7 ms·

After two years, the SFC is escalating to "asking publicly". Wow, they really are great stewards of the copyrights which have been assigned to them!

worik 4y ago
The legal system is glacial "Justice delayed, is justice denied " is supposed to be one of the principles of jurisprudence, it seems to have been forgotten
- tapoxi 4y ago
  How is it glacial? This is resolved with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Filing the suit is entirely on them.
  - worik 4y ago
    > How is it glacial? These cases take years In other parts of the (in)justice system people languish in jail, and on bail, waiting for their day in court. The legal systems of Western "democracies " have become a money fountain, and are loosing the sense of justice
    - SllX 4y ago
      Filing a suit does not take years. If you know you have a case, decide if you’re going to sue, if yes, then you bang out the paperwork and file it with the appropriate court. Trying to fight what ought to be a lawsuit through PR isn’t going to get you any closer to an injunction or discovery but is a red flag that maybe the one engaging in the PR battle doesn’t feel confident they have a case. EDIT: I dug into it a little. SFC appears to be dug into a lawsuit against Vizio. It makes sense, even law firms have finite resources, and there’s some indication that the outcome of this lawsuit could give a clearer indication of the viability of a suit against John Deere. My original point on the time it takes to file a suit stands though.
      - simoncion 4y ago
        > Filing a suit does not take years. Correct. Closing out the suit takes years. As was said: > These cases take years
      - pabs3 4y ago
        A suit against John Deere is a lot harder in the way that the Vizio suit is being done (there they are suing as an end-user, a third-party beneficiary of the GPL contract), because you would have to be a Deere customer first (presumably that would cost more money than Conservancy's budget for the Vizio lawsuit) and if you do sue, maybe they stop selling you tractors or software updates or stop taking your phone calls. A regular copyright violation lawsuit might be a better option.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    Yes, but the endgame of the GPL is not to generate copyright infringement lawsuits[0]. It's to compel modifiers of the code to license their changes back and respect user freedom - i.e. to keep the software effectively uncopyrighted. If you sue in a court of law, they will give you money damages, and maybe an injunction specifically requiring the developer delete their copy of the program. Under no circumstances will a court demand specific performance of GPL obligations to release source code. But that's what the SFC wants. So the only way to get people to comply with the GPL is to use the threat of a lawsuit to encourage compliance. This is contrary to what we normally think of with copyright litigation, but that's mostly because the lawsuits we see are either breakdowns of negotiation, or against individual infringers and pirate sites that would never be granted a license under any circumstances whatsoever. When you want a licensee to actually do something, you are better off threatening litigation and negotiating rather than going straight to the nuclear option. [0] Nobody told that to the Lawnmower Man[1] unfortunately [1] Larry Ellison
    - nier 4y ago
      Did you just anthropomorphize Larry Ellison?
      - serf 4y ago
        it sometimes strengthens a metaphor to anthropomorphize the non human entities.
        glandium 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure GP and GGP were referring to a talk by Bryan Cantrill. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
    - pabs3 4y ago
      Most of these violating companies don't care about lawsuits, the big ones could probably bankrupt anyone trying to sue them by dragging things out and the small ones just make a product, fold the company and start a new one. I found the latest Conservancy lawsuit interesting, they are suing as a third-party beneficiary of the GPL (ie as a recipient of GPL code), not as a copyright holder. They are suing solely for compliance, not for damages. Hopefully they get back their costs too though. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
- zamalek 4y ago
  How quickly does copyright get addressed when it comes to e.g. RIAA?
  - ksherlock 4y ago
    The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Napster in December 1999. A preliminary injunction to block RIAA music on Napster was granted in August, 2000. Napster appealed and the circuit court upheld the injunction in February 2001. The injunction was effective as of March 2001 and Napster shut down in July 2001. Some of the lawsuit was settled out of court in September 2001. Napster went bankrupt in September 2002. So that's 15 months for a slam-dunk injunction. Today it wouldn't take as long since there's case law backing them up. But if the RIAA had spent 2 years sending emails and writing blog posts, they wouldn't have gotten anywhere either.
neilv 4y ago
I'd prefer something a bit closer to the other end of the spectrum of defending open software licenses. The other end of the spectrum might be an outcome like "Some GPL library authors find themselves suddenly owning a major farming machinery company". :)
- elkos 4y ago
  Me too. If the risk of not adhering to a license is minimal, a for-profit organization has fewer incentives to do so. The US copyright law is draconian, copyright violations are felony violations with 10 years prison and 100k$ fines, the Aaron Swartz taught us that.
- pabs3 4y ago
  It seems more likely that "Deere banned from putting Linux on their tractors" would be the outcome than that :)
dan-robertson 4y ago
How far does it differ from the SfC’s stated attitude towards enforcement? I guess that they are behaving the way they said they would, and maybe you dislike that but you could at least have predicted it. Do they say they do something different?
pabs3 4y ago
They are a small org with limited resources, so that isn't surprising. They do sue companies though, their most recent lawsuit (against Vizio), if they win, will also allow any recipient of GPLed code to sue for compliance. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
wmf 4y ago
Most GPL violations are really minor and suing over them creates backlash that's worse than the original violation. So the reasonable path is to ask nicely and then... ask nicely in public.

worik 4y ago

The legal system is glacial "Justice delayed, is justice denied " is supposed to be one of the principles of jurisprudence, it seems to have been forgotten

tapoxi 4y ago
How is it glacial? This is resolved with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Filing the suit is entirely on them.
- worik 4y ago
  > How is it glacial? These cases take years In other parts of the (in)justice system people languish in jail, and on bail, waiting for their day in court. The legal systems of Western "democracies " have become a money fountain, and are loosing the sense of justice
  - SllX 4y ago
    Filing a suit does not take years. If you know you have a case, decide if you’re going to sue, if yes, then you bang out the paperwork and file it with the appropriate court. Trying to fight what ought to be a lawsuit through PR isn’t going to get you any closer to an injunction or discovery but is a red flag that maybe the one engaging in the PR battle doesn’t feel confident they have a case. EDIT: I dug into it a little. SFC appears to be dug into a lawsuit against Vizio. It makes sense, even law firms have finite resources, and there’s some indication that the outcome of this lawsuit could give a clearer indication of the viability of a suit against John Deere. My original point on the time it takes to file a suit stands though.
    - simoncion 4y ago
      > Filing a suit does not take years. Correct. Closing out the suit takes years. As was said: > These cases take years
    - pabs3 4y ago
      A suit against John Deere is a lot harder in the way that the Vizio suit is being done (there they are suing as an end-user, a third-party beneficiary of the GPL contract), because you would have to be a Deere customer first (presumably that would cost more money than Conservancy's budget for the Vizio lawsuit) and if you do sue, maybe they stop selling you tractors or software updates or stop taking your phone calls. A regular copyright violation lawsuit might be a better option.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Yes, but the endgame of the GPL is not to generate copyright infringement lawsuits[0]. It's to compel modifiers of the code to license their changes back and respect user freedom - i.e. to keep the software effectively uncopyrighted. If you sue in a court of law, they will give you money damages, and maybe an injunction specifically requiring the developer delete their copy of the program. Under no circumstances will a court demand specific performance of GPL obligations to release source code. But that's what the SFC wants. So the only way to get people to comply with the GPL is to use the threat of a lawsuit to encourage compliance. This is contrary to what we normally think of with copyright litigation, but that's mostly because the lawsuits we see are either breakdowns of negotiation, or against individual infringers and pirate sites that would never be granted a license under any circumstances whatsoever. When you want a licensee to actually do something, you are better off threatening litigation and negotiating rather than going straight to the nuclear option. [0] Nobody told that to the Lawnmower Man[1] unfortunately [1] Larry Ellison
  - nier 4y ago
    Did you just anthropomorphize Larry Ellison?
    - serf 4y ago
      it sometimes strengthens a metaphor to anthropomorphize the non human entities.
      - glandium 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure GP and GGP were referring to a talk by Bryan Cantrill. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
  - pabs3 4y ago
    Most of these violating companies don't care about lawsuits, the big ones could probably bankrupt anyone trying to sue them by dragging things out and the small ones just make a product, fold the company and start a new one. I found the latest Conservancy lawsuit interesting, they are suing as a third-party beneficiary of the GPL (ie as a recipient of GPL code), not as a copyright holder. They are suing solely for compliance, not for damages. Hopefully they get back their costs too though. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
zamalek 4y ago
How quickly does copyright get addressed when it comes to e.g. RIAA?
- ksherlock 4y ago
  The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Napster in December 1999. A preliminary injunction to block RIAA music on Napster was granted in August, 2000. Napster appealed and the circuit court upheld the injunction in February 2001. The injunction was effective as of March 2001 and Napster shut down in July 2001. Some of the lawsuit was settled out of court in September 2001. Napster went bankrupt in September 2002. So that's 15 months for a slam-dunk injunction. Today it wouldn't take as long since there's case law backing them up. But if the RIAA had spent 2 years sending emails and writing blog posts, they wouldn't have gotten anywhere either.

neilv 4y ago

I'd prefer something a bit closer to the other end of the spectrum of defending open software licenses. The other end of the spectrum might be an outcome like "Some GPL library authors find themselves suddenly owning a major farming machinery company". :)

elkos 4y ago
Me too. If the risk of not adhering to a license is minimal, a for-profit organization has fewer incentives to do so. The US copyright law is draconian, copyright violations are felony violations with 10 years prison and 100k$ fines, the Aaron Swartz taught us that.
pabs3 4y ago
It seems more likely that "Deere banned from putting Linux on their tractors" would be the outcome than that :)

dan-robertson 4y ago

How far does it differ from the SfC’s stated attitude towards enforcement? I guess that they are behaving the way they said they would, and maybe you dislike that but you could at least have predicted it. Do they say they do something different?

pabs3 4y ago

They are a small org with limited resources, so that isn't surprising. They do sue companies though, their most recent lawsuit (against Vizio), if they win, will also allow any recipient of GPLed code to sue for compliance. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

wmf 4y ago

Most GPL violations are really minor and suing over them creates backlash that's worse than the original violation. So the reasonable path is to ask nicely and then... ask nicely in public.