Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language [LWN.net]

Red Hat has announced that six more companies (CA Technologies, Cisco, HPE, Microsoft, SAP, and SUSE) have agreed to apply the GPLv3 termination conditions (wherein a violator's license is automatically restored if the problem is fixed in a timely manner) to GPLv2-licensed code. "GPL version 3 (GPLv3) introduced an approach to termination that offers distributors of the code an opportunity to correct errors and mistakes in license compliance. This approach allows for enforcement of license compliance consistent with a community in which heavy-handed approaches to enforcement, including for financial gain, are out of place."

does Microsoft hold copyright to any GPL code?

Posted Mar 20, 2018 23:54 UTC (Tue) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link] (3 responses)

or the question should be stated as, has Microsoft released any GPL code (especially GPL v3 code)

does Microsoft hold copyright to any GPL code?

Posted Mar 21, 2018 0:05 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

If nothing else, their contributions to the Linux kernel are under GPLv2.

(And the very fact that Microsoft has contributed code to the Linux kernel is still somewhat mind-boggling..)

does Microsoft hold copyright to any GPL code?

Posted Mar 21, 2018 3:55 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

That isn't surprising considering they make hypervisors (Hyper-V, Azure) and people use Linux on those.

They also make other hardware, some of which either can be connected to Linux systems or is general purpose enough to be able to run Linux based operating systems.

does Microsoft hold copyright to any GPL code?

Posted Mar 21, 2018 13:18 UTC (Wed) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link]

The Microsoft monopoly started to have to back off in recent years.

Otherwise Office on Android would never be a thing at all.

The days of them enforcing their browser, their office suite, their OS, etc. on everyone are waning. Shown by the fact that they have had to give away Windows 10, and Office is their biggest money spinner (along with their cloud offerings).

If they hadn't got on board with the virtual-machine support, etc. then people would be running Linux hypervisors with Windows VMs, instead of the other way around, and that way just ends in tears for them.

SQL Server for Linux, shell scripting on Windows, etc. are just further symptoms of the same phenomenon (somewhat half-hearted in some cases, but they're obviously testing the water).

It's posturing

Posted Mar 21, 2018 3:41 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (2 responses)

The companies that are party to this agreement have one thing in common: they haven't ever brought suit over their Open Source licenses. Even Red Hat is only rumored to have considered bringing suit against a patent aggressor once concerning some Open Source they might have been using.

So, what is the point of making elaborate promises regarding something they will probably never do?

The companies have a strong disincentive to sue because they are in the business of Open Source software.

And of course Open Source developers have always given longer cure periods than these folks promise. Often years. Even Patrick McHardy, which this is all directed to, does not discover new infringements as far as I'm aware, but pursues ones that are publicly known, where the defendant has probably already been contacted by someone else from the Kernel team or the SFC.

So, my B.S. detector is going off here. At least the Kernel developers have some prospect of actually bringing suit. These folks? No.

It's posturing

Posted Mar 21, 2018 7:06 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Perhaps if termination is no longer the nuclear option, they will be less reluctant to go to court in future? Or, in negotiations, can more credibly claim that they will go to court?

It's posturing

Posted Mar 29, 2018 22:39 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> The companies that are party to this agreement have one thing in common: they haven't ever brought suit over their Open Source licenses. Even Red Hat is only rumored to have considered bringing suit against a patent aggressor once concerning some Open Source they might have been using.

"The only winners in a court action are the lawyers".

If I had signed up for this, and I wanted to chase an infringer, I would point at that "opportunity to cure" and say, "you know what, if you don't play ball, that's clear evidence to me of bad faith. I *will* sue".

I just wish they'd signed up to a few more of the bug-fixes in v3, for example the fix to the distribution clause. For example, under v2, if I put separate tars of the binary and source up on a web-site, it's classed as binary distribution triggering the three-year requirement for the source :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language

Posted Mar 21, 2018 17:54 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

TLDR; version: "GPL is the new BSD"

This basically removes the last motivation to be in compliance.

After all, let's run the risk-benefit analysis:

0) You obey GPL rules and spend engineering time on it, opening your code to competitors or spending engineering time to isolate it through the "mere aggregation" clause.

1) You violate GPL and don't get caught. In this case you don't need to expend engineering time on compliance and you can keep your code secret from possible competitors.

2) You violate GPL and get caught. You spend time to open source your code and maybe to isolate some parts through the "mere aggregation" clause.

So pretty much any business will conclude that violating GPL is the sane course of action, giving most benefit.

Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language

Posted Mar 22, 2018 7:02 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

Publicly naming is always an option if a company seems to have wilfully committed a violation. Here in Germany, if companies are found by a court to have wilfully violated employee rights in certain ways they are made to pay a small fine to a charitable cause, which is however recorded publicly. Even companies for which the fine is small change go to some lengths to avoid that.

Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language

Posted Mar 22, 2018 8:46 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (3 responses)

Getting a reputation as a company which engages in underhanded activities and doesn't honor its agreements is not a good thing in general. Really big companies may be able to get away with it at times--but then really big companies are also unlikely to see a copyright infringement suit as much more of a deterrent. (See "Chump Change".)

Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language

Posted Mar 22, 2018 17:43 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, so these scummy Samsungs and Sonies that ship devices violating GPL by hundreds of millions will be quaking in their boots out of fear of public opinion. About a subject that most people have no interest in. Yeah.

Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language

Posted Apr 1, 2018 18:39 UTC (Sun) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

So you didn't read my whole post? It really wasn't that long. Or do you not think Samsung and Sony count as big companies?

Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language

Posted Mar 29, 2018 10:21 UTC (Thu) by federico3 (guest, #101963) [Link]

Indeed. The fact that a law or agreement is sometimes ignored does not make it useless. Violations do build up over time and put the perpetrator at risk of being pinned down on something, sooner or later.
Anybody that understands legal systems can see that.