can link against GPL code. Anything can link against LGPL code, look at WineX (Cedega) and Wine, originally Wine was under the LGPL and WineX added extra closed code to it but then Wine changed their license to GPL and WineX had to fork.

Re:Good thing!

[prisoner-of-enigma]

In one case, copyright is being used as a tool to protect the ability to freely disseminate and modify works. In the other case, it is being used as a tool to restrict freedom of distribution and prevent modification.

I love your twisted logic here, justifying copyright infringement on the one hand because it promotes "freedom" but condemning it on the other because it promotes the "freedom" to disseminate. Orwell would love you.

Here's the situation, and it's not a shade of grey as you imply: copyright infringement is either good for all or bad for all, you can't pick specific instances where it's good for some and bad for some. That's called subjectivism, and it has no business intruding into a legal matter such as copyright infringement. Open that door and all law suddenly becomes entirely relative, and you do not want to go down that path. Is murdering a white supremacist wrong? Sure, the world's better off without him, but does that make murder "right"? You cannot use the "it's for the greater good" argument because there is no "fair" way to define the greater good. What's good for you is most likely bad for someone else. That's why these matters must be objective, not subjective.

So, which is it? Would you stand on a hill and defend my right to violate the GPL however I see fit? I doubt it.

Don't look now, but your double standard is showing. Perhaps you'd be more comfortable with this definition [m-w.com] instead.

Re:Good thing!

[tweek]

Freedom minded people might also want to appreciate someone ELSE'S freedom to distribute his works under whatever license, agreement and policy they wish.

It's a double-standard pure and simple. I'm not saying that the majority of slashdotters are downloading movies and music against copyright law unlike the GP but I will say this.

The same fucking power and ruleset that the GPL is using is the same fucking power and ruleset that copyright holders are using.

The GPL is a copyright. Copyleft is just a cutsie term that the FSF attached to it. I love the GPL. I love libre software. I appreciate the FSF working WITHIN the law just as the Nature Conservancy works with contract law to preserve greenspace.

The question of someone's vigilante method of serving notices (I can't read the original site to determine if he is operating as counsel for the FSF) is a different issue. The pure and simple fact is that people who download or distribute music against the original terms of copyright are just as shitty as people who download or distribute GPL code against the terms of the GPL.