Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 19, 2006 21:27 UTC (Thu) by jwb (guest, #15467)
Parent article: A new FUD angle: securities laws

Haha hilarious. Wasabi's FUD says that if you are violating the terms of the GPL, you may also be violating Sarbanes-Oxley, and therefore you may go to jail. But the same is true of _any_ intellectual property license: free software, open source, or proprietary. Even the BSD license that Wasabi Systems is trying to sell.

Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 19, 2006 23:27 UTC (Thu) by lordsutch (guest, #53) [Link] (7 responses)

True, but it's pretty damn hard (actually, close to impossible unless you're being actively malicious) to violate the 3-clause BSD license. The GPL has some pretty byzantine requirements if you sit down and try to comply with them to the letter (i.e. you must provide the exact source of something you shipped three years ago on demand, you must provide a written offer to this effect, blah blah blah).

Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 20, 2006 1:18 UTC (Fri) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

*shrug* The bit you cite is one of several options, and is easily avoided simply by shipping source with your binary code.

Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 20, 2006 2:06 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

"It's pretty damn hard", yet such violations occur, and for the same reasons as with the GPL. Someone wants a competitive advantage they don't deserve. So they take BSD code and remove all the copyright statements, then brand it as a proprietary solution and sell it for $$$. Maybe if they remember they even change some of the code.

If you actually /can't/ provide the source to an embedded product from 3 years ago I think you have other engineering and legal problems without worrying about the GNU GPL.

Besides, if people making a $10 mouse can throw in a mini-CD full of documentation, it can't be hard to include a source code CD with your television, lawnmower or other Linux embedded device.

For non-embedded products, you can fulfill your distribution obligations in full by putting the source code with license text on the CD or FTP server next to the binary. If the user never looks at it, or (in the case of the FTP server) doesn't even download it, that's their problem, not yours according to the license.

Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 20, 2006 2:19 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link] (2 responses)

The degree of difficulty of violation is not relevant, because the Wasabi people insist the cost of the
GPL is that your engineers aren't qualified to evaluate the license, so you need expensive legal
vetting to discharge your obligations under Sarbanes-Oxley. But clearly the same is true of the BSD
license. If your engineers cannot gauge the risk of the GPL, they also cannot gauge the risk of
incorporating Berkeley-licensed code, or code under any other license, and the legal effort must be
undertaken regardless of the manner in which the 3rd-party software is acquired.

Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 23, 2006 22:08 UTC (Mon) by anonymous21 (guest, #30106) [Link] (1 responses)

> the Wasabi people insist the cost of the GPL is that your engineers aren't qualified to evaluate the
> license, so you need expensive legal vetting to discharge your obligations under Sarbanes-Oxley.
> But clearly the same is true of the BSD license.

Clearly, you've never seen the BSD license you Linux Zealot Weenie.

My dog can comprehend the three simple BSD clauses.

Your argument seems to be that the BSD license is just as complex as the GPL, and it's just not. Not
by a long shot.

Not much complexity anyway

Posted Jan 29, 2006 0:40 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

The GPL is not that hard either. Time to make your dog attend one of Eben Moglen's seminars?

Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 20, 2006 12:47 UTC (Fri) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] (1 responses)

> you must provide the exact source of something you shipped three years ago on demand

Really? I wouldn't think you'd be responsible for much beyond the current version of something.
For example, earlier versions of emacs are not necessarily obtainable.
I'm unsure your interpretation is correct, but this could be a worthwhile GPLv3 question.

Linux Users May Be Breaking U.S. Securities Laws

Posted Jan 20, 2006 14:08 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Depends which option you took under section 3 of the GPL. As a commercial distributor, you can't take up option 3c, so your choices are option 3a or 3b.

If you took up option 3a, as most GNU projects do by providing source and binaries in the same location (same CD set, same FTP site etc), you're clear of obligation. If you took up option 3b, you must keep the sources around for 3 years after you last shipped a product with that code in it.