Suit Claims Diebold Voting Machines Violate GPL 252
An anonymous reader writes "Diebold Inc. and its subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions, is using Ghostscript in its electronic election systems even though Diebold and PES 'have not been granted a license to modify, copy, or distribute any of Artifex's copyrighted works,' Artifex claims in court papers filed late last month in US District Court for Northern California. The gs-devel list first brought up the possible GPL violation a year ago."
Yes it does. (Score:5, Informative)
The GPL is pretty strict about any distribution requiring source being made available. Embedded devices are no exception.
Re:The thing is (Score:5, Informative)
They are probably not distributing the software outside their own company.
Considering they *sell* the machines to the government, that most certainly counts as distribution.
Just because it's loaded on closed hardware doesn't mean that it's not being distributed.
For one of the people who will be running the election hall on election day, when they get delivery of the election machine, is that counted as receiving a copy of the software?
Unless Diebold is
A) a part of the US government
or
B) running the election
that's pretty much irrelevant. They're distributing the machine to the government, who sends them to the election halls, and *that* is what counts as distribution.
Re:How are they violating the GPL (Score:5, Informative)
Look, the GPL gives Diebold the explicit right to use that software, so long as they distribute it themselves.
What? The GPL gives them the right to use and modify the software, as long as they don't distribute it. If they distribute it (say, by selling a voting machine that runs a copy of the software) they have to provide the source. They have not provided any source.
all they've done is establish that the free software movement is really free subject to arbitrary whims and conditions.
The conditions are not arbitrary. They are clearly spelled out in the GPL, which is much easier to read and obey than any proprietary license.
At least if they had used Microsoft Windows internally, they would have been free of any political considerations for license compliance.
Read the second link in the blurb. The voting machines in question run Windows 2000. Guess what, GhostScript runs on Windows too.
Voters don't have standing here (Score:5, Informative)
It's my understanding that anyone who has "object code" is also entitled to "source code."
This means the owners of the voting machines have standing to sue. If the machines are leased, depending on how the courts determine what distribution means when a lease is involved, the local governments may or may not have standing.
The copyright owner might only have a claim of "license violation" if an owner asked for and was denied the source code.
There's also the whole issue of "how viral is viral." If the printing code is done as an independent program, then Diebold might only be obliged to release it. After all, if I publish a BSD LiveCD that contains some GPL programs, I'm obligated to publish the GPL source but not the source to BSD-licensed code. The same would apply if the PDF-generating code were in a self-contained application in the "rom filesystem" in the firmware.
forced to distribute the source .. (Score:5, Informative)
No one is forcing Diebold Inc. to use Ghostscript in its electronic election systems
Doesn't Sound Like A Violation (Score:4, Informative)
Based on the totally inadequate summary it seems like there is no violation, except perhaps the minor one of Diebold not having their own ftp site with the normal GPLed gs code available (which they could fix in an hour).
I mean if Diebold didn't modify gs but merely used it on their machines they are only required to distributed the standard gs code. The mere fact that gs runs on the same machine doesn't make the rest of the diebold code a derived work. It's all about what is a derived work of the gs code.
Bad Summary: likely in-house license, not GPL (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So... how does this violate the GPL? (Score:3, Informative)
If you distribute you must give source, does not matter if you change it or not.
Re:Are they distributing the software? (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh. The GPLv2 makes it perfectly clear that the "offer to provide source code" method of binary distribution can only be passed on from a third party for non-commercial distribution.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
It's pretty straightforward english.
Re:So... how does this violate the GPL? (Score:3, Informative)
If you distribute a GPL program, you are required to specify that you are using GPL software, and you must let your users know their rights to view, modify and distribute the source code. Additionally, you are required to give them the source, or offer to do so.
The GPL is more or less straightforward and easy to understand. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt [gnu.org]
Re:Doesn't Sound Like A Violation (Score:2, Informative)
Because.... (Score:3, Informative)
GPL authors generally do not want to put code out there to be used as a no-cost alternative to commercial development libraries and programs, while getting nothing in return.
Basically, the "license fee" for GPL code is that the person/company reselling it must give back changes and/or distribute source. And they must abide by any attribution demands as well.
Or negotiate a commercial use license. MySQL does that.
Re:We Tax payer want our money back! (Score:5, Informative)
From what I understand their ATM security is just fine.
uhh what?
Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems (GES), the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years[7]
Re:Yes it does. (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't provide the source *with* the binaries (Section 3(a)), then you must make the source available to everyone (Section 3(b)).
The third option, pointing to the upstream provider (Section 3(c)) only applies to non-commercial distribution, which this isn't.
Re:Are they distributing the software? (Score:5, Informative)
The code was already found on a public FTP site by the founder of blackboxvoting.org
The code is totally insecure, and has many vulnerabilities.
Rest assured, there are multiple ways to rig the voting machines.
Case number 3:2008cv04837 (Score:1, Informative)
See Artifex Software Inc. v. Diebold Inc. et al [justia.com] for details on the suit which has the number 3:2008cv04837.
Re:Bad Summary: likely in-house license, not GPL (Score:3, Informative)
They would have to do that if it's GPL. This would not require them to release source to other software on the disk. There is a difference between aggregation and the creation of a derivative work. A program that just calls Ghostscript to run isn't a derivative work of Ghostscript.
Re:Are they distributing the software? (Score:2, Informative)
But, if you have any real interest, it is not a long document. If you write software or consume software and are self selected by being on