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Has anyone ever seen GPL being encorced in any country? Wont this end with BWM uploading a tar.gz of a kernel found on kernel.org and call it a good working da
by antocv 11y ago
Has anyone ever seen GPL being encorced in any country?
Wont this end with BWM uploading a tar.gz of a kernel found on kernel.org and call it a good working day?
Have seen it happen too many times, and in most countries the user has no claim on the license/copyright.
So unless I contributed/own some copyright found in exact Linux kernel version/other software used by a distributor, and buy their stuff, there is zilch I can do.
Which also means, you are free to sell/and break GPL software/license and as long as you dont upset somebody who owns the copyright to it, you're good to go.
- luso_brazilian 11y agoYes, and actually on BMW home country, Germany. The summary can be read at this old Slashdot submission [1] from 2005 but the gist of it is that > Harald Welte of the netfilter/iptables core team sought to enjoin Sitecom from distributing its WL-122 router, which used netfilter's GPL'd code, without also providing the source code and a copy of the GPL, as that license requires and > The Munich Court granted Welte a preliminary injunction [2] and then upheld that injunction [3][4] I believe there are other instances of GPL being upheld in courts around the world and this one should be only one of many examples. GPL is not even necessary in these cases, in the absence of the (GP) license it reverts to the default copyright rules, with all rights of copy and distribution being at the hands of the copyright holders (save for Fair use and other exceptions). A company that would try to argue that GPL is not a valid license in court would actually be admitting in court that they are distributing the software without a license from the copyright holders all along. [1] Munich Court Again Enforces GPL: http://news.slashdot.org/story/05/04/14/2024258/munich-court-again-enforces-gpl http://news.slashdot.org/story/05/04/14/2024258/munich-court... [2] Preliminary injunction: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/15/1649250&tid=123 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/15/1649250&tid=... [3] Injunction upheld: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/23/1558219&tid=117 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/23/1558219&tid=... [4] Court's decision in English (pdf): http://www.jbb.de/judgment_dc_munich_gpl.pdf http://www.jbb.de/judgment_dc_munich_gpl.pdf
- darkr 11y agoYup, I can remember several companies settling and being forced to comply for violations of busybox GPL'd code in the US off the top of my head - Verizon, Extreme Networks and Xterasys. There are likely quite a few other examples of GPL being successfully enforced.
- antocv 11y agoWow refreshing good news(?), did not know about that. Awesome.
- davidgerard 11y ago> Has anyone ever seen GPL being encorced in any country? ... yes? Lots and lots. There's a prominent case involving VMware versus Christoph Hellwig on right now: http://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20160225-vmware-gpl/ http://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20160225-vmware-gpl/ One manufacturer violation ended up with Busybox/SFC awarded a pile of the violating televisions ... http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/08/court-rules-gpl-part-of-a-well-pleaded-case/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/08/court-...
- realkitkat 11y agoHere are some example cases that have ended up to courts of law [linksys][busybox][fortinet][vmware]. [linksys] http://tinyurl.com/l9zd7qo http://tinyurl.com/l9zd7qo [busybox] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/08/court-rules-gpl-part-of-a-well-pleaded-case/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/08/court-... [fortinet] http://gpl-violations.org/news/20050414-fortinet/ http://gpl-violations.org/news/20050414-fortinet/ [vmware] https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit...