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Bell, SuperMicro Sued Over GPL
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jun 18, 2008 01:48 PM
from the if-it-wasn't-for-your-meddling-hippies dept.
from the if-it-wasn't-for-your-meddling-hippies dept.
Markus Toth writes "The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite. The suits allege that Bell Microproducts and SuperMicro Computer each violated redistribution stipulations of the GNU General Public License (GPL).The Bell Microproducts suit pertains to the Hammer MyShare NAS (network-attached storage) appliance, which is sold by Bell's Hammer Storage division. I was the one who alerted the busybox developers about the GPL violation after providing a script for disassembling the firmware and instructions about mounting the contained initrd. As you see in my first post at the gpl-violations.org mailing lists where I posted all mails that I sent to and received from Hammer Storage, they refused to provide me the GPL sources several times. Looks like they will have to provide them soon; I will post any updates in the nas-central blog."
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How stupid can you get? (Score:5, Insightful)
We hear so many of these large companies have problems with this. Why?
I'll guess "money". (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm serious. If they UNDERSTOOD the process, they would ANNOUNCE that it was GPL'd and that anyone who wanted to could modify it or add features, etc.
Just like LinkSys found with their wireless routers.
Parent
Re:Fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Fear. (Score:5, Insightful)
BSD licensed, MIT licensed, etc code does not share in that power.
Parent
Not fear, rational decision making. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who produces products has to decide what is more valuable - being able to use free software from the community, or being able to keep your software secret. If all you are going to add to the software is something that anyone else could create without much effort (i.e., software is not your key differentiator) then open source is the way to go.
But if you're going to make a massive improvement to whatever software you might take, something that is going to cost you a lot of money to develop (and would thus cost a competitor lots of money to develop), it makes the most sense to keep it to yourself.
Put more simply, a product that is 90% open source software from the community and 10% improvement is probably best released as open software - you get 90% for the cost of 10%. But a product that would be 10% software from the community and 90% software you develop yourself, it makes more sense to also redo the 10%. Trading away 90% for 10% would just be a bad business decision.
Parent
Re:Fear. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Fear. (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that why they bought Linksys? Because the low-end was becoming good enough for many customers?
Better to buy a Cisco-Linksys box than a Netgear.
Parent
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:4, Insightful)
The usual suspects...
Parent
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, their general policy is as follows: the MySQL client library (which you need to link to, to talk to the server) is GPL'ed, so it can only be used in a GPL'ed application. If you want to use it in a non-GPL application, you need to obtain a license from MySQL AB. MySQL supports many more languages/interfaces than just PHP, so this is a real concern.
So although you are right in saying that you can create a closed-source application using MySQL if you are using PHP, the other guy is right in saying that in general you cannot use MySQL in a closed-source application without obtaining a license from MySQL AB.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:5, Insightful)
From this I presume that you have never tried to read a typical redistribution license for a commercial software library.
Parent
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:4, Informative)
IANAL, and this is not legal advice. That said, the requirements of the GPL go quite a bit beyond that. You must include a copy of the GPL with any GPL software you redistribute. If you distribute object code without the source, you must make the source code available to anyone who requests it for three years (which amounts to having to make it available for three years after you stop distributing that object code.) And there are other very important terms, too.
The GPLv3 is really even harder. And all of it is in the same legalese that commercial licenses have.
The GPL is probably easier than most commercial licenses, but that does not make it easy. The fact that it's extremely commonly misunderstood should speak to that.
Parent
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so hard to read about the GPL? It's a whole lot easier to read and comprehend than your average commercial software license. If a company's lawyers are expected to routinely understand complex contracts running close to a hundred pages of dense legalese, why should they have any trouble whatsoever with the GPL?
Parent
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:4, Interesting)
Today, however, I'm not so sure. I've met plenty of developers who don't really understand the GPL or its purpose, but I have difficulty believing an entire team had nobody onboard who understood. Perhaps the team charged with developing the software didn't have much contact with the customer-facing folks who might be asked for the source code?
Parent
Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:4, Insightful)
Odds on the developers understand the GPL and it's obligations completely. But the packaging and distribution of the product isn't handled by the developers, it's handled by Marketing and Sales. And those guys probably don't even know the software has a license attached, they've got no clue what all went into their software, and they likely don't think they ought to consult with mere software developers about how they can market the product. And they probably didn't ask Legal for an opinion, since it's "their" software and they can (in Marketing's world) do whatever they want with it. Customer Support's likely a division of Marketing, so when the initial e-mails came in they got handled by people with that attitude.
And then one day the package with the letter on a lawyer's letterhead with all the court paperwork arrived, and it went straight to Legal, bypassing Marketing entirely. And Legal, being sensible people, asked the obvious questions of the obvious people. Marketing may ignore the engineers, but Management tends to listen to the lawyers.
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Re:How stupid can you get? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading is hard, yo! they have like, long words 'n shit!
Seriously, the GPL is about as simple as it gets. It has to be written in legalese so it's going to be a bit obfuscated no matter what, but come on. It's actually in some of the plainest English I've seen in a legal document.
Of course, you do have to understand some technical terms to read it, and people have deliberately fucked around with the meaning of those terms, and tried to get around the GPL in other ways, so now we have a new version. (Or do we? Is that thing out or what? Was the plan for the GPLv3 to dither until no one cared if it was changed all along?)
Or, you know, BSD licensed code. Go fingers, cutwhatchyalike. Seriously though, there's no nasty legal repercussions to GPL code if you just make the whole thing GPL. It's when you start closing parts of it that you have problems. Of course a lot of companies don't want to operate that way. But the cost of saving all that time is helping others save time. You can still differentiate on the copyrighted parts of the product (case design, web interface, et cetera.)
Parent
For those that use this... (Score:5, Insightful)
What would have happened if they instead used a copy of WinNT4.0 without paying Microsoft? Microsoft would want blood, and would extract it via the BSA.
The creators of Busybox just want you to host the changes you've done to it. They wanted no money.
In other words: What would $proprietary_software_manufacturer do?
Re:For those that use this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because proprietary software producers would be just as bad, or likely worse, does not mean that the GPL is always the best solution, since it is still a restrictive license.
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Re:For those that use this... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Im an end user, I can install it anywhere, copy it anywhere, give it to my friends without worry, hack it.... The list goes on.
Most of the restrictions only exist to ensure community efforts. After all, you got it for free, so submit your changes you sell for free.
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Re:For those that use this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then if you don't like the license, don't use the software. Using GPL software against the terms of the license because you couldn't find any other free code to use is hardly an excuse.
If you can find BSD or public domain code that allows you to re-use it and not have to write it, go ahead. If you can't, then either write it yourself, or quit whining that it's unfair you can't use the GPL stuff without adhering to the terms because it cramps your business model.
A lot of companies just figure they can have the best of both worlds -- get the OSS stuff because it already does most of what they want, and then treat it as proprietary software they won't tell you anything about.
As the GP said -- this isn't about software released under the GPL or if people should use it. This is about companies trying to get something for free.
Cheers
Parent
Re:For those that use this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, I'd say this isn't a problem with the GPL.
It's a problem with commercial entities trying to use the GPLd software without abiding by the rules.
If you can find some BSD/public domain code which does what you need, fine. If you can't, that doesn't mean you should be able to just take the GPL software -- it means you should write your own.
I don't really see a problem with companies avoiding GPL software because of the license. That doesn't reflect badly on the GPL, it reflects badly on companies who are trying to do an end-run around the license.
Cheers
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be greedy.
Ok, go ahead, mod me as a troll. It's the truth.
Slavery - Freedom To Take Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:For those that use this... (Score:5, Informative)
Except, uh, that's not what happened here. What happened here is that you looked up "Free", decided it didn't apply to the author of the software, and therefore that "Free Software" was bullshit. But it doesn't say "Free Use Of Software". It says "Free Software". It's like "Free Willy", it doesn't mean you can take him home, it means he jumps over the rocks and goes out in the ocean and gets eaten by a giant squid.
Look, this is very simple. The choice of license is at the discretion of the author. If the author's principal principle is that the code remain free to roam about the world, they use the GPL. This reduces the freedom of the author, but it improves the freedom of the customer. If they want to retain maximum control, they use the BSD license. However, even the BSD license has restrictions (the continuance of the license.) If you truly want to make unencumbered software, you place it within the public domain. This relinquishes control of the software entirely.
Note that even after an author releases code under the GPL, they still have the right to release it under another license. What they don't have the right to do accept code from others without having them assign copyright to the original author, and then close that code, re-issue it under another license, et cetera. This part of the GPL is powered by copyright law, so it changes nothing.
Anyway, it really is very simple to see that the GPL provides the maximum freedom for the code. This is the best situation for the developer in many cases, if their goal is for others to benefit from changes made to their code.
The problem with this analysis is twofold. First, as the size of the code base increases the benefit from using the GPL solution increases, and software is always getting bigger. Second, it's not hard to not get sued for GPL violation. Just follow the license in the first place. If your lawyer can't tell you what to do in order to follow the GPL, get a new lawyer.
Tivoization is an attempt to bypass the intent of the GPL, and closing that loophole is the only sensible thing to do.
As before, if you don't like the GPL, don't use it. But so much of the best software out there is licensed under the GPL, perhaps you should consider the possibility that there might be something to this whole thing after all.
Sooner or later there won't be any more closed-source operating systems. There will probably always be closed software, but it will be only for niche markets and amusements. After a certain point it just doesn't make sense to reinvent the highway system, let alone the wheel.
Parent
Re:For those that use this... (Score:5, Informative)
This is true as a user. It's not so true as a developer, except that developers tend to use more software than they write... Which makes them users, too.
When someone orders a "Pepsi Free", are they expecting to not have to pay for it?
Again, it's not about your freedom, it's about the software's freedom. There are many resources which explain this.
As a USER, you are MORE free with the GPL software. You can do anything you like to it, except steal it (e.g. take credit for it, benefit from it without giving back, et cetera.) In fact, the only person you have to give the code to is the person who buys it.
PHP and mysql are clusterfucks. gcc, on the other hand, is pretty much the most versatile compiler suite on the planet, and it's often shipped with some of the best compiler tools (flex, bison, etc etc) around. THOSE tools are so good that even people who have the suits with better-optimized compilers (e.g. sunspro for SPARC) will still use those pieces.
But seriously, all types of software is being superseded by OSS "alternatives" over time.
No, that is nonsense. It allows others to close derivatives of your code, thereby profiting from your work without giving benefit to others. That does NOT provide the maximum benefit to the user. If it's what you want, that's okay, but it clearly does not provide the user the maximum benefit. It allows people to make products with your code and then close it away from the user. That's not a benefit to the user in ANY way!
What? Operating systems aren't based on licenses. They're based on kernels and libraries (or something equivalent.) In the case of Linux, while the Kernel is under the GPL there is an explicit exception to allow programs which require it to operate to not be GPL'd, although things linked into the kernel must be GPL. In the case of the libraries, licenses vary but many of them are LGPL, which does not require that you license under GPL, thus you can still keep your code closed.
This is a blatant lie, or you simply do not understand what is actually happening. Use vmware as an example. The part that goes into the kernel is open source. The important parts are all in the closed-source binary. The program is dynamically linked, and ships with fallback libraries in case you don't have the appropriate libraries or versions. There is no need whatsoever to take the steps you describe.
OSX is a boondoggle. Apple decided they needed Jobs so they took NeXTStep instead of BeOS, and then ruined NeXTStep in the process of modernizing it. It used to be peppy on a 25 MHz '040. Now it's slow (as in, unresponsive) on a dual G5, or a Core Duo. BeOS was fast and peppy on their silly dual 66MHz system. If Apple becomes the dominant player, I'm going to be very surprised.
Parent
Others may decry it, but I support it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Source not posted? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.hammer-storage.com/support/software_updates.asp
not the right stuff?
Better late than never (Score:5, Insightful)
The myshare source files are made available under various open source code licenses, including the GNU General Public License (GPL). Please review the license terms included with each download for the rights, obligations and restrictions associated with the open source file.
Installation instructions
title / description download posted release notes
Myshare Home v.1 GPL Source Code
47.6 MB 06/11/08
Myshare Home v.2 GPL Source Code
158.1 06/11/08
Myshare Office v.2 GPL Source Code
220.8 MB 06/11/08
-Rick
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Re:Better late than never (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
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Re:Better late than never (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think, with proper grammar and some respect, Markus might have been able to motivate Mr. Vang to be a bit more interested in meeting the requirements of using GPL code. This whole thing might have been resolved with out lining the pockets of more lawyers.
-Rick
Parent
Re:Better late than never (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Better late than never (Score:5, Informative)
If the only penalty is having to open up the source once a suit is filed (and the SFLC or associated copyright owners proceed to drop the suit) then there isn't a downside to closing the source and violating the license.
If there aren't any monetary damages, then any company can violate the GPL with impunity until they're "caught".
Parent
Re:Better late than never (Score:5, Funny)
-Rick
Parent
confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Shouldn't time an effort be spent on finding the guys who modify the sources, and make a profit, rather than those who merely fail to mirror and honour the distribution agreement because they're lazy?
This reminds me of the Debian upstream/downstream problem that rears it's head up now and again: if the sources are freely available, does every man and his dog have to distribute the unmodified version if they merely make use of it downstream?!
Matt
Why NOT hand out the source? Its an app. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can sort of understand their motivation (if not their ethics/commercial sense!) if they've got a highly modified Lunix kernel where they've made extensive changes to the networking stack to enable their "unique" feature or similar, but why with Busybox? Surely the path of least resistance is just to make the tar ball available (or realise, you've stuffed up, and start making the offer and send any that ask the tarball to play catch-up). Are any of these guys really making proprietary improvements with amazing IP involved to Busybox? It seems an unlikely place to do it..
Maybe they've ported it to the latest tiniest CPU, but they still get a time to market advantage their (particularly versus producing Busybox like functionality from scratch!), but even that seems unlikely to be worth fighting hard when you'll quickly realise you'll lose.
Why go to the hassle?
I suspect that this probably boils down to default policies and a lack of understanding of the GPL more than anything, sadly. By default most companies would have a "We don't make available ANY of our IP unnecessarily" and that hasn't yet gelled with the GPL. No one wants to stand up and make the call that compiling Busybox didn't involved much of the companies IP, and releasing the source is an obligation.. The people involved with the IP aren't the same people that make the 'legal' calls and so companies come across with these silly positions..
--Q
Re:Understandable response... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Understandable response... (Score:4, Insightful)
1. They know they're violating the GPL and just want him to get lost
2. They don't know what the GPL is, that they're using GPL'd products, that they don't read the GPL right, they don't understand who he is, why it's any of his business, why he thinks he's got any right to their products source code and so on.
In the latter case, good communication skills that presents your case in a serious, professional and understandable manner that makes them realize their error or at least begins a closer investigation of the issue may be an advantage. Besides, it looks to me like his legal skills are severely lacking:
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Re:Understandable response... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Understandable response... (Score:4, Informative)
A single kid making noise? The settlement cost would be less that the bandwidth bill for 6 months, and that is based on a really low likelihood of the kid getting out of his basement and pressing the issue.
A copyright holder with out an attorney? Not the biggest threat on the plate, but definitely something that is on the radar. Might be worth it to have a contingency plan in place so that if this treat grows the organization can deal with it quickly and effectively. No sense in blowing resources unnecessarily though.
A certified letter from an attorney demanding we correct our licensing deficiencies? Time to spin up that contingency plan!
A summons? Those files better be on the website before I have to explain to the CEO why we are being sued!
Again, just to make sure no one is going to confuse me for a GPL abusing bastard, in that case I would have ensured the GPL code was available on the website and have avoided the situation all together. I'm not saying this stuff is right, only that it is realistic, and that you will get a LOT further in the business world by writing respectfully than writing in SMS shorthand.
-Rick
Parent
Re:Understandable response... (Score:4, Funny)
Signed,
gnu/mindbender
Parent
Re:Understandable response... (Score:4, Interesting)
Dear Sir,
it came to my attention that your product XXX, which I purchased through YYY, uses software based on a licensed component ZZZ. The license (GPL) grants me, the user, the right to obtain a copy of the source, and places a specific legal burden onto your company to provide such a copy to users of your product for free, or for a nominal fee to cover copying and mailing. Please refer to ${URL} for specific terms.
As a user of your product, having been granted the right to obtain the source code, I wish to exercise this right. Would you be so kind to inform me how I can download, or otherwise access, the source code in question?
Thanks in advance,
${name}
${address}
${telephone}
Most tech support people will forward such an email to their manager, and the manager will send it to legal, where it will be reviewed, and a company lawyer will not dare to ignore an official, lawful request that is traceable, because they know that willful infringement is worse than ignorance, and now they know.
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Re:Funny thing about GPL (Score:5, Informative)
Besides which, the complaints about lawsuits typically have less to do with quantity and more to do with quality. Otherwise the discussion threads would be much shorter.
Parent
All I've got to say (Score:5, Funny)
*Pulls on asbestos undies*
Parent
Re:Maybe I'm wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
No, you're not being pedantic, you're being wrong. To quote from the GPL v2, section 3b (which covers distribution of source for binaries which were distributed without accompanying source), the vendor must:
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;
Notice that the offer does not say the vendor must give only people who bought their product the source code. It says they must give any third party the code. Now, under section 3a the vendor only has to give the code to people who receive the product, but 3a pertains to the vendor distributing the source code with the product itself. If they don't include the source code with the binaries, 3a doesn't apply. And since it's not a non-commercial distribution, 3c doesn't apply either.
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Re:what product does supermicro use BB in ? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:what product does supermicro use BB in ? (Score:4, Informative)
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