The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/10437.html

by mjg59 • 14 years ago

161 90 14 years ago

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

bediger• 14 years ago

So much for the Holy Sacrament of "Intellectual Property". When it suits a corporation, the Most Holy Eye Pee Must Be Protected By Any Means, Including Taking Away of Civil Liberties. But when it also suits a corporation, they get to take what, if they owned it, would be Most Holy Eye Pee.

What a bunch of hypocrites. If BusyBox made Sony money, they'd fight an attempt to replace it tooth and nail, as AT&T did with BSD.

lunarscape• 14 years ago

>The SFC will grant a new license, but on one condition - not only must you provide the source code to Busybox, you must provide the source code to all other works on the device that require source distribution.

Wait what? This has actually happened?

mjg596• 14 years ago

Yes, it's part of the SFC's standard settlement.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

That's more than fair: you can use our code as long as you don't rip anybody else off either.

dedward6• 14 years ago

fair as long as theother rightsholders involved are informed..... it is their choice whether or not to force the license issue - for all we know they decided to let sony have software X..... if this is done without implicit cooperation with other rightsholders, its sort of stretching......

kragen• 14 years ago

Yes, this happens all the time in the world of GPL enforcement.

CapitalistCartr• 14 years ago

A thief must expect suspicion the second time around.

jlarocco2• 14 years ago

Maybe I misunderstood, but I'm not seeing how this is bad.

Sony wants to write a BusyBox that doesn't use BusyBox's license? What exactly is the problem? If they don't like the license isn't that the best approach they can take?

"A couple of weeks ago, this page appeared on the elinux.org wiki. It's written by an engineer at Sony, and it's calling for contributions to rewriting Busybox. This would be entirely reasonable if it were for technical reasons, but it's not - it's explicitly stated that companies are afraid that Busybox copyright holders may force them to comply with the licenses of software they ship. If you ship this Busybox replacement instead of the original Busybox you'll be safe from the SFC. You'll be able to violate licenses with impunity."

Wait, didn't GNU and the GPL start off for the completely non-technical reason that Stallman didn't like the original license?

I'm also not sure I like the idea of using BusyBox as a backdoor to examine the rest of a product's source code. I didn't realize that was a condition of the GPL, but it makes me glad I've switched most of my projects over to the BSD and ISC licenses.

lukeschlather• 14 years ago

The implication is that Sony is presently shipping software with Busybox and knowingly violating the licensing terms. If they rewrite Busybox in the interim they will be able to get away scot-free despite their years of flagrant copyright violation. Given the variety of devices Sony ships and their complete lack of respect for the GPL, their plan could very well work unless someone catches them red-handed.

And the point is that the people who wrote Busybox don't want money if you're infringing their copyright - they just want to see exactly what you've done with their code, and get the chance to play with it. Which is pretty reasonable when you think about it.

kryptiskt2• 14 years ago

Sony is presently shipping a lot of stuff with Busybox in, but they are not violating the license terms. Here you can download a zillion Sony-patched versions of Busybox to your hearts content: https://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/source_tv.shtml

gravitronic• 14 years ago

The problem is that the rewrite is coming AFTER they've been shipping with busybox and already not complying with the license.

fpgeek5• 14 years ago

Cite? (besides a wiki page that can be interpreted different ways)

gcp2• 14 years ago

This is bad because Busybox has copyright holders that actively enforce the GPL on their product.

They're not asking for this because they dislike Busybox'es GPL license. They're asking for it because they know Busybox actually goes to court to enforce it, and asks for the other GPL products to have their license respected too.

I'll spell it out more clearer: they want to get rid of Busybox, because its one of the only things whose license they cannot violate with impunity.

jlarocco2• 14 years ago

I'm still not seeing the problem.

On one hand, if the license holders of the other infringing software don't care to enforce the license, why should anybody care? It makes no sense to me, but it's up to them.

On the other hand, if Sony would rather write it themselves than abide by the GPL then I'm not seeing the problem there, either. Again, it makes no sense, but it's their decision.

angersock2• 14 years ago

So, if they switch to (say) a full BSD-licensed stack, what is the problem? They can use it for whatever, modify the code for whatever, and there shouldn't be any problems.

Why is this a bad thing, other than that it weakens the importance of the GPL?

akira25012• 14 years ago

If it's about violations, or money, I can't strictly tell; it's one of those things that depends on who you talk to: http://lwn.net/Articles/475901/

toyg• 14 years ago

The problem is that, in many cases, busybox is the only program you can actually "see" and hence enforce the license on. Once that disappears, everything behind it becomes technically invisible; so you could use this "piratebox" plus other infringing software, and be safe.

It's sad, really. I can see a future where a terminal program or command is embedded in the linux kernel and cannot be removed, only to force companies to stay honest.

twstws• 14 years ago

You have misunderstood. The current situation has Sony shipping devices running several/many different programs with GPL licenses. They don't want to provide their modified source code for these programs to their users, in violation of their obligations under the GPL. Most of the copyright holders of this code do not have the means to pursue an infringement case.

Busybox is the exception. The SFC actively enforces the license for busybox. In addition, once you lose your right to use busybox as a consequence of a license violation, the SFL will let you ship it again only if you come into compliance on for all of the GPL code you ship.

So they are making their own busybox as a way to continue to violate all the non-busybox GPL code they use.

If you comply with the busybox licence, you can continue to violate the licence on all the other GPL code. But violating busybox means you have to comply with all of your GPL code.

You never have to release your non GPL code.

kryptiskt2• 14 years ago

> They don't want to provide their modified source code for these programs to their users, in violation of their obligations under the GPL.

The fact that a Sony guy wants to build a non-GPL Busybox is not evidence of any Sony violations of the GPL, now or earlier. There is some radical jumping to conclusions here.

fpgeek5• 14 years ago

Do you have actual evidence Sony is violating (or intends to violate) the GPL with respect to non-busybox code? Or are you just speculating?

Let me put this another way: Do you think the developers behind editline wrote it because they wanted to violate the GPL? Or did they write it for some other reason?

Personally, I read the Sony post very differently. It sounds to me Sony, in part because of the aggressive stance SFC takes with busybox GPL violations, isn't happy with the business costs of using busybox (e.g. concerns among chip vendors and suppliers). They could easily be wrong in their assessment of the business costs (e.g. concerns from chip vendors and suppliers should not be taken seriously), but given that assessment, it seems to me that writing a busybox replacement is a reasonable response.

rcxdude• 14 years ago

the problem is that the GPL is still being violated (because linux and a host of other libraries and tools are still being used), but there's no longer a good tool to enforce it because most GPL copyright holders don't have the will or the means to pursue violators.

Note that busybox is only used to obtain the source code of parts of the product for which source code is already required to be provided by the GPL or similar licenses. It's not used to get code which isn't covered by the GPL (although it could in principle be, or at least force the company in violation to choose between that and coming into compliance by removing all use of busybox)

azakai3• 14 years ago

> I'm also not sure I like the idea of using BusyBox as a backdoor to examine the rest of a product's source code. I didn't realize that was a condition of the GPL, but it makes me glad I've switched most of my projects over to the BSD and ISC licenses.

This is based on one interpretation of the GPL: That if you violate the license, you lose the license to that software forever, including new versions of it, until you get explicit permission from the author. The SFC then made a condition of granting permission to BusyBox, that the violator come into compliance regarding all other GPLed projects.

But that interpretation is not a legal fact. Another interpretation - which seems much more reasonable to me, and was certainly the intention I had when I released GPL code myself - is that you lose the license when you violate it. But as the GPL states, you get a license when you download a new version of the software anyhow, so the problem goes away - unless you violate the GPL again. In other words, if you violate the GPL, you have no license to the code, but once you comply with it, you are fine.

The former interpretation always struck me as bizarre: If you lost the license when you violated the GPL, surely you lost that license to that particular software. But how can that prevent you from getting a new license to a new version of the software? How are those connected? Or how about a new version of the software that was rewritten from scratch, and has no code shared with the one you were temporarily in violation from? Is the mere name enough? How about forks of the project? If any of this were what the GPL originally intended, you would think it would have been specified in some way. The much more reasonable interpretation is the second one: You lose the license to the concrete software you were given a license to before. Download a new version, get a new license. Stop violating the license, and you are ok.

mjg596• 14 years ago

That's certainly another plausible interpretation, but it's not one that the license authors appear to agree with - otherwise, the additional paragraph in GPLv3 wouldn't be necessary. Individual authors may obviously disagree and refuse to enforce the license in that manner, but it's something that you probably want to confirm with the copyright holders before relying on it. It's also not an argument that any of the defendants involved in the SFC lawsuits appear to have made.

lutorm• 14 years ago

... how can that prevent you from getting a new license to a new version of the software? How are those connected?

They are connected in the way that the same people whose license you violated are the ones granting you the new license. And I'd say they have reasonable doubt as to whether you will comply with the new license, since you didn't before. They don't have to grant you a license to use it, you know. Using someone else's IP is a privilege, not a right.

caf• 14 years ago

But how can that prevent you from getting a new license to a new version of the software? How are those connected?

They're connected because some of the originally licensed copyrighted material still exists in the new version. You would get a clear license to any new material that you hadn't previously licensed (and hence hadn't violated the license of), but that's not very helpful.

Or how about a new version of the software that was rewritten from scratch, and has no code shared with the one you were temporarily in violation from?

If it doesn't contain any material that you'd previously violated the license of, then you would seem to be in the clear.

tibbon• 14 years ago

Yea, isn't this pretty much what Linux and GNU did? They saw software with restrictive licensing that they wanted to use, so they re-wrote it completely and released it under a license that worked for them.

thristian4• 14 years ago

No, this is not what Linux and GNU did, because they rewrote all the software they wanted to use. The linked article accuses Sony of only wanting to rewrite the software that gets them caught, so they can continue ignoring the GPL obligations on the rest of the software they use.

dman4• 14 years ago

In case someone from Sony is reading this - things like this result in lost sales. I research my buying options extensively and usually make a ranking of alternatives. The following sony products were at the top of their respective lists but I chose to not to buy them a) Camera - Sony Nex-5N (Bought a Canon S90 instead) b) Laptop - Sony Vaio Z with the 1920x1080 screen (Bought an HP Elitebook instead) c) Camcorder - HDR-CX700V (Bought a Panasonic TM900 instead) d) Noise cancelling headphones - MDR-NC100D (Bought Sennheiser ones instead, dont remember the model number)

astrange• 14 years ago

Isn't S90 a compact camera? It's much worse quality than the NEX series. If you care about that, try Olympus E-P1 or some other mirrorless camera.

dman4• 14 years ago

Yes I know the S90 is a compact camera. Rather than go one down in the category, I decided to go one category down and buy the top camera in that category. fwiw here is a picture from the S90 and one from the Olympus E-P1

http://a.img-dpreview.com/reviews/canons90/samples/comparedt... http://a.img-dpreview.com/reviews/OlympusEP1/samples/compare...

technomancy• 14 years ago

I don't know about that; at this point anyone who cares about high standards has been boycotting Sony since the rootkit fiasco. Of course, this makes things worse, but that's not saying much.

dman4• 14 years ago

When I said things like this, I definitely meant to include the rootkit fiasco. The last couple of years I do try my best to not buy from companies that I think have an antipathy to the hacker ethic.

pasbesoin2• 14 years ago

I, too, refuse to give Sony my money. And I tell my family and friends why. Slowly, it's sinking in.

P.S. For a multitude of reasons. E.g. attempting to rootkit my computer using a legally purchased CD.

dkersten• 14 years ago

I have refused to buy any Sony products for a good number of years now and have no intention of ever buying any of their products in the future. Their actions have lost me as a customer[1] and they will never get me back.

Sadly, I am currently using a Sony Ericsson phone, though somebody gave it to me - I did not buy it.

[1] I have owned many Sony products in the past, including (but not limited to) the Playstation and Playstation 2 (and many many games for both of these), so I am definitely a lost customer and not someone who claims to be one but who never bought their products to begin with.

nodata• 14 years ago

I stopped giving Sony money since they failed to protect my personal information on their Playstation network - three times!

Things I have not bought because of this: a TV, an ultrabook, a tablet and an Android phone.

pyre• 14 years ago

As a thought experiment, it's funny to think about what GPL enforcement could have done with SOPA, had it passed. Especially if software/firmware updates were distributed via the web.

On the one hand Sony is pushing for SOPA, but on the other hand Sony is violating the GPL. They could end up actively pushing through legislation that ends up significantly harming their bottom line.

agravier• 14 years ago

I'm confident that regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Battle For Freedom on Internet and Intellectual Property, it will remain that the most wealthy most often gains financially from their own wrongdoings. The judiciary system will remain the warhammer of giants, way to heavy financially for most individuals and small companies.

fryguy• 14 years ago

So an analogy would be that Pirate Steve wants to put the entire criterion collection (http://www.criterion.com/library) on the pirate bay. However, he knows that Fox is really litigious about their movies, so he replaces all of their movies with garage remakes (like "Be Kind, Rewind") so that he can safely pirate the rest of the movies since the other motion picture studios are lazy.

Is my analogy correct at all? Essentially Sony wants to be able to pirate (that's what it's called when you're redistributing things that are copywritten), so they're removing the only project that actually litigates against them?

thristian4• 14 years ago

That's the gist, yes.

derleth• 14 years ago

> copywritten

Copyrighted. It's about rights, specifically the right to copy.

larrik2• 14 years ago

SFC enforces copyrights on others behalf's?? Isn't that where Righthaven failed because it isn't actually allowed?

biot• 14 years ago

Righthaven didn't own the copyrights on the material; they were simply "granted" the right to sue, which turned out to be bogus from a legal perspective. To enjoy the benefits of SFC enforcement, you must assign your copyrights to SFC thereby avoiding the Righthaven situation altogether.

Zak• 14 years ago

Looking at SFC's website, it appears that people actually assign their copyrights to SFC.

larrik2• 14 years ago

I can see why other projects are hesitant to join in.

dedward6• 14 years ago

not exactly.... they are enforcing their own copyright, and by virtue of the license wording, using it as easy leverage to insist the infringing product is cleanly complying with similar licenses before granting a new license.

trotsky2• 14 years ago

SFLC is far from a well supported organization in the GPL world. You say that the busybox settlements are necessary because most authors lack the means or the time to pursue violations, but in fact anyone who wished SFLC to act on their behalf is free to let them - and yet no one does.

It is telling that not a single mainline kernel copyright holder will allow them to, including your employer and many of your coworkers. As noted elsewhere in the comments, Rob Landley regrets assigning them rights for busybox, and no other authors have been represented in the suits.

The SFC will grant a new license, but on one condition - not only must you provide the source code to Busybox, you must provide the source code to all other works on the device that require source distribution.

Quoth wikipedia:

On 7 December 2007, a case was brought against Verizon Communications over its distribution of firmware for Actiontec routers; this case was settled March 17, 2008 on condition of license compliance, appointment of an officer to oversee future compliance with free software licenses, and payment of an undisclosed sum.

On about Aug 03, 2010, BusyBox won triple damages of $90,000 and lawyers' costs and fees of $47,865, and possession of "presumably a lot of high-def TVs" as infringing equipment in the lawsuit Software Freedom Conservancy v. Best Buy, etal., the GPL infringement case noted in the paragraph above.

The suit against High-Gain Antennas was settled on March 6, 2008 with the company agreeing to comply with GPL and paying an undisclosed sum to the plaintiffs.

On October 30, 2007, an SFLC press release announced that the lawsuit had been settled with Monsoon agreeing to comply with the GPL and pay a sum of money to the plaintiffs.

etc.

mjg596• 14 years ago

That's a somewhat misleading. The TVs were awarded to the SFC by a judge in lieu of costs and any other settlement - Westinghouse, the company involved, had declared bankruptcy and were no longer paying their lawyers. There was no settlement in that aspect of the case, and Westinghouse never came into compliance. And if a settlement doesn't involve any payment, congratulations - you've just spent a significant amount of money and you haven't got your costs back.

Many kernel authors simply don't care. Many others are employed by companies who would prefer not to potentially scare off customers, or are contractors who work directly for companies that are concerned about increased enforcement. Some have performed all their work under work to hire conditions and are in no position to engage in any kind of enforcement. While I'm sure some do disagree with the SFC's actions, I'd be astonished if that's the overwhelming reason for a lack of involvement.

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

Please don't confuse the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC, providers of legal services to numerous FOSS projects) with the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC, a GPL enforcement organization who holds some of the copyrights to Busybox). In particular, even if you don't like the work of the SFC, please don't use that to complain about the SFLC, an entirely separate organization.

trotsky2• 14 years ago

Rob Landley sure seems to believe the SFLC is in control, as he repeatedly faults the SFLC for their judgement in what suits to bring regarding busybox. They share a number of directors and staff and a few years ago the conservancy's web presence was hosted on a subdomain of the sflc.

In the SFLC's own press releases on the subject they note that they (the SFLC) identified organizations not in compliance, set the terms for getting into compliance, and decided who and when they should sue. At least at the time, the director of the SFC was a paid staff member of the SFLC.

Doesn't really sound like entirely separate organizations to me.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/SFC-and-SFLC-sues-Sam...

EDIT: quote: Because many of its clients could benefit from the protections of having a legal entity as well as tax exemption status, but were reluctant to pay the fees associated with formation or dedicate the time necessary to start and maintain a tax exempt nonprofit, the Software Freedom Law Center has established The Software Freedom Conservancy. Since its launch in 2006, the Conservancy has grown to include free and open source software projects active in a wide range of fields.

https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.h...

AmazingBytecode3• 14 years ago

I'm not saying it's OK to violate the terms of open source licenses, but the GPL has never fit with my idea of what Free Software should be like. I see Free Software as a gift given to the world as a whole, regardless of what they plan to do with it. Thus I see GNU and the FSF as terrible gift-givers.

rickmb• 14 years ago

The GPL and the concept of keeping software free permanently embodies the very definition of Free Software.

What you're saying is "the absence of color doesn't fit my idea of what black should be, I see black as having a little touch of yellow in it".

AmazingBytecode3• 14 years ago

Alright, Free Software isn't the appropriate term for the type of open-source license that I appreciate. I apologize for my poor choice of terms.

HerraBRE• 14 years ago

Free Software is not a gift. That is where you go wrong. Just because you want it to be does not make it so.

Free Software, as advocated by the FSF and many others, is an attempt to remedy the ethical problems posed by closed source software, which has a strong tendency to lead to monopolistic behavior and unfair power balance between the consumer and the producer of a program.

Free Software may be many other things as well, depending on who is writing the software and releasing the code, but it's almost never a gift. The developers almost always want something in return, whether that is recognition, assistance with development or support for their ideals.

People who give software as a gift, release it into the Public Domain or use the most liberal of the BSD licenses. :-P Those who chose other licenses, do so for reasons you should respect if you intend to benefit from their work.

SomeOtherGuy2• 14 years ago

>Free Software is not a gift

Yes it is, that is what free means. Check a dictionary.

>Free Software, as advocated by the FSF and many others

The FSF doesn't actually get to re-define the word free to mean "mandates the set of restrictions we desire".

>People who give software as a gift, release it into the Public Domain or use the most liberal of the BSD licenses

Both of which are free software.

AmazingBytecode3• 14 years ago

"Those who chose other licenses, do so for reasons you should respect if you intend to benefit from their work." Of course. Authors are free to release software under whatever terms they like, and people who use the software are bound to abide by those terms. Let me be clear, I don't think that it's OK to violate the GPL. I was just saying that I don't really like the GPL.

dthunt• 14 years ago

This article mostly seems to be suggesting that vendors derive more benefit from GPLv3 - which is more focused on coming into compliance, rather than punishing companies that get it wrong.

I'm not sure what this has to do with busybox, save that under GPLv2 there are vendors who are afraid to use them because they have actively been pursuing an aggressive course of action under GPLv2 for several years.

danielpal• 14 years ago

Someone should re-write this blog post and re-submit it to Hacker News. It's so confusing what the problem really is, or what the author is really saying. I had to read this about 3 times to understand it. He should just say: many hardware manufactures use several GPL projects on there embedded devices, one of those projects is BusyBox. Since BusyBox copyright holders allow SFC to defend their copyright, the SFC is able to force this manufactures to comply with the licenses of all the GPL projects they use. Sony and other manufactures are looking to have a BusyBox alternative so that they can infringe the other GPL product licenses they use, since they know no-one enforces this licenses. Those who own GPL licenses should contact the SFC and allow them to enforce there copyrights.

The ongoing fight against GPL enforcement

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