Does The GPL Still Matter?

from the expired-license? dept

The GNU General Public License heads to court again today, as Skype attempts to defend its distribution of Linux-enabled SMC hardware handsets that appear to be in violation of the operating system's open source license. It's easy to guess why Skype is fighting the suit, which was brought by GPL activists: the company relies on a proprietary protocol, and releasing the code could give competitors an advantage. You can't blame them for trying. Although in the past few years the GPL has made important strides in establishing its legal enforceability, it's still conceivable that a court could find something wrong with its unusual, viral nature.

Few think that this will be the court case that makes or breaks the GPL. Skype's already lost early rounds of this fight, and the claims it's now making seem so broad as to imply desperation. Besides, the case is being tried in the German legal system, which to date has proven friendly to the GPL.

But even if the license was invalidated, either in this case or another, there's an argument to be made that the GPL has already served its purpose. Its impact on the world of open source software is undeniable: by ensuring that an open project would remain open, the license encouraged programmers to contribute to projects without fear of their work being coopted by commercial interests. And by making it difficult, if not impossible, for a project derived from a GPLed project to go closed-source, it encouraged many programmers to license their efforts under open terms when they otherwise might not have.

But today, with open source firmly established as a cultural and commercial force, the GPL's relevance may be waning. The transition to the third version of the license left many in the open source community upset and intent on sticking with its earlier incarnations. And an increasing number of very high profile projects, like Mozilla, Apache and Open Office, have seen fit to create their own licenses or employ the less restrictive LGPL. The raw numbers bear out the idea of a slight decline in the GPL's prominence, too: Wikipedia lists the percentage of GPLed projects on Sourceforge.net and Freshmeat.net, two large open source software repositories, as 68% and 65%, respectively, as of November '03 and January '06. Today, the most recently available numbers show that Sourceforge's share has fallen to 65%, and Freshmeat's share has fallen to to 62%.

This is, of course, a small decline, and the GPL remains the world's most popular open source license by a considerable margin. But it does seem as though there may be a slowly decreasing appetite for the license's militant approach to copyleft ideals. I certainly don't wish Skype well in its probably-quixotic tilt at the GPL, but if they were to somehow get lucky at least they'd be doing so at a point in the open source movement's history when the GPL is decreasingly essential.

Filed Under: gpl, licenses, open source
Companies: skype

Why The RIAA May Want To Side With Open Source Developers In France

from the what-is-distribution-anyway? dept

We all know that the RIAA has been pushing for a certain definition of what constitutes "distribution" online these days (which the courts are still in flux over). An anonymous reader points to a case in France that the RIAA may want to pay attention to -- where it may find itself siding with some strange bedfellows: open source developers. Apparently, some of open source developers have sued the large French ISP Free/Iliad for failing to offer up the software used in the 3 million routers that customers use, despite the fact that it includes GPLed software (which requires that any software you distribute also be available to others for free). The ISP has responded by claiming that it hasn't actually distributed the software, since the routers are still officially a part of its own network -- and therefore the software doesn't have to be offered up.

In other words, simply giving the routers to users doesn't count as distribution in his definition -- which would certainly go against the RIAA's "making available is distribution" claim). However, as the link above suggests, it could get even worse. If you follow the same definition that Free/Iliad is making, then an ISP could purchase a site license for certain applications or content and then let everyone on its "network" access it, since it wouldn't be "distributing" it. Thus, suddenly, it may be in the RIAA's best interest to side with a bunch of open source developers before the definition of "distribute" in France gets defined in a way that the RIAA wouldn't much appreciate.

Filed Under: distribution, france, gpl, open source, riaa

MPAA Takes University Toolkit Offline For GPL Violation

from the whoops dept

Remember last week how the MPAA was pushing a ridiculous toolkit on universities that was officially supposed to help universities track network usage, but also had the side-effect of potentially exposing all sorts of private info? Well, some folks noticed that the toolkit was built on open source technologies, such as Ubuntu Linux, though the MPAA (irony alert) didn't appear to be abiding by the GPL license associated with the software. It didn't take long for an Ubuntu developer to send a takedown notice, forcing the university to remove the toolkit. The developer contacted the MPAA concerning the violations, and found that the group ignored him (shocking, I know, for a group that claims it's such a huge supporter of intellectual property rights). So, he was forced to go to the ISP hosting the content, which finally resulted in the MPAA pulling the software down. This isn't the first time, by the way, that the MPAA has decided that it was okay to ignore intellectual property rules when it suits the organization, but it does suggest that for all its talk of having a principled stand on the issue, it's all a bunch of hogwash.

Filed Under: gpl, toolkit
Companies: mpaa

Lawsuit Tests The Legal Status Of The GPL

from the license-or-contract dept

On Wednesday, the Software Freedom Law Center filed a lawsuit to enforce the GPL against a company that has been distributing GPL-derived software without disclosing the source code, as the GPL requires. The SFLC says this is the first US copyright infringement lawsuit it has ever filed for infringement of the GPL. Traditionally, SFLC head Eben Moglen has worked to settle disputes with companies without going to court. But in this case the lawsuit was filed less than a month after SFLC first contacted the defendant, Monsoon Multimedia, about its violation of the license. Luis Villa suggests a couple of possible reasons they moved so quickly. One is that Monsoon failed to respond to the SFLC's letters, leaving them little choice but to go to court. Another factor is the recent Jacobsen decision, which called into question the enforceability of open source software licenses. The SFLC may have felt its chances of winning on appeal were not as good with the Jacobsen case, which is more complicated and involves a less popular license. And so instead of appealing Jacobsen, they may have fast-tracked a case they believe will make it more likely they'll win on appeal.

This will be an important case because it will help clarify the legal status of the GPL and other copyleft licenses. The Free Software Foundation argues that the GPL is a license, and that any violation of the GPL results in copyright infringement. That would entitle the authors of GPLed software not only to monetary damages but also to prohibit further use of the software by the infringing party. But other legal scholars think the GPL may be interpreted as a contract, in which case only monetary damages would be available. And because GPLed software is given away for free, it's an open question how those damages would be calculated. It's conceivable that a judge could hold that the proper amount of monetary damages is zero since the software is being given away for free. The SFLC is clearly trying to avoid that outcome by emphasizing that the software in question is sold by "more than 100 manufacturers all over the world, including IBM, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, and Siemens."

Filed Under: gpl
Companies: sflc