During the last Intellectual Property and New Media lecture we discussed about the GNU Public License (GPL). This is one of the most widely used licenses for open-source software which protects everybody's right to use, copy and modify free software. However there are plenty of companies taking advantage of open-source software and violating the GPL license because it's an easy way to profit and gain credit from the work of others.Even though GPL has been around since 1989 only recently (after 2000) the first court cases in connection with GPL have emerged. This is probably due to the fact that open-source programmers are not the kind of people to take big name companies and their armies of lawyers to court. Needless to say that making GPL software is not going to make you a millionaire and there is no profit to be made from protecting the GNU Public License in court. This is usually enough to scare lawyers away from taking on a pro-GPL case. However there are a selected few who DO have the time, resources and willingness to fight in the name of free software. Harald Welte and Armijn Hemel are members of this elite group and they are the lone sheriffs in the very wild west of open-source software planes. Luckily they have the courts on their side.
Welte founded gpl-violations.org a website that is dedicated to "gathering, maintaining and distributing information about people who use and distribute GPL licensed free software without adhering to the license terms." The project has successfully resolved over 100 GPL infringement cases both in and out of court. Some of the more well-known court cases have been fought in Germany against D-Link (read the English translation of the verdict here) and Sitecom (unofficial English translation of the verdict also available). News of these cases have echoed around the Internet because GPL related court cases are VERY rare. Most of gpl-violations.org cases have also been resolved outside the court room.
However gpl-violations.org was not the first one to take GPL rights to court. In 2002 MySQL AB along with The Free Software Foundation's chief legal counsel, Eben Moglen, made history by taking Progress Software Corporation to court because of GPL license infringement. In this case Progress was selling a proprietary software product called Gemini that was linked to MySQL's open-source code licenced under GPL. You can read more about the case from a lawyers point of view in the FindLaw article by Laura A. Majerus. The Register also has a news article regarding the case.
But it's not always the pro bono freedom fighters who file suit against profit-hungry corporations. In a very amusing case Daniel Wallace actually sued the Free Software Foundation (the organization behind GPL) for price fixing in 2005. Wallace claimed that by fixing the price of software at 0.- the GPL license was restricting fair trade and prohibiting competitive business practices. It's no surprise that the case was dismissed without prejudice. Nevertheless Wallace was not deterred. He consequently filed 4 amended complaints which were all dismissed. With the dismissal of his last appeal on 20/03/2006 the court ordered him to pay the FSF's legal costs.
This is where any sensible person would realize their foolishness and quietly walk away... but not Wallace. It would seem that the concept of open-source software as a "good thing" was still beyond his reach. In 2006 he filed another lawsuit against IBM, Novell, and Red Hat claiming that they profit from the distribution of open-source software (especially Linux) and were therefore engaging in anticompetitive price fixing. Yet again he failed in his quest to expose the "conspiracy" because the courts dismissed his case... but he STILL kept on trying and filed an appeal in the Seventh Circuit Appeal Court where his case was heard in front of three judges who YET AGAIN dismissed him due to a number of problems with his complaint. Chief Judge Easterbrook definitively stated that "[t]he GPL and open-source software have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws."
For further in depth analysis regarding this comical case I recommend reading The Register's article titled "Free software still legal - judge". After reading about Wallace and his epic court battles it's no wonder that he has a Wikipedia entry in his name.
As far as I understand all court cases in connection with the GNU Public License have been ruled in favor of open-source software and it's principles. This is surely a clear sign that GPL is a good way to protect free software. I'm not saying that it's perfect but if it's good enough to hold up in a court of law then it's good enough for me. If anybody reading this posting has other information I would greatly appreciate it if they would care to share their thoughts in the comments.
My only fear is that with the increasing amount of open-source code the number of companies exploiting the open-source community will overwhelm the small number of lawyers willing to fight against them in a court of law. Hopefully every case won for the GPL team will make it easier for others to protect the principles of free software.
(GNU logo from www.gnu.org)
6 comments:
This reminded me of the recent Blendernation article article on people selling Blender (an Open Source 3D package).
The weird thing is, while this causes much anger from the community, there's really nothing wrong with that, legaly speaking.
The GPL essentially says you can do anything under the license, as long as you always make the source code available freely. It protects the code, not the author (whatever that means).
So the only mistake so many GPL violators have made is not publish the source.
D-link messed up. But for example, Cisco/Linksys plays by the rules.
Apple uses a lot of GPL-based projects in their OS (notably gcc, Samba, CUPS and OpenSSL) but you never really realize it (and quite frankly, why should you?). But the source is actually all there. Notice that they also have their own Open Source license - the APSL and that GPL and FreeBSD licenses are just marked as "Other". :/
And I would bet that many violations aren't even deliberate. The GPL is such a "viral license" that it's very easy to do something you're not supposed to. Like the MySQL example, I wouldn've done the exact same mistake. Basically every MySQL client that uses MySQL's own libraries, should be open source.
Btw, there was an interview about GPL 3.0 with Eben Moglen on FLOSS weekly.
... just my 0.02 EUR
"Registered users may download source code and software covered by the Apple Public Source License. Please enter your Apple ID and password. If you don't already have an Apple ID, please create one at myinfo.apple.com."
:(
Great post, Jaan!
Hi to Filipp, I guess we'll meet in Nosturi on 28th April ;)
ivo, yeah, like I said, most of it's under Apple's own license.
The 28'th? Clutch is on the 25'th.
Yes, but why do you need a logon if its supposed to be open?
Sorry, 25th is correct!
Thanks for the comments Filipp! Yes, it's completely legal to selle GPL software if somebody wants to buy it from you (like Red Hat does wit Linux). I see no problem with companies like Red Hat because they are selling not only the software but the whole solution including service & support. The latter is actually the thing you are paying for... not a packaged software product. This is the right way of doing business and that's why companies like Red Hat have become successful.
The Blender incidents mentioned by Filipp involves people selling GPL software on eBay... well this is of course the wrong way of doing business. But then again you won't be cashing in a lot of revenue based on such a business model. I wouldn't worry about them much.
But I do have problem with companies who incorporate GPL software in their own products but refuse to acknowledge this and don't give anything back to the open-source community.
Apple doesn't hide the fact that they use GPL code and they support the open-source community by making the code along with a lot of documentation freely available. You do need and Apple ID, as Ivo mentioned, to download the source code but you can make this in a few minutes.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html
:)
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