Bell, SuperMicro Sued Over GPL

Markus Toth writes "The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite. The suits allege that Bell Microproducts and SuperMicro Computer each violated redistribution stipulations of the GNU General Public License (GPL).The Bell Microproducts suit pertains to the Hammer MyShare NAS (network-attached storage) appliance, which is sold by Bell's Hammer Storage division. I was the one who alerted the busybox developers about the GPL violation after providing a script for disassembling the firmware and instructions about mounting the contained initrd. As you see in my first post at the gpl-violations.org mailing lists where I posted all mails that I sent to and received from Hammer Storage, they refused to provide me the GPL sources several times. Looks like they will have to provide them soon; I will post any updates in the nas-central blog."

How stupid can you get?

I assume someone had to go and evaluate the software for inclusion in the product. Is is that hard to whack a tarball onto a server and give out the link.

We hear so many of these large companies have problems with this. Why?

Fear.

Fear that your competition will download it and leap-frog all "your" development "efforts" by using "your" code in their device.

I'm serious. If they UNDERSTOOD the process, they would ANNOUNCE that it was GPL'd and that anyone who wanted to could modify it or add features, etc.

Just like LinkSys found with their wireless routers.

Re:Fear.

If another company uses your code to make their product better, they're still bound by the GPL. Thus, once you have their source code in hand, you're in a nice position to leapfrog their development.

Re:Fear.

And that's exactly why open source is so powerful.

Re:How stupid can you get?

The GPL isn't an easy to read document

From this I presume that you have never tried to read a typical redistribution license for a commercial software library.

Re:How stupid can you get?

What's so hard to read about the GPL? It's a whole lot easier to read and comprehend than your average commercial software license. If a company's lawyers are expected to routinely understand complex contracts running close to a hundred pages of dense legalese, why should they have any trouble whatsoever with the GPL?

Re:How stupid can you get?

The GPL isn't an easy to read document

Reading is hard, yo! they have like, long words 'n shit!

Seriously, the GPL is about as simple as it gets. It has to be written in legalese so it's going to be a bit obfuscated no matter what, but come on. It's actually in some of the plainest English I've seen in a legal document.

Of course, you do have to understand some technical terms to read it, and people have deliberately fucked around with the meaning of those terms, and tried to get around the GPL in other ways, so now we have a new version. (Or do we? Is that thing out or what? Was the plan for the GPLv3 to dither until no one cared if it was changed all along?)

That is part of the reason why a lot of companies work with BDS Licenesed code, there are less legal reprocussions from using it.

Or, you know, BSD licensed code. Go fingers, cutwhatchyalike. Seriously though, there's no nasty legal repercussions to GPL code if you just make the whole thing GPL. It's when you start closing parts of it that you have problems. Of course a lot of companies don't want to operate that way. But the cost of saving all that time is helping others save time. You can still differentiate on the copyrighted parts of the product (case design, web interface, et cetera.)

For those that use this...

For those that use this as a reason to NOT use the GPL...

What would have happened if they instead used a copy of WinNT4.0 without paying Microsoft? Microsoft would want blood, and would extract it via the BSA.

The creators of Busybox just want you to host the changes you've done to it. They wanted no money.

In other words: What would $proprietary_software_manufacturer do?

Re:For those that use this...

It's only restrictive depending if you are a coder vs end user.

If Im an end user, I can install it anywhere, copy it anywhere, give it to my friends without worry, hack it.... The list goes on.

Most of the restrictions only exist to ensure community efforts. After all, you got it for free, so submit your changes you sell for free.

Re:For those that use this...

Because proprietary software producers would be just as bad, or likely worse, does not mean that the GPL is always the best solution, since it is still a restrictive license.

Well, then if you don't like the license, don't use the software. Using GPL software against the terms of the license because you couldn't find any other free code to use is hardly an excuse.

If you can find BSD or public domain code that allows you to re-use it and not have to write it, go ahead. If you can't, then either write it yourself, or quit whining that it's unfair you can't use the GPL stuff without adhering to the terms because it cramps your business model.

A lot of companies just figure they can have the best of both worlds -- get the OSS stuff because it already does most of what they want, and then treat it as proprietary software they won't tell you anything about.

As the GP said -- this isn't about software released under the GPL or if people should use it. This is about companies trying to get something for free.

Cheers

Re:For those that use this...

I still see this as a reason not to use GPL, preferring instead to use BSD-style licensed software or public domain software whenever possible.

Again, I'd say this isn't a problem with the GPL.

It's a problem with commercial entities trying to use the GPLd software without abiding by the rules.

If you can find some BSD/public domain code which does what you need, fine. If you can't, that doesn't mean you should be able to just take the GPL software -- it means you should write your own.

I don't really see a problem with companies avoiding GPL software because of the license. That doesn't reflect badly on the GPL, it reflects badly on companies who are trying to do an end-run around the license.

Cheers

Slavery - Freedom To Take Freedom

The GPL only restricts your freedom in a way similar to laws that prohibit slavery are restricting your freedom to take slaves. The GPL only takes away your freedom to take away the freedom of your users and the original authors of your code.

Source not posted?

Are the files at the bottom of
http://www.hammer-storage.com/support/software_updates.asp
not the right stuff?

Better late than never

From the download page on their site:

myshare Source Files

The myshare source files are made available under various open source code licenses, including the GNU General Public License (GPL). Please review the license terms included with each download for the rights, obligations and restrictions associated with the open source file.
Installation instructions
title / description download posted release notes

Myshare Home v.1 GPL Source Code
        47.6 MB 06/11/08

Myshare Home v.2 GPL Source Code
        158.1 06/11/08

Myshare Office v.2 GPL Source Code
        220.8 MB 06/11/08

Looks like they just got them up last week (apparently 5 months after the GPL-Violations post).

-Rick

Re:Better late than never

I'd just like to add that the 11th was two days after the lawsuit was filed.

From the article:

The lawsuits announced today were both filed June 9 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Re:Better late than never

Which goes to show: a lawsuit is far more powerful than the saber rattling of an anonymous e-mailer with bad grammar.

Just think, with proper grammar and some respect, Markus might have been able to motivate Mr. Vang to be a bit more interested in meeting the requirements of using GPL code. This whole thing might have been resolved with out lining the pockets of more lawyers.

-Rick

Re:Better late than never

It's too bad they already lost their rights under the GPL. Once the suit is filed the SFLC won't accept just publishing the source. To get distribution rights back is going to cost them some cash to cover SFLC's costs in addition to some punitive costs to make sure they remember never to do it again.

Re:Better late than never

And 9 days before it got Duped on slashdot.

-Rick

Why NOT hand out the source? Its an app.

Can anyone shed any light on why companies repeatedly do this with Busybox?

I can sort of understand their motivation (if not their ethics/commercial sense!) if they've got a highly modified Lunix kernel where they've made extensive changes to the networking stack to enable their "unique" feature or similar, but why with Busybox? Surely the path of least resistance is just to make the tar ball available (or realise, you've stuffed up, and start making the offer and send any that ask the tarball to play catch-up). Are any of these guys really making proprietary improvements with amazing IP involved to Busybox? It seems an unlikely place to do it..

Maybe they've ported it to the latest tiniest CPU, but they still get a time to market advantage their (particularly versus producing Busybox like functionality from scratch!), but even that seems unlikely to be worth fighting hard when you'll quickly realise you'll lose.

Why go to the hassle?

I suspect that this probably boils down to default policies and a lack of understanding of the GPL more than anything, sadly. By default most companies would have a "We don't make available ANY of our IP unnecessarily" and that hasn't yet gelled with the GPL. No one wants to stand up and make the call that compiling Busybox didn't involved much of the companies IP, and releasing the source is an obligation.. The people involved with the IP aren't the same people that make the 'legal' calls and so companies come across with these silly positions..

--Q

Re:Understandable response...

I didn't realize that the GPL allowed you to deny source code to someone on the basis of poor grammar or the use of a pseudonym. Oh wait...

Re:Understandable response...

It's section 37, right below the part about defacing pictures of the poor, innocent GNU in its natural habitat.

Re:Funny thing about GPL

The people who wrote it are always complaining about there being too many lawsuits, yet they engage in the same activity that they critisize.

This just in: The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy [gnu.org].

Besides which, the complaints about lawsuits typically have less to do with quantity and more to do with quality. Otherwise the discussion threads would be much shorter.

All I've got to say

GNU more Mr. Nice Guy...

*Pulls on asbestos undies*

Re:Maybe I'm wrong...

No, you're not being pedantic, you're being wrong. To quote from the GPL v2, section 3b (which covers distribution of source for binaries which were distributed without accompanying source), the vendor must:

Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;

Notice that the offer does not say the vendor must give only people who bought their product the source code. It says they must give any third party the code. Now, under section 3a the vendor only has to give the code to people who receive the product, but 3a pertains to the vendor distributing the source code with the product itself. If they don't include the source code with the binaries, 3a doesn't apply. And since it's not a non-commercial distribution, 3c doesn't apply either.

Re:what product does supermicro use BB in ?

According to the complaint [slashdot.org], SuperMicro's "AOC-SIM1U+ IPMI 2.0 System Management Card" contins BusyBox; and while SuperMicro supplied the source, they did not supply

the "scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable" and therefore did not constitute "complete and corresponding source code" within the meaning of the license.

Sounds a little thin to me.