Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Allwinner GPL violations

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#51

Post by JohnTHaller »

arcatek wrote: post #40
JohnTHaller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple answer is "because money". It costs quite a bit to be able to do any of that. And that's not something most open source projects or developers can come anywhere close to affording. Source: I run PortableApps.com and have had my GPL software used illegally by competing projects in other countries as well as at least one Fortune 500 here in the states.

You made PortableApps ? I used it like seven years ago, and it was great - it helped me and a few others to learn programming on our school computers which, as you might guess, didn't have a lot of tools dedicated to that purpose.

Glad you liked it. We're still going strong. A larger percentage of our users these days now use it either locally or on a synced cloud folder. Our platform installer even detects and offers to install to Dropbox, Box, One Drive and Google Drive.

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#52

Post by paulv »

scott00 wrote: post #48
paulv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to this particular incident, but I have helped with the technical aspects of GPL copyright enforcement, almost exclusively on embedded devices (routers, TVs, blu-ray players, etc). The copyright holders didn't always want money (I'd guess more than 50% did, though) and they all, always, wanted compliance with the license. It was definitely made clear to the offenders that they would be taken to court, a…

Where did the GPL-enforcing lawyer come from? How did the lawyer get paid? For the people who wanted monetary damages, did they ever actually get significant monetary damages, or were the money claims dropped in exchange for compliance in the settlement process?

Sometimes the Software Freedom Law Center, sometimes the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Conservancy does license enforcement for its member projects upon request.

The lawyers are on staff at those organizations, but I'm not familiar with the details of how their funding works. They are both non-profits, though, so if you're curious you can pull their Form 990s.

I don't know what the monetary damages were. I was never purview to those conversations (as I said, I was only handling the technical side of things). I heard through the grape vine that some of them requested damages as well as compliance, but I don't know for sure.

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#53

Post by [deleted] »

scott00 wrote: post #48
paulv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to this particular incident, but I have helped with the technical aspects of GPL copyright enforcement, almost exclusively on embedded devices (routers, TVs, blu-ray players, etc). The copyright holders didn't always want money (I'd guess more than 50% did, though) and they all, always, wanted compliance with the license. It was definitely made clear to the offenders that they would be taken to court, a…

Where did the GPL-enforcing lawyer come from? How did the lawyer get paid? For the people who wanted monetary damages, did they ever actually get significant monetary damages, or were the money claims dropped in exchange for compliance in the settlement process?

[deleted]

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#54

Post by ksk »

tspiteri wrote: post #39
ksk wrote: post #35

Always interesting to see people's reactions to copyright for GPL Code vs Music/Movies/Games.

What is interesting about comparing reactions to GPL copyright against music copyright? Without saying that either of the two copyright cases is right/wrong, there are major differences. In GPL copyright violation, the violation hinders sharing. In music copyright violation, the violation usually helps sharing. So the comparison is a bit meaningless.

The original piece of code is left unchanged. The author can share it as much as they want.

You certainly can ask people if they want to share their own work. You can't take it for granted that people have a moral obligation to share the products of their labor. People might say if you don't agree with the license "then stop using GPL code", similar to how someone might say "then stop using copyrighted music/movies/games". It seems to me, that these statements are equivalent, but the attitudes of people are not the same.

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#55

Post by yellowapple »

ksk wrote: post #49
quadrangle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are totally different. The way Music/Movies work usually it's "don't f-ing share this, you need permission". The GPL is "we require that you share and provide freedoms to others" In other words, copyright is usually used to block people from being good sharing neighbors. GPL requires sharing. Not sharing is wrong. So, copyright for music is against the natural tendency to be a good neighbor and people rightly bl…

Not everyone shares your particular idea of what a bad and good citizen is.

I'm pretty sure a significant majority would agree that generosity is an important trait for a good citizen, however. An unwillingness to share makes someone look more like an asshole.

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#56

Post by yellowapple »

simosx wrote: post #21
scott00 wrote: post #8

Seems like pretty blatant and long-lived violations. Anybody know why somebody doesn't take them to court and try to get an import ban, monetary damages, or both? If the punishment for blatantly violating the GPL or LGPL for years at a time while raking in millions of dollars in profits is getting bitched at on the internet, it seems likely to me that a lot of companies will do the cost-benefit analysis and decide th…

If there is any LGPL code in that library, then it can be separated into a secondary library. And the licensing issue could get resolved (in new versions). It would be great if the code of that library (hardware acceleration for audio/video decoding/encoding) was released with an open license. I hope it happens. What is sad, is that the OP in the Google Group thread is using the "bitch about it hard and loud" strateg…

While I agree that it would be ideal if being nice and diplomatic will fix things, I'm personally a bit of a pessimist, and am with Luc on this.

Working with companies like this is often like working with young children. Usually, calmly saying "please don't do that" doesn't work (and, indeed, doesn't appear to be working with Allwinner after 4 years of pointing out GPL violations); you have to make it plain and clear that what the child / company is doing is bad behavior, and that it's making you or someone else upset.

I'd be more inclined to take your side on this and criticize Luc if Allwinner actually had a good track record of responding immediately and adequately to such (L)GPL violations. From what I can tell, however, neither have been the case, and I therefore completely understand (and even agree with) Luc's visible hostility.

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#57

Post by ksk »

yellowapple wrote: post #55
ksk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone shares your particular idea of what a bad and good citizen is.

I'm pretty sure a significant majority would agree that generosity is an important trait for a good citizen, however. An unwillingness to share makes someone look more like an asshole.

A programmer deciding not to share the fruits of their own labor does NOT make them an asshole. The thread is about Copyright and GPL code, not everything-in-the-entire-world-that-can-be-shared.

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#58

Post by briandh »

ausjke wrote: post #19

Allwinner is the rare, if not the only SOC ARM chip vendor, from China that sort of embraced Linux/GPL/LGPL in a public way to some extent. The rest of those similar companies does pretty much nothing meaningful at all, they use Linux too, just no public release whatsoever. In that sense, it's the least evil as far as GPL violation goes.

AMLogic seems to be decent, though I haven't had to delve into it personally so I can't say for sure how complete their source releases are. See here, for instance: http://openlinux.amlogic.com:8000/download/ARM/

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#59

Post by pseudonom- »

simosx wrote: post #24
lfam wrote: post #15

Allwinner's SOCs are popular as Raspberry Pi-ish single-board computers for hobbyist Linux users who want a dirt-cheap home server. What are some alternatives that have better track records with the GPL?

As far as I understand, until recently Allwinner has been doing kernel development with sole focus to get Android shipped as fast as possible. It is a fact that they did not work to get mainline Linux support for their SoCs. Developing for mainline might be slower but in the long-run it's better and even cheaper. I think that they are seeing this now. You can check the slides at https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event…

> It is a fact that they did not work to get mainline Linux support for their SoCs.

Though it is possible. I got mainline Linux running on an A10.

Re: Allwinner GPL violations

#60

Post by mkesper »

mwcampbell wrote: post #20
lfam wrote: post #15

Allwinner's SOCs are popular as Raspberry Pi-ish single-board computers for hobbyist Linux users who want a dirt-cheap home server. What are some alternatives that have better track records with the GPL?

I'd suggest looking at the ODROID boards from Hardkernel ( http://www.hardkernel.com/ ).

Rather not: http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=9639 I bought one assuming the openness status was better, but https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ looks better, sadly.
Post reply on HN