6 ms·

Seems like pretty blatant and long-lived violations. Anybody know why somebody doesn't take them to court and try to get an import ban, monetary damages, or bot

by scott00 12y ago

Seems like pretty blatant and long-lived violations. Anybody know why somebody doesn't take them to court and try to get an import ban, monetary damages, or both? If the punishment for blatantly violating the GPL or LGPL for years at a time while raking in millions of dollars in profits is getting bitched at on the internet, it seems likely to me that a lot of companies will do the cost-benefit analysis and decide that GPL compliance isn't really worth the hassle.

vidarh 12y ago
To have standing in most places, the "somebody" would need to be an author of one of the works they have infringed on. That limits the pool substantially to begin with. Then that somebody would need to be willing to take the risk and cost of a lawsuit that could drag out for ages, with an uncertain outcome. That's why we see as few lawsuits as we do.
- phkahler 12y ago
  >> Then that somebody would need to be willing to take the risk and cost of a lawsuit that could drag out for ages, with an uncertain outcome. I think an author with a proper lawyer would be able to use the DMCA to shut them down rather quickly - meaning it won't drag out for ages.
  - Xylakant 12y ago
    DCMA would get their repositories shut down and code taken off the internet - but it would not get the code off the devices etc. You'd need a lawsuit against a company based elsewhere - that's a pretty bad timesink potentially.
  - simosx 12y ago
    I thought DMCA was not kosher (https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca). Also, not in the US. That guy who started the thread on Google Groups (Luc), is prone to polarizing the discussion. I suppose that Allwinner can fix the issue and still keep their library closed. That would be bad for everyone.
simosx 12y ago
If there is any LGPL code in that library, then it can be separated into a secondary library. And the licensing issue could get resolved (in new versions). It would be great if the code of that library (hardware acceleration for audio/video decoding/encoding) was released with an open license. I hope it happens. What is sad, is that the OP in the Google Group thread is using the "bitch about it hard and loud" strategy. Trying to be negative and so on. It's not a constructive attitude.
- yellowapple 12y ago
  While I agree that it would be ideal if being nice and diplomatic will fix things, I'm personally a bit of a pessimist, and am with Luc on this. Working with companies like this is often like working with young children. Usually, calmly saying "please don't do that" doesn't work (and, indeed, doesn't appear to be working with Allwinner after 4 years of pointing out GPL violations); you have to make it plain and clear that what the child / company is doing is bad behavior, and that it's making you or someone else upset. I'd be more inclined to take your side on this and criticize Luc if Allwinner actually had a good track record of responding immediately and adequately to such (L)GPL violations. From what I can tell, however, neither have been the case, and I therefore completely understand (and even agree with) Luc's visible hostility.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
The simple answer is "because money". It costs quite a bit to be able to do any of that. And that's not something most open source projects or developers can come anywhere close to affording. Source: I run PortableApps.com and have had my GPL software used illegally by competing projects in other countries as well as at least one Fortune 500 here in the states.
- phkahler 12y ago
  Copyright violation carries heavy penalties these days, particularly in the US. If you can prove it, get a lawyer to work on contingency. IANAL but this seems easy.
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    It carries heavy penalties for large players with on-staff or retained legal firms. For the rest of us, you can forget about it (source: multiple lawyers, none of whom would work on contingency for a case like this). I can absolutely prove it, but it doesn't matter. At least I got them to stop but not before they'd passed off my software as someone else's to millions.
    - srathbun 12y ago
      That's a shame. I've used portableApps and it is a nice piece of software.
- arcatek 12y ago
  You made PortableApps ? I used it like seven years ago, and it was great - it helped me and a few others to learn programming on our school computers which, as you might guess, didn't have a lot of tools dedicated to that purpose.
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    Glad you liked it. We're still going strong. A larger percentage of our users these days now use it either locally or on a synced cloud folder. Our platform installer even detects and offers to install to Dropbox, Box, One Drive and Google Drive.
paulv 12y ago
I can't speak to this particular incident, but I have helped with the technical aspects of GPL copyright enforcement, almost exclusively on embedded devices (routers, TVs, blu-ray players, etc). The copyright holders didn't always want money (I'd guess more than 50% did, though) and they all, always, wanted compliance with the license. It was definitely made clear to the offenders that they would be taken to court, and at that point most of them opted to settle. For those that didn't, the court stuff was mostly uneventful. The judge would tell them they had to comply with the license, they would either stonewall or give us a (usually non-working) dump of their code & build system, ad infinitum, until we told them we were going to ask the judge for an injunction. That was usually sufficient motivation. The reason there are no court cases is because we had them dead to rights and their lawyers knew it. Their lawyers told them there was no point in fighting, and to just give us what we wanted.
- scott00 12y ago
  Where did the GPL-enforcing lawyer come from? How did the lawyer get paid? For the people who wanted monetary damages, did they ever actually get significant monetary damages, or were the money claims dropped in exchange for compliance in the settlement process?
  - paulv 12y ago
    Sometimes the Software Freedom Law Center, sometimes the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Conservancy does license enforcement for its member projects upon request. The lawyers are on staff at those organizations, but I'm not familiar with the details of how their funding works. They are both non-profits, though, so if you're curious you can pull their Form 990s. I don't know what the monetary damages were. I was never purview to those conversations (as I said, I was only handling the technical side of things). I heard through the grape vine that some of them requested damages as well as compliance, but I don't know for sure.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
legulere 12y ago
Because it's lots of work and you get nothing really in return. What you want is code that you can commit back into your reposority but what you get is some code that is quickly hacked together and you don't even want to look at.
yaur 12y ago
It doesn't make it right but it seems like a big part of it is ffmpeg which is one of the most common GPL violations out there. Specifically since Zeranoe's builds are GPL3 the vast majority of windows products that bundles ffmpeg (e.g. games from Funcom and EA among other) are violating the GPL.

by scott00 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

To have standing in most places, the "somebody" would need to be an author of one of the works they have infringed on. That limits the pool substantially to begin with. Then that somebody would need to be willing to take the risk and cost of a lawsuit that could drag out for ages, with an uncertain outcome. That's why we see as few lawsuits as we do.

phkahler 12y ago
>> Then that somebody would need to be willing to take the risk and cost of a lawsuit that could drag out for ages, with an uncertain outcome. I think an author with a proper lawyer would be able to use the DMCA to shut them down rather quickly - meaning it won't drag out for ages.
- Xylakant 12y ago
  DCMA would get their repositories shut down and code taken off the internet - but it would not get the code off the devices etc. You'd need a lawsuit against a company based elsewhere - that's a pretty bad timesink potentially.
- simosx 12y ago
  I thought DMCA was not kosher (https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca). Also, not in the US. That guy who started the thread on Google Groups (Luc), is prone to polarizing the discussion. I suppose that Allwinner can fix the issue and still keep their library closed. That would be bad for everyone.

simosx 12y ago

If there is any LGPL code in that library, then it can be separated into a secondary library. And the licensing issue could get resolved (in new versions). It would be great if the code of that library (hardware acceleration for audio/video decoding/encoding) was released with an open license. I hope it happens. What is sad, is that the OP in the Google Group thread is using the "bitch about it hard and loud" strategy. Trying to be negative and so on. It's not a constructive attitude.

yellowapple 12y ago
While I agree that it would be ideal if being nice and diplomatic will fix things, I'm personally a bit of a pessimist, and am with Luc on this. Working with companies like this is often like working with young children. Usually, calmly saying "please don't do that" doesn't work (and, indeed, doesn't appear to be working with Allwinner after 4 years of pointing out GPL violations); you have to make it plain and clear that what the child / company is doing is bad behavior, and that it's making you or someone else upset. I'd be more inclined to take your side on this and criticize Luc if Allwinner actually had a good track record of responding immediately and adequately to such (L)GPL violations. From what I can tell, however, neither have been the case, and I therefore completely understand (and even agree with) Luc's visible hostility.

JohnTHaller 12y ago

The simple answer is "because money". It costs quite a bit to be able to do any of that. And that's not something most open source projects or developers can come anywhere close to affording. Source: I run PortableApps.com and have had my GPL software used illegally by competing projects in other countries as well as at least one Fortune 500 here in the states.

phkahler 12y ago
Copyright violation carries heavy penalties these days, particularly in the US. If you can prove it, get a lawyer to work on contingency. IANAL but this seems easy.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  It carries heavy penalties for large players with on-staff or retained legal firms. For the rest of us, you can forget about it (source: multiple lawyers, none of whom would work on contingency for a case like this). I can absolutely prove it, but it doesn't matter. At least I got them to stop but not before they'd passed off my software as someone else's to millions.
  - srathbun 12y ago
    That's a shame. I've used portableApps and it is a nice piece of software.
arcatek 12y ago
You made PortableApps ? I used it like seven years ago, and it was great - it helped me and a few others to learn programming on our school computers which, as you might guess, didn't have a lot of tools dedicated to that purpose.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  Glad you liked it. We're still going strong. A larger percentage of our users these days now use it either locally or on a synced cloud folder. Our platform installer even detects and offers to install to Dropbox, Box, One Drive and Google Drive.

paulv 12y ago

I can't speak to this particular incident, but I have helped with the technical aspects of GPL copyright enforcement, almost exclusively on embedded devices (routers, TVs, blu-ray players, etc). The copyright holders didn't always want money (I'd guess more than 50% did, though) and they all, always, wanted compliance with the license. It was definitely made clear to the offenders that they would be taken to court, and at that point most of them opted to settle. For those that didn't, the court stuff was mostly uneventful. The judge would tell them they had to comply with the license, they would either stonewall or give us a (usually non-working) dump of their code & build system, ad infinitum, until we told them we were going to ask the judge for an injunction. That was usually sufficient motivation. The reason there are no court cases is because we had them dead to rights and their lawyers knew it. Their lawyers told them there was no point in fighting, and to just give us what we wanted.

scott00 12y ago
Where did the GPL-enforcing lawyer come from? How did the lawyer get paid? For the people who wanted monetary damages, did they ever actually get significant monetary damages, or were the money claims dropped in exchange for compliance in the settlement process?
- paulv 12y ago
  Sometimes the Software Freedom Law Center, sometimes the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Conservancy does license enforcement for its member projects upon request. The lawyers are on staff at those organizations, but I'm not familiar with the details of how their funding works. They are both non-profits, though, so if you're curious you can pull their Form 990s. I don't know what the monetary damages were. I was never purview to those conversations (as I said, I was only handling the technical side of things). I heard through the grape vine that some of them requested damages as well as compliance, but I don't know for sure.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

legulere 12y ago

Because it's lots of work and you get nothing really in return. What you want is code that you can commit back into your reposority but what you get is some code that is quickly hacked together and you don't even want to look at.

yaur 12y ago

It doesn't make it right but it seems like a big part of it is ffmpeg which is one of the most common GPL violations out there. Specifically since Zeranoe's builds are GPL3 the vast majority of windows products that bundles ffmpeg (e.g. games from Funcom and EA among other) are violating the GPL.