3 ms·

Everywhere I've worked, anything with the letters "G", "P", and "L" was to be avoided like toxic waste. Just too much concern about running afoul of it and hav

by xienze 11y ago

Everywhere I've worked, anything with the letters "G", "P", and "L" was to be avoided like toxic waste. Just too much concern about running afoul of it and having to open source the whole product.

mikekchar 11y ago
The GPL is a license like any other license. If you violate it, you may be sued. The result of that lawsuit would be that you would be liable to hand over an amount of money and also potentially have an injunction on further distributing your product. This is the exact same thing that would happen if you violated any other license, so there is not any additional risk to using the GPL. I think the confusion that one would have to "open source the whole project" comes from the offer that many GPL authors make to violators of their license. Very frequently, if you violate a GPL license, the author will offer to allow you to continue to use the code as long as you comply with the GPL. The author does not have to make such an offer and, in fact, this point is spelled out very clearly in the GPL itself. If you violate the license, you lose any right to use the software, unless forgiven by the author. Since many authors are not interested in suing anyone and are only interested in compliance, they make the offer anyway. Usually the offer is accepted, or the GPL code is removed from the software (there have been very, very few GPL violations that have actually gone to court). If you buy some software library from somewhere, it will also have a license for use. You are only allowed to use the software according to the license. If you use it in other ways (for example, you accidentally use it for product A, but you have only licensed it for product B), you can expect to be sued. You will have to pay some money and may have an injunction against distributing your product. It is exactly the same. I've talked with several lawyers at large tech companies that I worked with who avoided the GPL. In one particular case, they had signed an agreement to avoid the GPL (very likely with Microsoft) and were thus were obliged to forbid its use. However, in other cases, I have found the sticking point usually is in the way the agreement is made. In most software licenses, you can not run the software without agreeing to the license. With the GPL, it explicitly says that you may use the software for any purpose without accepting it. You may even modify the software and even link it to your own code. You only have to accept the license when you distribute it. For the lawyers I talked to, this was very confusing. They had never seen language like that before and were very hesitant to touch a license like it, just because they couldn't relate it to the very precise legal language that they were familiar with. I think, as the GPL has gained popularity, this problem is going away. Most IP lawyers are familiar with the license now and understand how it works. Having said that, there are a whole class of programmers who believe what you have said. This is unfortunately ignorance, reinforced by decades of misinformation spread by Microsoft when they decided they needed to wage war against the GPL. As times change (and even MS has used the GPL now), this misunderstanding seems to decrease, so I don't think it is a major worry.
- jordigh 11y ago
  I wish you had made these comments earlier so more people would have seen them. In fact, I think you should write a blog post out of this comment and publish it.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    Hmm... I appreciate the kind words, but I wonder if it would be better if someone like Bradley Kuhn wrote it. I know he has written several posts discussing his approach to GPL violators, but I'm not sure if he has written anything as explicit as "What happens when you get sued for a GPL violation". I think it is an excellent idea.

by xienze 11y ago

Everywhere I've worked, anything with the letters "G", "P", and "L" was to be avoided like toxic waste. Just too much concern about running afoul of it and having to open source the whole product.

mikekchar 11y ago

The GPL is a license like any other license. If you violate it, you may be sued. The result of that lawsuit would be that you would be liable to hand over an amount of money and also potentially have an injunction on further distributing your product. This is the exact same thing that would happen if you violated any other license, so there is not any additional risk to using the GPL. I think the confusion that one would have to "open source the whole project" comes from the offer that many GPL authors make to violators of their license. Very frequently, if you violate a GPL license, the author will offer to allow you to continue to use the code as long as you comply with the GPL. The author does not have to make such an offer and, in fact, this point is spelled out very clearly in the GPL itself. If you violate the license, you lose any right to use the software, unless forgiven by the author. Since many authors are not interested in suing anyone and are only interested in compliance, they make the offer anyway. Usually the offer is accepted, or the GPL code is removed from the software (there have been very, very few GPL violations that have actually gone to court). If you buy some software library from somewhere, it will also have a license for use. You are only allowed to use the software according to the license. If you use it in other ways (for example, you accidentally use it for product A, but you have only licensed it for product B), you can expect to be sued. You will have to pay some money and may have an injunction against distributing your product. It is exactly the same. I've talked with several lawyers at large tech companies that I worked with who avoided the GPL. In one particular case, they had signed an agreement to avoid the GPL (very likely with Microsoft) and were thus were obliged to forbid its use. However, in other cases, I have found the sticking point usually is in the way the agreement is made. In most software licenses, you can not run the software without agreeing to the license. With the GPL, it explicitly says that you may use the software for any purpose without accepting it. You may even modify the software and even link it to your own code. You only have to accept the license when you distribute it. For the lawyers I talked to, this was very confusing. They had never seen language like that before and were very hesitant to touch a license like it, just because they couldn't relate it to the very precise legal language that they were familiar with. I think, as the GPL has gained popularity, this problem is going away. Most IP lawyers are familiar with the license now and understand how it works. Having said that, there are a whole class of programmers who believe what you have said. This is unfortunately ignorance, reinforced by decades of misinformation spread by Microsoft when they decided they needed to wage war against the GPL. As times change (and even MS has used the GPL now), this misunderstanding seems to decrease, so I don't think it is a major worry.

jordigh 11y ago
I wish you had made these comments earlier so more people would have seen them. In fact, I think you should write a blog post out of this comment and publish it.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Hmm... I appreciate the kind words, but I wonder if it would be better if someone like Bradley Kuhn wrote it. I know he has written several posts discussing his approach to GPL violators, but I'm not sure if he has written anything as explicit as "What happens when you get sued for a GPL violation". I think it is an excellent idea.