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Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

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Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#11

Post by lurker19 »

Uchikoma wrote: post #3

What I did not understand in the original article: For what is the license void? For BusyBox or for BusyBox 1.0.3. Is it valid again - new distribution - with BusyBox 1.0.4? Or is it the "same" software? [edit] Just saw this is also discussed in the linked article. PS: In philosophy this problem is known as Ship of Theseus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Software doesn't violate licenses, people do. Anyone who violates the license of a work loses their license to the work. A more pointed question then is about who violates/loses the license: an individual coder? A corporation/foundation?

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#12

Post by anon1385 »

aninteger wrote: post #8

This is a subscriber-only article. By linking to a subscriber link we are not helping LWN. Quoting LWN: "Reader subscriptions are a necessary way to fund the continued existence of LWN and the quality of its content."

Don't worry, I'm sure they wouldn't actually want to enforce the restrictions in their policies, and any suggestion that they would is clearly the work of Microsoft employed FUD-monsters.

More seriously, LWN articles get posted here quite often, and the exposure probably encourages more people to subscribe. I always assumed that was the point of allowing people to create these links to subscriber articles.

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#13

Post by calloc »

vogonj wrote: post #5
click170 wrote: post #4

This paragraph from the bottom of the article presents a vector of attack (albeit a small one) on the kernel that I hadn't considered before, but it seems like one we may quickly encounter in the future. "One would guess that a copyright troll with a small ownership [of kernel code] would succeed mostly in getting his or her code removed from the kernel in record time. Big holders could pose a bigger threat. Imagine…

"IBM also has the look of one of those short-lived companies that doesn't hang around for long." this is probably the funniest sentence I have ever read.

The link it goes to explains why it is extremely sarcastic ;-)

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#14

Post by jrockway »

aninteger wrote: post #8

This is a subscriber-only article. By linking to a subscriber link we are not helping LWN. Quoting LWN: "Reader subscriptions are a necessary way to fund the continued existence of LWN and the quality of its content."

But LWN has a feature specifically for sharing subscriber-only articles on social news sites, and that's why everyone can see this article. Presumably if this is killing them, they'd just turn that feature off.

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#15

Post by jrockway »

sixtofour wrote: post #10
vogonj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IBM also has the look of one of those short-lived companies that doesn't hang around for long." this is probably the funniest sentence I have ever read.

It's conceivable that Motorola Mobile might have had GPL-licensed linux code. That story might be playing out differently had Microsoft bought them instead of Google.

In the end, the code gets removed and rewritten. Most of Linux is drivers for hardware that you don't have anyway, so the chances of this affecting the average person are minimal.

Honestly, nothing but good could come from being forced to remove key parts of Linux. A lot of it needs a good rethinking, but breaking compat would not be tolerated. If it's legally required, then people don't have a choice.

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#16

Post by sixtofour »

jrockway wrote: post #15
sixtofour wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's conceivable that Motorola Mobile might have had GPL-licensed linux code. That story might be playing out differently had Microsoft bought them instead of Google.

In the end, the code gets removed and rewritten. Most of Linux is drivers for hardware that you don't have anyway, so the chances of this affecting the average person are minimal. Honestly, nothing but good could come from being forced to remove key parts of Linux. A lot of it needs a good rethinking, but breaking compat would not be tolerated. If it's legally required, then people don't have a choice.

"In the end, the code gets removed and rewritten."

Undoubtedly true, but what about deployed/sold devices? I wasn't real impressed at the pace of the update getting to my Epic, which I believe was caused in part by different motivations between Samsung and Sprint. What about devices that are no longer supported by updates? They're "out there."

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#17

Post by joshuacc »

aninteger wrote: post #8

This is a subscriber-only article. By linking to a subscriber link we are not helping LWN. Quoting LWN: "Reader subscriptions are a necessary way to fund the continued existence of LWN and the quality of its content."

Full text of the notice at the top of the article:

"The following subscription-only content has been made available to you by an LWN subscriber. Thousands of subscribers depend on LWN for the best news from the Linux and free software communities. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to LWN. Thank you for visiting LWN.net!"

At first glance it seems that they don't actually object to the article being shared.

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#18

Post by aninteger »

jrockway wrote: post #14
aninteger wrote: post #8

This is a subscriber-only article. By linking to a subscriber link we are not helping LWN. Quoting LWN: "Reader subscriptions are a necessary way to fund the continued existence of LWN and the quality of its content."

But LWN has a feature specifically for sharing subscriber-only articles on social news sites, and that's why everyone can see this article. Presumably if this is killing them, they'd just turn that feature off.

Fair enough I guess. I don't work for LWN. I just felt slightly guilty by accessing a subscriber link that was probably intended more for "friends of a subscriber" than the whole internet community.

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#19

Post by jandevos »

lurker19 wrote: post #11
Uchikoma wrote: post #3

What I did not understand in the original article: For what is the license void? For BusyBox or for BusyBox 1.0.3. Is it valid again - new distribution - with BusyBox 1.0.4? Or is it the "same" software? [edit] Just saw this is also discussed in the linked article. PS: In philosophy this problem is known as Ship of Theseus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Software doesn't violate licenses, people do. Anyone who violates the license of a work loses their license to the work. A more pointed question then is about who violates/loses the license: an individual coder? A corporation/foundation?

I think the gist was: if you lose your license to distribute Busybox X, does that impact your rights with respect to Busybox Y?

My take on this (but IANAL) is that you do not really lose the rights to distribute a specific version, but the rights to distribute specific code (or compiled versions of it), and that would carry through to all code in version Y that was already in version X, but not any newer code that is unique to version Y. That won't be very useful, though.

[Edit] Just read the part of the article that deals with this question. Personally, I hold to my take on this matter -- that the scope is not a particular version of the distribution containing the code, but to all the bits of code of which the license was violated -- even if you also have access to the code in another way. My reasoning for this is that this could otherwise open up a pretty simple loop-hole: you'd only have to get someone else, whose license is not yet revoked, to fork the project, and release a new 'version' of the program, to get your rights to the code back. That can not have been the intention of that clause in the GPL.

Re: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

#20

Post by jandevos »

aninteger wrote: post #18
jrockway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But LWN has a feature specifically for sharing subscriber-only articles on social news sites, and that's why everyone can see this article. Presumably if this is killing them, they'd just turn that feature off.

Fair enough I guess. I don't work for LWN. I just felt slightly guilty by accessing a subscriber link that was probably intended more for "friends of a subscriber" than the whole internet community.

Aren't we all friends here? :)

Honestly, though, if LWN was worried about this, they could put some sore of limit on the number of times a subscriber link could be used (per time unit?) or something. I don't think they are, and rightly so: the exposure to their content (which is very good value for the small amount of money they ask subscribers), as well as their liberal policy on these 'friend links' probably lead to more subscribers. Personally, I want to read the LWN articles when they appear there (on their RSS feed, to be precise), and not when someone gets around to posting a link on Hacker News.

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