TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 24, 2018 18:23 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: TLDR; GPL is the new BSD by armijn
Parent article: A successful defense against a copyright troll

Perhaps I can't understand English but:

> Beyond that, McHardy's arguments that his modifications are protected by copyright and were infringed by the defendant were not proven. He alleged that he contributed 50,000 lines of code over the years and provided a CD with the changelogs corresponding to those changes, but did not show that those modifications fulfilled the requirements for copyright protection.

means that pretty much nobody can enforce the copyright on Linux contributions.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 24, 2018 18:28 UTC (Tue) by armijn (subscriber, #3653) [Link] (11 responses)

No, that's not what it means at all.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 24, 2018 18:47 UTC (Tue) by mdolan (subscriber, #104340) [Link] (10 responses)

Armijn, didn't the company come into compliance well before the appeal? This had nothing to do with compliance.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 24, 2018 18:58 UTC (Tue) by armijn (subscriber, #3653) [Link]

The company came into compliance before the first oral hearing (early October 2017). McHardy even said as much as "If Mr Hemel has checked it, it is probably good." (or something along those lines) during that oral hearing.

This had indeed nothing to do with compliance, as Geniatech wanted to be compliant and put in the effort to become compliant as well. Compliance is absolutely necessary in case you want to fight in court. Also, if a company doesn't want to come into compliance I don't help them.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 28, 2018 16:27 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (8 responses)

Hey Michael,

When are _you_ going into compliance with the GPL?

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 29, 2018 20:17 UTC (Sun) by armijn (subscriber, #3653) [Link] (7 responses)

As far as I know Mike is in compliance with the GPL. If you think he's not then please do tell where you think he's not in compliance, as I am very certain he would fix it.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 29, 2018 20:28 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Well, Mike is free to comment here and tell the readers what the Linux Foundation's position is on whether a work that is written to explicitly make use of and depend upon functionality and abstractions provided by a GPL work is deriving of that GPL work, and whether the source code of the former work should therefore be licensed according to the conditions required by the GPL licence.

Over to Mike.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 30, 2018 19:54 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Well, that's strange, he hasn't replied. Maybe his comment notifications aren't working. Armijn, can you ping him an email?

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted May 4, 2018 7:50 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

Well, Mike definitely knows about this thread.

The question remains: If a work A is made to directly and explicitly use and rely upon abstractions and functionality provided by a GPL work; e.g. by work A including header files of the GPL work, so as to make function calls into the GPL work to avail of its functionality, and to register callbacks to conform to abstractions so that the GPL work can orchestrate functionality on behalf of work A, along with other technical mechanisms that cause work A to explicitly depend on the GPL work for critical functionality; would the Linux Foundation consider work A to be a derived work of the GPL work?

Strange that it's difficult for the Linux Foundation to give a public answer to that...

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted May 7, 2018 22:42 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

/me just plants a hook here to get notified of replies...

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted May 8, 2018 9:12 UTC (Tue) by lyda (subscriber, #7429) [Link]

/me is also interested.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted May 16, 2018 3:18 UTC (Wed) by fest3er (guest, #60379) [Link]

Suppose this Work A (which only referenced some of GPL Work's header files) runs on a Windows computer in Japan and GPL Work runs on a computer in Ireland, and the interface between them has been stretched across TCP/IP. Work A is clearly independent of GPL Work (except for the question of the header files).

Perhaps the question that should be asked is, "Are included header files (that don't contain 'code') non-factual code? Or are they merely facts that do nothing by themselves?" If the latter, then there should be no questions and no issues. (Refer to the timezone data debacle, where some court clearly determined that facts cannot be copyrighted.) When something cannot be copyrighted, there can be no one who can grant or deny license to use it.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Jun 2, 2018 12:03 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

No answer from Mike, and I've emailed him about this too - they were copied a complaint of mine about this last year too.

Background: The Linux Foundation are hosting a project who vehemently claim that source code that is intimately built on GPL code (like work A) is /in no way/ subject to the GPL licence. This is a deliberate, long-running campaign to dilute and undermine the GPL licence (on at least the code-base concerned, which includes code of mine), backed by a number of corporate bodies.

The Linux Foundation appears to be A-OK with this.

TLDR; GPL is the new BSD

Posted Apr 24, 2018 19:52 UTC (Tue) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

The critical point you are missing is that "were not proven" is not the same as "cannot be proven". As the article says:

Von Welser said that McHardy was trying to make wide claims to make things simpler for himself. If he had showed which parts of the kernel he modified, demonstrated that these modifications are copyrightable (which is not difficult in Germany), and showed how those modifications were used by the defendant, he might have found a different reception by the court.

So somebody trying to enforce their copyrights in the kernel can do it; they just can't cut corners with their legal case.