WURFL Founders Fire Off DMCA Takedown Against Fork

An anonymous reader writes "ScientiaMobile, the company formed behind the open source library WURFL, an API used to do mobile device detection for web applications, has issued a DMCA takedown notice against the OpenDDR project on Github. ScientiaMobile claims that OpenDDR is 'ripping them off' by forking their database, which used to be licensed under a liberal license. Newer versions of the device database are licensed under restrictive licenses which do not allow any modification or redistribution."

Bletch

[Anonymous Coward]

Having had to integrate that horrible thing into a web application, I can only wonder why OpenDDR didn't just start from scratch with a new API. They would have had to have gone some way to create a worse implementation than the original.

Re:Benefit of the doubt

[gstoddart]

To give ScientiaMobile the benefit of the doubt, it is possible they simply don't know how the licensing system works and don't realize that changing the license later on doesn't restrict uses of earlier versions that had been distributed under GPL

Well, that makes them ignorant of some basic legal principles, and if they received any legal advice which suggested you could retroactively change something like that, their lawyer is incompetent.

In many places it's illegal to pass a law that is ex post facto [wikipedia.org], and licenses are no different.

There is no 'benefit of the doubt' to believe they simply didn't know this was the case -- this is either gross lack of knowledge about the legal system, or a blatant abuse of it. It's a pity the DMCA doesn't really have redress for abuses like this. Because I fail to see how this can be classified as an honest mistake.

And, I don't see why they have to be either idiots or assholes -- in my opinion, they can be both, and if they sent a DMCA takedown, they likely are.

Re:Success

[galaad2]

oddly enough their support forum is called "Community Support Forum"... shouldn't that be "Proprietary Support Forum" now?
http://www.scientiamobile.com/forum/ [scientiamobile.com]

Also, Scientiamobile itself is in breach of SourceForge's Terms of use (they use SourceForge for file distribution!) because the Terms state:

http://geek.net/terms-of-use [geek.net]
"Except as otherwise expressly permitted by these Terms, any Code submitted to SourceForge.net must be licensed to Geeknet and other licensees under a license that is: compliant with the Open Source Initiative ("OSI")'s Open Source Definition (http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd) or certified as an "OSI-Approved License" (http://opensource.org/licenses)."

imho, the license that they are using now is in COMPLETE VIOLATION with sourceforge's terms.

i already submitted an abuse report with sourceforge for this... but i'm not sure if only one abuse report is enough

The GPL is starting to make more sense.

[liquidweaver]

I used to release works that I made under MIT or artistic - thinking the GPL was too extreme for my tastes.
It is becoming clear to me that businesses _predictably_ try to "proprietize" anything they can - morals are never part of the equation. The only defense you have when writing software for the public (and keep it that way) is the include clear, strong, and pervasive licenses such as the GPL.

The legal framework we live in, at least here stateside, basically demands we protect our works' right to be free and shared in an active fashion. Corporations only have incentives to try and lock down and monopolize anything they can - it makes sense and history continues to repeat itself. Looks like RMS was right; everything I write is GPL from here on out.

Re:Again

[iluvcapra]

Oh shut up already

You jest, but if Slashdot wanted to shut me up they'd be completely in their rights. I have no right to have anything I post appear here, moderation or no.

I think if people did more standing on soapboxes and spent less energy fighting for the hypothetical rights of someone to reproduce five minutes from The Daily Show on Youtube we'd certainly live in a better world.