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Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

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Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#161

Post by AshamedCaptain »

goodpoint wrote: post #152
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #33

> Actually, it gets worse. Here's what the GPLv2 says about termination: > So if you violate the licence, it is terminated. That's it. Given that “you” may refer to a corporation, this creates the following disturbing possibility: This is called the GPL death penalty, has actually happen in the past even before the article was written. It is yet another thing fixed by the oft-maligned GPLv3. Samba switched to GPLv3 b…

> death penalty Can we slow down with the FUD please? GPLv3 is extremely lenient with license violations and GPLv2 is not. Yet, calling it "death penalty" is absurd. Millions of contracts have clauses for immediate termination, and often with less clear reasons than copyright violation. Plenty of free services like HN can close an account at any time and nobody calls it "death penalty". Do we see thousands of compani…

You know that the terminology comes from one of the drafters of the GPLv3, right ?

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#162

Post by coliveira »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #17
hayleox wrote: post #14

While it's not ideal to have Linux being used in ways that aren't permitted by the license, it's not necessarily a violation of anyone's rights. These license-incompatible uses of Linux are ongoing and readily apparent. There's a decent argument to be made that anyone contributing to Linux should have reasonably expected that their contributions would be used in this way, even if it wasn't in the license. Courts have…

The problem (for me) is that nowadays most of our IT infrastructure depends on Linux. Depending on an operating system hoping that nobody ever gets litigious because it's licensed in such a way that it creates this risk is, for me, a bit problematic.

This has always been the case. Most operating systems are based on UNIX technology and SCO once tried to sue almost everyone based on that. These things don't happen often in practice because big companies want to support customers, not to sue them. And in case someone like SCO appears, big companies have deep pockets to make agreements with them.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#163

Post by coliveira »

assttoasstmgr wrote: post #20
nix23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL is a nice idea...but you need lawyers lots of money and time. I hate lawyers and i don't have time for that bs nor do it have/want money to spend for lawyers, i was a diehard gpl evangelist in my 20`s, now it's BSD/MIT/ISC (and not diehard anymore...more like IDGAS)...and i really don't care for religion anymore...just quality and real freedom.

My company does whatever it can to comply with GPL requirements and it is nothing short of a goddamn nightmare. Nothing like sitting in a conference room for hours with lawyers while we poured through the licenses for 250 different packages; we would have been better off just burning the money. My conclusions are that most Linux distributions are an amalgam of software packages with licenses that are fundamentally in…

So why don't you just use commercial software and skip all this? I will answer this question: because you and your company don't want to pay for it! If your company had to pay for every library and application that you now use for free because of GPL software, you probably wouldn't be on a job in the first place. So, yes, I think GPL is doing a good job, and I'll never write a single line of code that is at least not GPL.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#164

Post by admax88qqq »

trasz wrote: post #145
admax88qqq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? The FSF and copyright in general does not worry about static vs dynamic linking. They focus on "derivative works.". The only question that matters is "does this piece of software derive from this other piece.". How they are linked together has no meaning. Hackers like to misunderstand that and think they can work around the GPL by how they bundle the two pieces together. The CLISP case is a classic example. It…

What if the readline was really libedit(3), a BSD equivalent with the same API/ABI? How is the app a derived work of readline then?

It wouldn't be? If the software was built for libedit then I'm sure that's fine.

In the clisp case it was clearly built for libreadline, and trying to unbundle and repackage it differently doesn't erase that fact.

What the courts will ask and what you need to ask yourself is, was the distribution model for a software done in a way to try to circumvent the spirit of the license?

Law and contracts are not code. They are not interpreted in the strictest reading of the words, but in a reasonable interpretation of their meaning.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#165

Post by admax88qqq »

dralley wrote: post #109
admax88qqq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? The FSF and copyright in general does not worry about static vs dynamic linking. They focus on "derivative works.". The only question that matters is "does this piece of software derive from this other piece.". How they are linked together has no meaning. Hackers like to misunderstand that and think they can work around the GPL by how they bundle the two pieces together. The CLISP case is a classic example. It…

LGPL absolutely does care about linking. Section 4d specifically talks about shared libraries and requires you to be able to "re-link" the application with a modified version of the library, if dynamic linking is not used. When people talk about how the LGPL isn't a good license, it's largely because A) C and C++ are really the only two systems languages for which dynamic linking is even an option and B) header-only…

Yeah the LGPL gets a little technical, but at ita core it's really just saying there needs to be a way for the user to replace the LGPL library that is used.

If it was statically linked on then some sort of relink ability needs to be provided.

It's more like advice for people who want to incorporate LGPL software.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#166

Post by badsectoracula »

Comevius wrote: post #35

I rather use Mozilla Public License 2.0, Eclipse Public License 2.0, or EUPL 1.2 for copyleft purposes. Strong copyleft as a concept has no legal reality. Linking a program to another don't produce a derivative work. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/news/why-viral-l... FSF is full of baloney about how static or dynamic linking is different than communicating for example through sockets. To be able to use t…

The europa.eu articles (this is only one of them BTW) are about the case in EU where, indeed, copyleft goes only as far as MPL/LGPL/etc and of course EUPL - and note that this isn't 100% certain, it is just the most likely interpretation based on previous cases about interoperability.

However this only valid for the EU itself. When software is not confined inside the EU, e.g. one (even a member of EU) cares about distribution outside of it, then the difference between GPL and LGPL can matter. For example even if EU does not see a difference, US might do and unless your software isn't to be used outside of EU the distinction still exists.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#167

Post by goodpoint »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #161
goodpoint wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> death penalty Can we slow down with the FUD please? GPLv3 is extremely lenient with license violations and GPLv2 is not. Yet, calling it "death penalty" is absurd. Millions of contracts have clauses for immediate termination, and often with less clear reasons than copyright violation. Plenty of free services like HN can close an account at any time and nobody calls it "death penalty". Do we see thousands of compani…

You know that the terminology comes from one of the drafters of the GPLv3, right ?

Yes. I know Jeremy Allison and I watched the presentation of his slides. But here the term is being used in a completely different framing: FUD.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#168

Post by seba_dos1 »

butlerm wrote: post #150
tsimionescu wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main point of my argument, and the main concern I feel with GPL-style licenses, is the notion of "do I have to distribute my work under the terms of the GPL even if I don't distribute any GPL code directly; in other words, when is my program a derived work of a GPL work?". If instead I am distributing GPL code directly, the question is more clear - as you say, copyright law makes few exceptions there. But again,…

Unfortunately the FSF's idea of what a derivative work is largely something they made up with no basis in statutory law and which has never been tested in court. It basically consists of wishful thinking on their part. In the US, a derivative work has a legal definition in Title 17 of the United States Code, and anything that is purportedly a derivative work that doesn't clearly fall under the legal definition or est…

If you persuade enough people to be "out of touch with reality", they're not out of touch with reality anymore, because it's the reality that got changed.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#169

Post by AshamedCaptain »

goodpoint wrote: post #167
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that the terminology comes from one of the drafters of the GPLv3, right ?

Yes. I know Jeremy Allison and I watched the presentation of his slides. But here the term is being used in a completely different framing: FUD.

What? I am literally using the term to describe the exact same point. What is different in the framing ?
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