On the 'death penalty' thing [LWN.net]

On the 'death penalty' thing

Posted Feb 1, 2012 17:24 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: On the 'death penalty' thing by hummassa
Parent article: A tempest in a toybox

Another thing to keep in mind is that the software in these things is (more often than not) done by a subcontractor of a subcontractor. This is commonly done to shield the parent from direct liability from the actual work. Each step in the chain they just package it up and toss it over the fence as a "finished" black-box item.

But the GPL trumps that hierarchy and short-circuits things -- the parent company (whose name is on the box and who the end-user has a relationship with) is the one ultimately responsible for adhering to the GPL, and can't legally pass the buck by saying "we didn't get the source from our suppliers".

to post comments

On the 'death penalty' thing

Posted Feb 2, 2012 1:25 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

Even with commercial software, if a piece of the product infringes copyright (even a minuscule part of the product) whether it came from a subcontractor or not isn't going to matter in US courts. Microsoft has been sued numerous times for code they didn't even write. This is because even though it was supplied by a third party it was included in their product and they were the company violating copyright by distributing it.

From the courts point of view the infringer is the one distributing it, if you got the code from a third party your only recourse is to sue the supplier for the damages and costs associated with curing the copyright infringement.

On the 'death penalty' thing

Posted Feb 2, 2012 9:19 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

And rightly so.

Imagine you get ill from eating some prepared food. Then the retailer claims its not its fault because the poor thing bought rotten eggs and did not notice. Would you accept that as an excuse?