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Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case
On his blog, Harald Welte writes about work he is doing as part of the gpl-violations.org project. "Right now I'm facing what I'd consider the most outrageous case that I've been involved so far: A manufacturer of Linux-based embedded devices (no, I will not name the company) really has the guts to go in front of court and sue another company for modifying the firmware on those devices. More specifically, the only modifications to program code are on the GPL licensed parts of the software. None of the proprietary userspace programs are touched! None of the proprietary programs are ever distributed either." If the manufacturer were to succeed with its claims, it could jeopardize many different projects that provide alternate code for devices, he says.
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Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 2:46 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (guest, #216) [Link]
I wonder if there's any way to find out which company this is without violating court orders or anything like that...?
exposure Posted Sep 2, 2010 2:59 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
It sounds like he's still hoping they'll come around. Anyway the plaintiff is in the public record if they've already filed suit.
exposure Posted Sep 2, 2010 11:03 UTC (Thu) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link]
The public record of which country, for starters? As long as Mr. Welte chooses not to disclose the identity of the lawsuit he's referring to, there is not much chance for anybody to find it.
exposure Posted Sep 2, 2010 12:19 UTC (Thu) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] I agree, he is not doing anyone a favor except the company dong the suing. If it is in a court then in all probability it is a matter of public record. So he would not be spilling the beans on anyone and his excuse does not wash.
exposure Posted Sep 3, 2010 10:42 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
If he (and his lawyers) can convince 'Company X' to drop the case and return to sanity then there would really be not much of a reason to go public with the corporation's name. If they fight and resist then we'll find out who it is fairly shortly.
If your worried about what devices to purchase or avoid that may be from this company you just have to pay attention to whether the corporation your giving money to has helped out or contributed back upstream and whether or not they make the GPL'd portions of the software available online and such things. If they do that then they are very unlikely to be 'Company X'.
exposure Posted Sep 2, 2010 17:59 UTC (Thu) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]
Someone makes GPL firmware, sues for something allowed under the license said manufacturer chooses, and Welte expects these guys to come around? Ok, maybe he's got a very large mallet and proposes to ensure they're going to be in a position to come round in that sense of the term.
Failing that, I can't see how a company that fails to read its own licenses is going to comprehend much of anything.
exposure Posted Sep 3, 2010 10:38 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Ok, maybe he's got a very large mallet and proposes to ensure they're going to be in a position to come round in that sense of the term.
That mallet would be the USA copyright system. They violate the license and they lose the right to use the software their hardware needs. So yeah, being unable to sell working devices to customers would be a big problem for them.
I don't like such tactics, but since they are already suing another company for modifying software they are modifying themselves: Live by the sword, die by the sword. (in this case "sword" being the violence inherent in the court system) I think it's wholly justifiable in this case.
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 6:03 UTC (Thu) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link]
Why not name the company? To favor confidentiality is an old habit contrary to the open approach.
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 6:49 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
Perhaps because companies tend to get somewhat less responsive to friendly discussion when you publically call them out by name?
Not all discussions can immediately happen in the open, and not all organizations feel comfortable airing out their dirty laundry where Google and LWN can find it. This holds particularly true for organizations who don't "get" FOSS yet, which clearly applies here.
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 8:44 UTC (Thu) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link]
With stubborn kids a slap on the hand is sometimes educative.
How these companies will learn to behave fair if they don't get some punishment?
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 9:04 UTC (Thu) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] I agree. If as TFA says the suit is in progress that means its listed on a courts docket which also means the suit falls in public knowledge. I think Mr. Welte needs to re-examine the notion of "confidentiality".
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 9:50 UTC (Thu) by cate (subscriber, #1359) [Link]
You are assuming that the suit is filled in U.S., which is IMO not the case.
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 12:30 UTC (Thu) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] True, that may not be but are not a courts docket mainly publicly available in most countries?
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 9:14 UTC (Thu) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]
I would imagine that the threat of public disclosure, once the offending company becomes aware of the reputation damage their own actions will cause, is a powerful negotiating tool in obtaining more appropriate behavior from the offender including paying costs of offended parties etc. However, once their behavior has been publicly disclosed, the threat is gone.
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 3, 2010 1:09 UTC (Fri) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
Perhaps because the owner of the copyright wants to do it his way, not yours? It's presumably his code, his lawsuit, his money bringing the lawsuit ... his choice. There are facts we don't know, almost everything about it which we don't know, and it is not our decision to make or second guess.
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 3, 2010 6:38 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
suing someone for doing something that you explicitly allow in your license is not just a matter of "it's your copyright, you can do what you want with it"
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 3, 2010 12:20 UTC (Fri) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]
Not sure I get what you are saying but here is a response to one possibility.
So I write some code and put it under the GPL. You take that code and incorporate it into your product and sell copies to others.
You eithe:
Pass along the Freedoms granted by the GPL to them.
or:
You violate the license I granted you and lose the "legal rights" "granted" in that license.
If you do the first, you have no basis to sue.
If you do the second, you have no remaining grants from me for that code.
Can you explain further?
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 3, 2010 17:59 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] If you do the second [fail to meet conditions of my license], you have no remaining grants from me for that code. More important, you never had the right to distribute the code to the guy you're suing for modifying it. And that doesn't mean you don't have a case against him. You still have copyright on the derived work you distributed. But we're really shooting in the dark here. We don't know what kinds of licenses the mystery company gave the guy it sued, and we don't know on what theory the company sued him. It's easy to assume the guys running this company are just not as knowledgeable as we are about GPL, but if they went to the trouble to sue someone, and then to make Harald sue them, I assume they've put a lot of thought and study into it.
Welte: More GPL enforcement work again.. and a very surreal but important case Posted Sep 2, 2010 10:21 UTC (Thu) by yaneti (subscriber, #641) [Link]
Unfortunately its not unheard of for both government and the private sector to get the idea exactly backwards in bizarre ways. Here is a case from an unnamed Eastern European country.
Company A produces warehousing software and freely distributes a open source version with some advanced features cut. Even boasting that the program is open source and GPL licensed.
A competing company B produces software with an initial startup option in the spirit of "Import from 'Company A'"
A files a complaint with the CPC (Commission on protection of competition) against B, claiming various violations including infringement on their copyright on the database structure of the db behind their product.
CPC fines B.
I don't really want to go more into it so I've spared the names.
I trust the voice of experience Posted Sep 2, 2010 18:52 UTC (Thu) by michaelkjohnson (subscriber, #41438) [Link]
Harald Welte has consistently been one of the most active enforcers of the GPL.
There aren't many people I would trust to second-guess him on when it makes sense to take allegations public, and when to be cautious about details and names.
I suggest that anyone making negative comments about this choice start out by providing their bona fides in the GPL enforcement area. Put up or shut up, please.
Thank you, Harald, for doing work that needs to be done but few have the knowledge, endurance, and resources combined to do!
I trust the voice of experience Posted Sep 2, 2010 22:45 UTC (Thu) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link]
+1
I trust the voice of experience Posted Sep 7, 2010 18:34 UTC (Tue) by xorbe (subscriber, #3165) [Link]
Also, naming the company is an invitation to hate mail, unfortunately. And that doesn't help anything either.
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