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18 Comments
- sjvn, on 10/10/2007, -0/+20True, but look at this way, no one's had the guts to try it because they know they'd be hosed if they did. Open-source can be attacked in many ways, but a direct assault on the GPLv2 or v3 is just *asking* for the courts to hammer on you.
Steven - geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15It's actually bad news. I was really hoping to see this go to court so the company would be reamed for their misuse of GPL'd code, and it would start an avalanche of code release (as every other company that's currently abusing the GPL would be forced to fork over their code and probably pay damages). Furthermore, the GPL would be emboldened and less legally fishy, so companies like Microsoft couldn't spread FUD on it nearly as easily.
- Onestone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14That's good news, although GPL remains untested in USA.
- oneoverzero, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8With any luck, it will remain that way.
- whataboutdave, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Word up to legal precedent.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You're pretty much exactly wrong. The GPL is a license, not a contract, which is exactly why your entire argument is invalid (and believe me, you're not the first one to make this mistake, it's rampant due to the fact people don't understand the difference, and due to the fact in some countries there is no difference; in countries where the GPL would be a contract, the contract at this point would simply be called "invalid" and you would *still* be violating the copyright). The reason people settle so quickly in the light of GPL cases is because it's pretty much airtight in its design. Either you follow the letters of the License, or you don't have a right to use the code, which is still under copyright, a plain and simple copyright infringement case.
For example: Trolltech has dual-licensed their Qt toolkit so that all applications written on top of it have to be GPL or they have to get a separate commercial license to use it. If you don't, Trolltech is well within their legal ability to sue you for using it, and either force you to license it, or make you stop distributing your code. In America (and most places), you don't have to register your copyright in order to retain it, so that argument's dead too. This isn't the first legal battle for the GPL, mind you. It's been around since 1991, and there have been a few cases overseas and every time to date, it's been settled out of court. It's a testament to its design. - freebit50, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Hip-Hip-Hooray!!!
Hip-Hip-Hooray!!! - bieber, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2You have no idea what this is about, do you.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1In the US, the copyright holder gets to assess how much the copyright is worth to them (and for some reason, we don't tax this "assumed worth"). This is why the RIAA can charge you $750/song if you pirated it when they can turn around and sell the same song for a buck on iTunes.
The Busybox developers could have written as many zeros as they wanted, though to prevent the judge from tossing it out, they'd need to have some kind of rubric for how they came up with that number (such as hours worked or what-have-you). A license for Busybox itself is at least worth a few million dollars, as almost every embedded Linux depends on it, and thousands upon thousands of man-hours have went into its maintenance. [Linux itself was estimated based on the work put into it alone to be worth over $600,000,000, and that's really a conservative number.] - Vaelan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1hey interesting question about GPL violations... Given two situations... what's your verdict...
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Understanding_GPL_Vote_ ...
(here is the direct article link: http://mythinkpond.blogspot.com/2007/09/understand ... - Garfunkel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's good that they are complying without court influence.
- fluxion, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"Since we intend to and always intended to comply with all open source software license requirements"
riiiight...you shouldnt have to file a lawsuit every time you want someone to hold up their end of the bargain.
in any case, it's done. and it's good news. - krached, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1The GPL will be held valid, that is not the issue (unless the authors are really sloppy in having one license on the website and another in the tarball which is surprisingly common). The kicker is the remedy, contract or copyright? If it is considered a breach of contract, the the copyright owners will get their damages, which will be nothing. Even if it considered copyright infringement, most people have not registered their work within 90 days of publication. That bars an author from getting statutory damages. And they don't get all profit, the question is what would someone have paid a license for the code. Since this code wants to be free, it will probably get its wish. I think the GPL will turn out to be a toothless tiger.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Please, please don't feed the trolls.
- schestowitz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1IANAL, but what about the Wallace case? Does it offer no validity, at least in part?
- Alex2, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Would suck if the legal precedent were a token one dollar fine for copying something which is 'free'.
- IceZZ, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0It's not the first. There have been several. Really there has not yet been a non-settlement in a GPL battle, because the courts have not had a chance to test it.. so basically the article is backwards.
- geekee, on 10/10/2007, -6/+1Who cares? Copyright violation is rampant on the internet. This case is a drop in the bucket for fighting copyright infringement.
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