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OLS: Enforcing the GPLOLS: Enforcing the GPLPosted Jul 24, 2004 22:19 UTC (Sat) by stockholm (subscriber, #3939)Parent article: OLS: Enforcing the GPL
In my opinion it is mostly good for the own ego to come down hard upon
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OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 24, 2004 22:26 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] It's considerably more trouble to use a proprietary product; they will still have to negotiate a proprietary license. On the other hand, there is no negotiation necessary with the GPL because you already have a lot of permission. If you want even more permission, you can work it out with the copyright holders the same way you can with proprietary code.Calling the actions of these companies "courageous" is stupid. They are software hoarders, and should be treated no better than any others.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 24, 2004 22:53 UTC (Sat) by stockholm (subscriber, #3939) [Link] Even if it is more trouble to use a proprietary product, it is whatpeople are used to and what they are good at. It is most likely a novelty to abide to the "free" GPL and properly play by it's rules. Probably you have some enthusiastic engineers pointing out the technical merits of linux to their management, everone is slightly licence-illiterate (especially regarding the GPL) and think free software is free (as in beer). (Hence the name.) It is not necessary to imply willfull software hording at all, just plain human error and oversight. Now imagine the situation after the legal action by Harald. Both the lower management and the engineers will not have happy days for quite some time and the turn to linux in that company is over for good. What a victory for freedom and free software.
It's never just ignorance Posted Jul 24, 2004 23:18 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] A case doesn't get to court without the parties having prior contact. If they screwed up through ignorance (as you suggest) that's a great time to say "Ok, hand on my heart I screwed up, and I'm going to drop everything to give you what you want."Whereas on the other hand if they've already explicitly decided that they're not too interested in obeying the terms of the license, then when someone threatens a lawsuit they're going to say "Sure pal, whatever. You haven't got anything on me" and hope it's a bluff. This guy isn't bluffing. That's all it comes down to.
It's never just ignorance Posted Jul 25, 2004 14:43 UTC (Sun) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link] Not from what I read. It seems his policy (as opposed to FSF's) is to get the lawyers out fast and get to trial fast so that companies don't drag their feet. Essentially he assumes there is an intent to steal from the corporations to begin with. Not a mistake or missinformation as the previous poster does. Is the FSF disingenous? Maybe, maybe not.
It's never just ignorance Posted Jul 26, 2004 13:19 UTC (Mon) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link] At this point, any company that uses GPL'd software knows what the license means. If they don't, they deserve to get sued, and fast. I'd be completely surprised if there are any cases of a company using GPL'd software and not complying with the license through ignorance. Which means that companies are making the concious decision to NOT comply with the GPL - so they get sued - so what, they'll drag it out in court until it doesn't matter any more. If you don't think this is a concious business decision on their part, you are completely naive. Companies do this as a matter of course, regardless of the nature of the license on the software they are using (commercial or otherwise). The intent to steal is definately there, as is the intent to delay getting taken to court as long as possible.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 25, 2004 17:21 UTC (Sun) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link] Both the lower management and the engineers will not have happy days for quite some time and the turn to linux in that company is over for good. What a victory for freedom and free software.
Obviously, you have never worked in a company that sells software. The first thing any reputable company does is checking what licenses the tools/libraries/etc. that they are using have.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 26, 2004 9:50 UTC (Mon) by minichaz (subscriber, #630) [Link] The free/Free misunderstanding is a purely English thing. English happens to have one word that means free as in beer and free as in freedom. Most languages have two different words for these meanings. French for example has "gratis" for free as in beer and "libre" for free as in freedom.Anyone know the situation in German? Anyone know of another language that has one word for both these concepts? Thanks.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 26, 2004 13:56 UTC (Mon) by greve (subscriber, #8385) [Link] I can tell you that in German there are two words possible here: "frei" and "gratis".- "gratis" is exclusively only ever used for zero price - "frei" is clearly referring to freedom according to linguists, although I know the same to be true for Spanish, Portugese, Italian, Korean, Japanese at least -- in fact English is the only language I ever encountered that was so weak on this aspect.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 26, 2004 18:49 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] But I know of a case of a French to English translation of "libre" to "uncopyrighted". In no language does the equivalent of "free" mean "granting freedom" rather than "having freedom", with, as far as I know, the sole exception of "free speech", which is short for "freedom of speach" ("of" denoting type, not possession) and related to "speak freely". So other languages have what is probably a worse confusion, that the software has been granted self-determination as opposed to being owned by someone, which most easily suggests public domain.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 29, 2004 8:24 UTC (Thu) by chepelov (guest, #23542) [Link] Care to give the reference for that translation?There is a corner case, though: the expression "libre de droits", which is more or less equivalent to public domain ("unobstructed by [intellectual property]rights"). But nobody without an intent of infrigement would seriously think of "logiciel libre" to mean "public domain software". (now, mainstream press journalists, that's a different matter....)
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Aug 5, 2004 12:28 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] The original was French, and it was an (American iirc) Reuters translation.
So it was an English speaker who screwed up the translation ...
Cheers,
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 25, 2004 4:40 UTC (Sun) by set (guest, #4788) [Link] Harald is enforcing his copyright, which is the the whole underpinningof the GPL. You can whinge about 'what *we* should do, or what is better for *us*', but it is the copyright holders who get to make these kinds of decisions about the license they chose for the software *they* wrote. And I say good for Harald; businesses need to know that the GPL is a real license and unless they follow it, they cannnot distribute. Let them use BSD or similarly licensed code if they dont want to.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 30, 2004 15:47 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] Indeed. And while clearly this is not legal precedent anywhere in the US, if he succeeds -- excuse me: when he succeeds :-) -- it will certainly stand as *business* precedent, which isn't quite the same thing.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 25, 2004 6:55 UTC (Sun) by akumria (subscriber, #7773) [Link] I work for a company which does development for an OEM. The very first thing they say is what licenses we are allowed to use on the project. Some they don't mind if we use GPL, some they do. In all cases though we are required to deliver a report at the end detailing each component, what its license is and the status of our compliance with it. That also goes for the propreitary modules. The only change between doing this with propreitary modules versus using Free Software is that sometimes the license of Free Software stipulates extra conditions regarding when/where you have to make the code and/or your changes available. If a company can't be bothered complying to a Free Software license (which are realtively simple) what makes you think they would bother complying to a commercial one? Either a company actually determines and lives up to its obligations or it doesn't. Free Software doesn't mean you can have a free ride. Everything has a cost - the companies Harald has exposed just believed they could get away with it. If no one pushed the GPL then we would have more damage in the long term with companies believing they had no obligations at all - which just isn't the case.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 25, 2004 8:33 UTC (Sun) by jmshh (guest, #8257) [Link] There is nothing "courageous" in this context. The case is a very indirect one: Some manufacturer from an East-Asian country, where copyrights are just ignored, made the product. It was imported by the European headquarter based in the Netherlands and then sold by the German subsidiary in Germany. What this verdict does is banning further sales in Germany, nothing more :-(. This is the most one can get without fighting cases far away: just a little itch to an I-don't-care company. Other contacts with more accessible manufacturers were more successful and needed no involvement of the courts.
OLS: Enforcing the GPL Posted Jul 26, 2004 0:43 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It's not that simple. Yes, one case will not change situation with "I-don't-care company". Once you'll get the same verdict for the rest European countries, USA and Japan suddenly "I-don't-care company" start to care. Yes, it's long and hard battle but it can be done and was done previously.
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