GPL Wins In French Court Case 266
viralMeme writes "An appeals court in Paris has upheld the ruling from a lower court, which found that the French firm Edu4 had violated the GNU General Public License (GPL). The plaintiff was the French Organisation Association francaise pour la Formation Professionnelle des Adultes (AFPA), an umbrella organization for adult education." The basic charge was the removal of copyrights and such from VNC source code, and not distributing it.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article: AFPA - the education agency - sued edu4 - a company working for this agency - because edu4 did not release the source code to its modified VNC software.
The court essentially said that AFPA was correct, that the GPL should have been upheld by edu4, and that the source code should be released by edu4 to its client, the AFPA.
Essentially, this is good news: as far as France is concerned, the GPL has been challenged, and upheld in court. Modifications done by a private company to a GPL software should therefore be available for all.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
"should therefore be available for all"
No, not to all, only to their clients. What their clients do with it in turn is up to them.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Informative)
No, not to all, only to their clients.
Not according to the GPL. If you distribute GPL software to anyone, then you must extend the offer of source code to all third parties.
Re:PDF of the decision on the FSF France website (Score:3, Informative)
(self-reply). I'm no Pamela Jones, but here's a quick summary:
After seeing the 21SEP04 emergency judgement at Bobigny high claims court
After seing the 21SEP04 appeal by the defendant
After seing the 22DEC06 decision whee the court agreed (in essence) for hearing expert opinion ..
After seeing the expert's memo from 25APR08
After seeing the last demands from the defendant
After seeing the last demands from the plaintiff
THE COURT,
considering that all the due process (from 2000 onwards) has been followed
considering that the call for tender (CCAP -- administrative part) was correctly structured
considering that the Validation of Aptitude phase of the contract was botched (3 times adjourned, presumably because of technical issues), all the way from january 2001 to 21DEC01, but was finally declared done (starting the verification in regular service(VSR) phase); that the plaintiff did start to question the legal status of the software at that time;
considering that AFPA started to question the sincerity of the 25MAY00 tender, (etc.) and that an offer to bargain and drop charges for EUR 228674 has been offered by AFPA; that finally given all that went wrong, the contract had been terminated 4JUN02
Considering that Defendant sued AFPA for breach of contract because of the contract termination
Considering that this Court already judged, on 22DEC06, that AFPA was entitled to getting its money back,
Considering that the expert did perform his work correctly,
Considering that AFPA's grief is not the use of Free Software, but the stealth use of a version of VNC modified in breach of the licensing terms (GPL), thus performing the act of counterfeiting, and the use of a backdoor password ("en introduisant un mot de passe connu uniquement de EDU 4 et non modifiable, permettant ainsi a EDU 4 de prendre le controle de tout poste en court-circuitant le mecanisme affiche de protection livre par EDU 4") [whoa, they really did this?? ] , and never did tell AFPA any of this
Considering that EDU4 pretends it never hid the use of GPL, (etc.)
Considering that EDU4 says the alleged defect on access control cannot justify the termination of contract, given that this defect was to be fixed within 2-3 months,
Considering that proof was given that AFPA did know on 03AUG01 VNC and GPL software was to be delivered,
Considering that on 27SEP01 EDU4 delivered licensing documentations which did not tell anything about GPL,
Considering that on 21DEC01 the VA was pronounced only subject to EDU4 clarifying the legal status of all included software,
Considering that on 04APR02, EDU4 alleged it never modified the VNC software, never breached GPL or copyright terms (except for set-up
software, clear delimitation of EDU4 and VNC parts, etc.)
Considering that the expert was unable to confirm the 04APR02 allegations on the materials delivered in Decembre 2001 (VNC was hidden, the
license is not identifiable, the properties of the vncviewer.exe and winvnc.exe files had been altered, hiding the AT&T Research Labs name except for the vnc hooks.dll file,
Considering that EDU4 failed to provide AFPA with the modified source code, which it had pledged to do on 15JAN02, thus voiding the allegation of a proper [GPL] delivery by 5APR02
Considering that it appears from all facts that EDU4 failed to live up to its contractual obligations [...] caused the copyright notices to
disappear from VNC, etc.
Considering that AFPA is entitled, according to art. 1184 from Civil Code, to terminate the contract; that nothing being validated, EDU4 is
not entitled to any payment
Considering that EDU4, failing to prove its allegations, has to pay for all expertise and procedural costs (experts + 8K EUR)
BECAUSE OF THOSE MOTIVES, THE COURT ... OVERTURNS the original judgement, and, deciding anew,
declares AFPA (plaintiff) is founded in its demands
declares EDU4 (defendant)'s claims are thrown out
sentences EDU4 to pay AFPA 8K EUR
sentences EDU4 to pay for all judicial and expertise costs, and that the appeal costs are to be paid for according to art. 699 of civil procedural code.
Re:What the hell? Crazy French! (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article. The AFPA requested the source code of the modifications the company (Edu4) did to VNC but the company refused to provide it and so they were sued.
quit spreading FUD - try reading the GPL (Score:3, Informative)
Your statement is (sadly) one of the many common FUD scarecrows foes of open source use to try to prevent companies from using GPL software.
The GPL very specifically only requires you to offer to "convey" the "Corresponding Source" to the parties to whom you have conveyed object or binaries containing your modifications AND that you convey to those same parties your distribution rights so that they may convey your object/binaries and corresponding source to anyone they choose to (as long as they do so under GPL licensing terms).
The GPL intentionally does not impose the burden for modifiers to positively disseminate their "Corresponding Source" to anyone other than those to whom they have already incurred the burden of distributing the binaries.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Propagation of this misinformation, specifically, is the reason the GPL is so misunderstood: too many people out there that think GPL is the same thing as public domain and derive a sense of entitlement from it.
General Public License != Public Domain
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
You're both almost right.
Empahsis mine.
Basically, edu4 could have either distribute the source with the binaries or accompany the binaries with a written offer to distribute the source to any third parties. (I suppose they technically could have done both and still be in compliance, but that seems rather redundant)
Re:What the hell? Crazy French! (Score:5, Informative)
It's an idiosyncracy of French law. The plaintiff here was a customer who did, yes, successfully sue for the source code. It probably couldn't happen in the US or UK.
FSF France's take on this finds this noteworthy: [fsffrance.org]
Just when you thought the German courts were GPL-friendly, this shows up. Vive la France!
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
It's difficult because it depends how you "give source".
If you go for the written offer to provide source rather than just providing the source upfront then you do in fact have an obligation to provide the source to all third parties.
Re:What the hell? Crazy French! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, first of all, this was French law, not US or English, so their idea of standing might be different.
Second, the AFPA were third party beneficiaries of the GPL -- as receivers of the binary, they were entitled (by the GPL) to receive the source. This might have granted them standing even in the US.
From
http://ejustice.org/federal_practice_manual_2006/chapter_5/chap5sec3.html [ejustice.org]
The GPL (IMO, IANAL) makes it crystal clear that the person receiving the binary is an intended beneficiary.
Re:What the hell? Crazy French! (Score:1, Informative)
Worse. EDU4 never stated in its tender that it was to use VNC.
It did afterwards, but then in what was supposed to be the final delivery (start of the Validation of Aptitude phase, which is where, in typical French IT purchase contracts, is where you deliver the final software and Client verifies it satisfies all contractual demands, but in practice some leeway for patches is introduced) modified GPL was delivered without ever showing that it was GPL software (and nary a source file in sight).
EDU4 first sued to get paid as AFPA considered the delivery terminally incorrect and voided the contract (which is an explicit possible outcome in public IT contracts). AFPA showed in the first trial that GPL was being breached; the first judge didn't understand the deal. The Court of Appeals took the GPL at face value (which is hugely significant) and found that perfectly valid grounds for AFPA's behaviour all along.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
mod parent up. The original post on this thread was just plain FUD.
You must:
1) give the modified GPL source code as well as the binaries to the person who is your client.
You have the option to
2) give the modified GPL source code to your client, and everybody else if you choose to.
The second option is not mandatory.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What the hell? Crazy French! (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, we are returning "Freedom Fries" back to their original name "French Fries". Happy now?
We still apologize for French's Mustard, which is not french and can barely be called mustard.
Re:What the hell? Crazy French! (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing in the information I posted or linked to says anything about concealing the terms of a contract from an intended beneficiary makes the intended beneficiary incidental. If you have other information please post it.
Auto analogy:
Ford sells off-lease cars to independent dealer "Car Emporium", with the contract of sale stating that "Car Emporium" will provide complimentary maintenance for these cars to whoever they resell it to for one year after that sale. "Car Emporium" doesn't do so and conceals the existence of that contract from the buyers. The buyers somehow find out. They _DO_ have standing to sue "Car Emporium", as they were an intended beneficiary of the contract.
The FSF doesn't claim it's "just copyright". They claim it's a license. They also claim if that IF you don't accept the license, THEN what you have is "just copyright". The defendants in this case could have claimed they never accepted the GPL, but that would have put them in hotter water. There likely STILL would have been a cause of action by the plaintiffs (because the defendant had provided them, unknowingly, with illegal copies of software), and there would have been a cause of action by the copyright owner for copyright violation.
Re:What the hell? Crazy French! (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't sue over the copyright. They sued over license violations that impacted them. The operative words are "that impacted them"; that gives them legal standing.
The license gets its force from the copyright, but that changes nothing. The plaintif had a right which the defendant violated, regardless of the fact that the right in question was granted by a document whose authority came from somebody else's rights.
Re:PDF of the decision on the FSF France website (Score:3, Informative)