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Our lawsuit against ChessBase

stockfishchess.org

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Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#21

Post by mehrdada »

MattGaiser wrote: post #13

>Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. However, ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products. Can they just do that? How can software really be considered free if the maker can later take away your permission to use it?

The copyright holder can choose to do that only after violations have occurred (and choose to permanently terminate the license even after curing the violation). See the verbatim quote from GPL3 in my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897105

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#22

Post by heavenlyblue »

httpsterio wrote: post #17
MattGaiser wrote: post #13

>Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. However, ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products. Can they just do that? How can software really be considered free if the maker can later take away your permission to use it?

I don't think they can do that for already-released code unless there's some clause in the licensing. For future code, they can opt to change the licensing as long as it follows the existing licensing and their possible code contribution agreements.

Well, but the other party already violated the clause of the licensing.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#23

Post by theturtletalks »

MattGaiser wrote: post #13

>Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. However, ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products. Can they just do that? How can software really be considered free if the maker can later take away your permission to use it?

GPL and other copy-left licenses work in that way. If StockFish was MIT licensed before, then ChessBase can use the latest version with that license. They could even fork the repo at that point and continue developing. If StockFish was always GPL, then the license can be terminated.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#24

Post by Y_Y »

nichch wrote: post #5

> Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. What do they mean by this?

I suppose they were providing the stockfish software to Chessbase (and everyone else) under the GPL, but now they won't do that any more.

I don't think that prevents somebody sympathetic (if such a person exists) from re-distributing it to Chessbase though.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#25

Post by orwin »

thom wrote: post #3

While I think it’s a shame that nobody has been able to sue ChessBase for their software being utter garbage, I will cheer on this equally worthy endeavour.

If company could be sued because their software are garbage, you won't have a lot of company left.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#26

Post by metiscus »

httpsterio wrote: post #17
MattGaiser wrote: post #13

>Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. However, ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products. Can they just do that? How can software really be considered free if the maker can later take away your permission to use it?

I don't think they can do that for already-released code unless there's some clause in the licensing. For future code, they can opt to change the licensing as long as it follows the existing licensing and their possible code contribution agreements.

The GPL has a termination provision. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897105

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#27

Post by apetresc »

Rd6n6 wrote: post #4

In an online course recently, one module involved an API with an attribution requirement that neither the instructor nor any student was aware of - they specifically described it as free use, no attribution required, because they were unaware. Despite there having been more than 20k previous students, I was the first person to mention mention this and link to the clause, and the instructor was surprised. Almost every…

This is a possibility in general, but not here. Chessbase has a long history with this sort of thing, and they've been called out repeatedly. They've even settled before, if I recall correctly.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#28

Post by kyrra »

progman32 wrote: post #19
MattGaiser wrote: post #13

>Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. However, ChessBase is ignoring the fact that they no longer have the right to distribute Stockfish, modified or unmodified, as part of their products. Can they just do that? How can software really be considered free if the maker can later take away your permission to use it?

See Section 8 of the GPLv3, "termination". https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

Reading that, I don't see anything about the copyright holder being able to manually terminate a license. Rather the copyright holder can notify a party that is violating other sections of the GPL3, and then the party can either remedy those violations or lose their license to use the software.

Is ChessBase violating the GPL3?

EDIT: oh, I should read the article. They are saying ChessBase modified the GPL software then redistributed it without the original attribution or copyright.

Re: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

#30

Post by dmurray »

InvaderFizz wrote: post #10
nichch wrote: post #5

> Due to Chessbase’s repeated license violations, leading developers of Stockfish have terminated their GPL license with ChessBase permanently. What do they mean by this?

Absent a license, ChessBase has no right to distribute any of the Stockfish code. This simply reverts the code to copyrighted content, much like a book.

I think they've revoked even Chessbase's license to use the code. So, not like a book, where if you have the physical copy you can generally read it, but more like a pirated copy of Windows or Oracle, where you owe license fees per user, per core, per day.
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