Munich Court Again Enforces GPL 311
BrianWCarver writes "Despite earlier concerns reported on Slashdot that the GPL might be particularly difficult to enforce in Germany, that country's courts now hold the distinction of having enforced it twice. The first enforcement came in 2004 when Harald Welte of the netfilter/iptables core team sought to enjoin Sitecom from distributing its WL-122 router, which used netfilter's GPL'd code, without also providing the source code and a copy of the GPL, as that license requires. The Munich Court granted Welte a preliminary injunction and then upheld that injunction (Court's decision in English pdf) and now Sitecom provides the source code from their website. Welte, who also now runs gpl-violations.org to track GPL violations, and who personally handed over warning letters at Cebit to companies not in compliance with the GPL, reported on his blog today that he has obtained a new preliminary injunction enforcing the GPL, this time against Fortinet for distributing their firewall products (FortiGate and FortiWiFi) that include GPL'd code while Fortinet refuses to release the source. Congratulations again to Welte and his attorneys!"
mirror of pdf (Score:4, Informative)
The rest, you can find on your own.
Re:Good news, but we need some US court rulings 1s (Score:4, Informative)
DrewTech vs SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers)
DrewTech developed some GPL code, and SAE said that they owned it and refused to release the source, and were charging money for it.
SAE gave up on their claims of ownership and released the source.
I feel it's more of an issue of the SAE debating the origin of the code than actually contesting the GPL, though.
Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Informative)
I think you mean you'd just as soon eat a copy of Windows XP
Cute "Dept" Tag (Score:2, Informative)
Before the naysayers say GPL is anti-business (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't mind releasing source and contributing changes/improvements back to the community, you can use the code for free. But, if you want to create a closed-source/proprietary project, you can buy a license that allows it. MySQL does this [mysql.com].
The GPL does not create an anti-business environment in and of itself. It merely a licensing option that can be part of a portfolio of licensing options developers make available to those who want to use their code.
- Greg
Re:Preliminary Injunctions are not enforcement (Score:3, Informative)
Here [slashdot.org] you can find a Slashdot story about a German court ruling upholding an older injunction in a similar matter.
Now I'm not an expert on German law, but this sure sounds like a proper upholding in a trial to me.
Interpretation (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how the FUDmeisters at C|Net translate the exact same story:
Shadow over open sourcei ctory/2100-7344_3-5671209.html?tag=nefd.lede [com.com]
German court ruling halts shipments of one company's Linux wares; license spat could soon hit U.S
http://news.com.com/Linux+programmer+wins+legal+v
Re:nice try (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mod ME up, I can TYPE Münich (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, I live here (in MUC -- the city, not the airport). I'm not from here. See some of my earlier posts or the "journal".
Anyway, German courts are really screwy. A decision in one court does not necessarily influence another court at the same, higher or even lower level. Just because the high court in the state of Sachsen finds A, B and C, it doesn't mean that the Bavarian high court is bound to accept that as precedent.
Precedent don't mean dick here. Not even when the Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, similar to SCOTUS) hands down a decision. It's kind of freaky, really.
woof.
Re:Free != free (Score:3, Informative)
c|net changed the story? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So, basically (Score:3, Informative)
Well, because the primary thing the GPL wants you as the user to be able to have is the ability to modify and share. Without copyright, you would always be able to modify any software you had a copy of, and you would be free to share that software -- with or without your modifications -- with anyone you chose. So without copyright the primary rights the GPL grants to you would be available all the time. The case we have here of a company taking free code and making it proprietary (i.e. taking away your rights) simply could not happen.
In this sense the statement that without copyright the GPL would not be needed is true.
Now, just because you would have the right to modify and distribute, say, Photoshop, doesn't mean you would have the source code to Photoshop. it would be perfectly legal to disassemble/decompile Photoshop and distribute the result, but that's not exactly the same thing. This is a big benefit of the GPL that you wouldn't get automatically without copyright. On the other hand, in the current situation we don't have the right to modify Photoshop at all.
Now, not having copyright may not mean that we wouldn't have source code. First off, the whole proprietary model of selling individual copies that must therefore be protected would die overnight. Since decompiling, disassembly, and outright copying of blocks of code would be legal, there would be very little reason to try to prevent it by hiding your source code. In fact I think it wouldn't take long in a copyright-free world for people to expect source code so that they could more easily perform their completely legal modifications/redistributions.
That's just speculation, though. I'm in favor of copyright in its original limited form, and the GPL requirements for source work well with that. I think it's a positive thing. But on the other hand, if copyright went away entirely I don't think it would be that bad either, even (especially) from a free software perspective.
Re:c|net changed the story? CNET:only the headline (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Interpretation--story author replies (Score:5, Informative)
We need more guys like Welte (Score:4, Informative)
"Without access to the underlying source code, Welte often has to work hard to find out if GPL software is used in a product. In Fortinet's case, the use of GPL software was unusually difficult to verify, because the company had encrypted it, Welte said. It took 40 hours of work to ferret out the information, he said."
And finally, the just reward.
"The court said Fortinet would have to pay a fine of five to 250,000 euros and that employees would face up to 6 months imprisonment for violation of the injunction. In addition, the company is responsible for Welte's legal fees. "
I can't wait to see more of these cases here in the US so that we can slowly build a nice stack of precedents that will serve to solidify even further the legal standing of the GPL.
Some interesting differences. (Score:5, Informative)
You know of a number of GPL'ed projects which distribute under the GPL or a proprietary [gnu.org] license. The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a commercial license because business is done under this license. GPL-covered works are distributed for a fee. The GPL is in no way anti-business. Ironically, I've pointed out some significant ways in which the open source movement fails to speak to business interests as well as free software speaks to all computer users (the open source definition ignores any requirement for private derivatives, for instance).
The free software movement does not want to be confused with the open source movement and the open source movement works hard to distance themselves from freedom talk. Please reconsider trying to conflate the real and important differences between the two movements [gnu.org]. The open source movement deserves far less credit than it receives with regard to the GNU GPL, considering they had nothing to do with writing it, building a community around it, and that the open source movement doesn't frame anything in terms of software freedom. Their work in bringing people to freedom is to be commended, but I think when associating a movement with the license (particularly in an article focusing on the license itself), it's important that we give credit to the FSF and associate it with the free software movement.