[Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

Mon Jul 17 13:12:23 UTC 2006

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>The way it's worded in GPL2 (and GPL3) its ambiguous. I've also been 
>following the FSF and
>their litigation strategy over the years, and to be honest they wilt 
>away like chaff in the wind
>on a certain class of GPL violators -- big software companies who pinch 
>GPL code then use it.
>
>They onyl go after folks with little or no litigation resources. I Think 
>they know if this thing got in front
>of a court and someone bankrolled 20 mil into costs, it may not stand up 
>... just a theory.
>
>  
>
A few points to note here....   The biggest known "abuser" of GPL'd 
software is Tivo (the set-top real-time video recorder).  The company 
openly admits to be using Linux as the OS for their products but doesn't 
give copies of "modified" software they have been using within the 
devices that they sell.  The problem here is, are they selling devices 
that happen to have GPL'd software "embedded" in the device, not 
re-selling software.  The GPL is ambiguous if this is even a violation, 
and other companies that you are talking about also view pinching GPL'd 
code under the same light.  I guess this is one of the "classes" of 
violators you are talking about.  Some of this is also a mistaken belief 
that the GPL requires "giving back to the community" any changes to 
software that you make.  It does not, and Tivo has decided to keep their 
changes as trade secrets.

The other known major abuser of copyleft software was none other than 
Microsoft itself, who copied the TCP/IP software from BSD Unix for the 
Windows NT operating system network routines.  The problem here is that 
it was not the GPL, but rather the BSD license that this software was 
released under, and the FSF has no copyright claim on any of these 
routines either.

BTW, the exact opposite view is sometimes applied, where you will not be 
hired by some software development groups if you have ever been exposed 
to GPL'd software source code.  The reason is that they don't want to 
have their software "contaminated" by GPL'd software specifically 
because they don't want to deal with the viral nature of the GPL and 
being forced to release all of their software under the GPL.

Of course the most famous court case for testing the GPL is SCO vs. IBM, 
where it was originally seen as a major test of the GPL (with IBM 
backing of the GPL in a weird twist of events).  Instead it looks as if 
the case is going to spin into a stock fraud case and turn from civil 
litigation into a criminal matter.  Where the SEC will take this, I'm 
not sure, but I'm certain that the GPL will be the least of the problems 
for the CEO of SCO.  This case did air out some of the legal issues 
regarding the GPL in court and did deal with many copyleft issues in 
general, but it doesn't look like the GPL will be significant for any 
precedence to use this case in future GPL-related litigation.

I'm curious what other major copyright violators of the GPL that you are 
talking about that the FSF didn't litigate against?  The real issue that 
the FSF has been facing is that major violators of the GPL havn't 
necessarily been violating the use of GNU/Hurd software or anything else 
with a copyright claim by the FSF.  I guess this is another "class" of 
GPL violations, but if they don't have a copyright claim, the FSF can't 
really file as a plaintiff and enforce the copyright.  There is also the 
issue of statutory vs. actual damage claims that I raised earlier that 
also apply to software under the GPL, making even a positive judgement 
(for the GPL) something that is essentially a moot point and effectively 
unenforcable.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning