Red Hat's new patent counterclaim: GPL violation

http://www.itworld.com/storage/295325/red-hats-new-patent-troll-weapon-gpl-violation

by esolyt • 14 years ago

126 67 14 years ago

itworld.com

vhf• 14 years ago

My only hope in this double-case is that if TPS offers an even settlement, RedHat refuses it.

Fighting GPL violations is the "good" side, patent trolling the "bad".

slowpoke• 14 years ago

Could we (as in, everyone) please stop referring to programs in general as "apps"? It's retarded. An "app" is a specific kind of program for a smartphone. mount isn't such a program.

Sorry, this just bugged me.

delinka• 14 years ago

I'm with wikipedia on this one: "Application software, also known as an application or an app, is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_application

pubby• 14 years ago

Application software is such a vague and undescriptive word that it's better to just use the terms "program" and "software" as they're impossible to misuse or argue about.

Wikipedia uses the term "utility" to refer to programs like mount, although again, just call it a program and be done with it.

(this is just a general remark, not a reply)

jere• 14 years ago

Here's one of those retarded people:

http://youtu.be/RhD5lIHxCN0?t=1m29s

amalcon• 14 years ago

The term "app" was in use before smartphones even existed, so no.

swang• 14 years ago

Could we (as in, everyone) please stop referring to something we find stupid or dumb in general as "retarded"? It's offensive.

Sorry, this just bugged me.

baddox4• 14 years ago

If your best argument for why someone should stop doing something is that "it's offensive," I will have trouble taking your side.

gruseom• 14 years ago

"App" doesn't imply smartphones. It has been used this way since at least the 80s:

https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22kil...

Karunamon3• 14 years ago

>An "app" is a specific kind of program for a smartphone.

No, "app" is short for "application". The term "killer app" has been around long before there was such a thing as a smartphone.

Stop being bothered by such trivial matters, moreso when you don't know what you're talking about.

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

>Since free software is so pervasive these days, it might not be very hard to find something within a company's product portfolio that depends greatly on free or open source software. Once discovered, all it takes is a claim of license violation like this one to shut down that software

That paragraph actually makes it sound scary to even use open source software when they actually mean only GPL'ed software and that too only when modified and distributed/sold.

cjbprime• 14 years ago

> That paragraph actually makes it sound scary to even use open source software when they actually mean only GPL'ed software and that too only when modified and distributed/sold.

No, you have to comply with the GPL regardless of whether you've modified the source that you're distributing. (As in this case: I'd be surprised if Twin Peaks modified mount -- I don't see why they'd need to.)

jlarocco• 14 years ago

You completely missed the point.

There's a lot of open source code that isn't GPL. Many licenses don't require the code to be distributed, even if it's changed.

The sentence from the article makes it sound like all open source code is GPL.

justincormack2• 14 years ago

They are a file system vendor, they probably added some mount options for their file system to mount.

eurleif• 14 years ago

>Since both of Twin Peaks' products are released under a proprietary license, there was no source code of any changes it made to mount released, which is a violation of the GPLv2.

Seems like Twin Peaks could resolve this by just releasing the source code to their version of mount. Maybe Red Hat will be able to get damages out of it, but if Twin Peaks releases the code in a timely fashion, I doubt Red Hat will be able to get an injunction against their product sales. (IANAL.) Meanwhile, the patent suit goes on.

graue2• 14 years ago

The GPL has a clause saying that if its terms are violated, all rights granted to the violator by the GPL are terminated. So if Twin Peaks did indeed copy Red Hat's mount code as alleged, they would never be allowed to distribute that code again (without specific permission).

xtdx3• 14 years ago

Term 5? All that says is if you don't accept the terms, you don't get to use the software. There's no irrevocable termination of rights.

At worst, all they have to do is download a new copy of mount and presto, they have a new license.

[err, that's for gpl2. gpl3 has a more complicated termination procedure.]

ok, so in light of gpl3, they just need to go back and get a gpl2 copy of mount. It's not like mount has changed all that much, I'm sure the 2007 version will suffice. Or they could just write their own. How many lines of code are we talking about here?

lbarrow• 14 years ago

I think the blog title is a bit sensational here. 'Patent trolls', at least as I understand the term, do not produce products. That's the whole point: they're trolls because they do nothing but sue people, without adding any value themselves. Twin Peaks does produce products, so they aren't a troll. Red Hat has just found an interesting way to counter-sue in a fairly ordinary patent dispute.

The fact that Twin Peaks clearly waited until Gluster had been acquired by Red Hat before filing doesn't make it a troll.

SCdF2• 14 years ago

That and it's a one-time counter claim for this specific situation. From the title I presumed that they had somehow made a 'generic' weapon that could be used to shut down any patient troll.

pilif• 14 years ago

Suing a patent troll for GPL violations is impossible by definition. A patent troll is a non-practicing entity, so they don't produce anything (but lawsuits) and thus they don't distribute software and conversely can't be sued for GPL violations.

If whatever company that is suing on patent grounds is also producing software (like this current case), then they are not a patent troll by the most common definition of the term but just plain aholes.

krichman2• 14 years ago

It is the examples of prior art that make it patent trolling.

wtracy• 14 years ago

Care to expand on that?

buster• 14 years ago

Nope, not patent troll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll):

Patent troll is a pejorative term used for a person or company who enforces patents against one or more alleged infringers in a manner considered aggressive or opportunistic with no intention to manufacture or market the patented invention.

baddox4• 14 years ago

"Intellectual property" as a socially and legally recognized concept is nonsensical and harmful, even in instances like the GPL where it's intended to increase freedom.

cwp• 14 years ago

I've started using the older term "monopoly" instead of "property". Respect for property rights is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it's really hard to argue against it without sounding like some crazed hippie. Arguing against monopolies is much more respectable.

rayiner• 14 years ago

[citation needed]

zdw• 14 years ago

Usually this argument is summed up more succinctly by adding two words to the phrase: "is neither"

astrodust3• 14 years ago

If we could live off of a handful of ideas and had no want of food, shelter, or clothing, I'd be in complete agreement.

baddox4• 14 years ago

We (the human race) would be worse off if we only had a handful of words or numbers, yet I believe that respecting words and numbers as property is nonsensical and harmful.

chris_wot• 14 years ago

Your fallacious argument intrigues me. Fallacious because we can still live quite well without there being intellectual property. Could you expand upon your theme? Perhaps I'm not following.

chii• 14 years ago

But you are confounding physical property with "intellectual property", which is infinitely reproducible once discovered.

The only reason patents exist is to "promote the science and the useful arts", and it seems to be theres a growing body of evidence that this goal is not being achieved (at least, in the field of software - may be its working great for the manufacturing/pharma industries).

icebraining• 14 years ago

This is the point where you demonstrate with evidence that a lack of recognition of IP would cause such problems, right?

As someone who gets paid for developing software that can be freely shared, I'm particularly interested.

monochromatic• 14 years ago

That's great, except it would be totally ineffectual against a real troll. If you're not making anything, you're likely not violating the GPL.

zurn• 14 years ago

You could use it against the patent troll's masters (eg. Mosaid)

huhtenberg2• 14 years ago

This is not going to be effective unless Red Hat really pushes for damages. Shutting down Twin Peaks products is not a big deal, they will just release the source of their mount.mfs and/or rewrite the mount, and then push out a new version that doesn't violate mount's license.

warp2• 14 years ago

Except that GPLv2 doesn't work like that. Once the license is violated you permanently lose the rights granted by the license. So even if Twin Peaks fixes their stuff and comes back into compliance, they do not get their rights back automatically -- the copyright holders have to explicitly give them back these rights.

This is one of the important differences between GPLv2 and GPLv3.

morsch• 14 years ago

Wait, so when you're dealing with GPLv3 stuff, you do get the license for redistribution back automatically?

huhtenberg2• 14 years ago

Where's this stated exactly in the license?

Red Hat's new patent counterclaim: GPL violation

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