French Court Issues Damages Award For Violation of GPL (heathermeeker.com) 52
Some news from "Copyleft Currents", the blog of open-source/IP lawyer Heather Meeker:
On February 14, 2024, the Court of Appeal of Paris issued an order stating that Orange, a major French telecom provider, had infringed the copyight of Entr'Ouvert's Lasso software and violated the GPL.
They ordered Orange to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for moral damages.
This case has been ongoing for many years. Entr'ouvert is the publisher of Lasso, a reference library for the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) protocol, an open standard for identity providers to authenticate users and pass authentication tokens to online services. This is the open protocol that enables single sign-on (SSO). The Lasso product is dual licensed by Entr'Ouvert under GPL or commercial licenses.
In 2005, Orange won a contract with the French Agency for the Development of Electronic Administration to develop parts of the service-public.fr portal, which allows users to interact online with the government for administrative procedures. Orange used the Lasso software in the solution, but did not pass on the rights to its modifications free of charge under GPL, or make the source code to its modifications available. Entr'Ouvert sued Orange in 2010, and the case wended its way through the courts, turning on, among other things, issues of proof of Entr'Ouvert 's copyright interest in the software, and whether the case properly sounded in breach of contract or copyright infringement...
The compensatory damages were based on both lost profits of the plaintiff and disgorgement of profits of Orange. Moral damages compensate the plaintiff for harm to reputation or other non-monetary injury.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
They ordered Orange to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for moral damages.
This case has been ongoing for many years. Entr'ouvert is the publisher of Lasso, a reference library for the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) protocol, an open standard for identity providers to authenticate users and pass authentication tokens to online services. This is the open protocol that enables single sign-on (SSO). The Lasso product is dual licensed by Entr'Ouvert under GPL or commercial licenses.
In 2005, Orange won a contract with the French Agency for the Development of Electronic Administration to develop parts of the service-public.fr portal, which allows users to interact online with the government for administrative procedures. Orange used the Lasso software in the solution, but did not pass on the rights to its modifications free of charge under GPL, or make the source code to its modifications available. Entr'Ouvert sued Orange in 2010, and the case wended its way through the courts, turning on, among other things, issues of proof of Entr'Ouvert 's copyright interest in the software, and whether the case properly sounded in breach of contract or copyright infringement...
The compensatory damages were based on both lost profits of the plaintiff and disgorgement of profits of Orange. Moral damages compensate the plaintiff for harm to reputation or other non-monetary injury.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
Don't infringe copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people criticize the GPL by saying it makes companies wary of incorporating GPL code in their own. This is a feature, not a bug.
If you're making proprietary software, you shouldn't be sticking someone else's code in it without a license. Duh.
Just like you wouldn't try to do that with code from Windows or Photoshop, don't try to get away with doing it with code from Linux or Lasso.
The copyleft provision of the GPL originates in RMS's belief that all proprietary software is inherently unethical. The GPL is hostile to the existence of proprietary software and has the intent of making it a thing of the past.
Re:Don't infringe copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
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And that's what makes the whole copyright and AI complex. All the cases against OpenAI are relying on copyright because that's the essential heart of it.
If AI reads in text and spits out text, is it copyrighted? If not, then open-source as it is, will die because there's an open loophole to bypass copyright infringement.
But if it is copyrightable, then AI companies probably need to start obtaining licenses for the work they read in, and may even need to be careful how those licenses work. Because some licen
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This would require AI to be copyrighted. All that protects AI at the moment is that the models aren't accessible. For the models you can download no copyright applies.
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> then the source code (architecture+weights) for your AI must be made available to
> anyone who interacts with it.
We already have something like that, and I've used it for my own images (mostly posted
to Usenet) for about ten years;
Free Art License 1.3
http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/
I wish
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It doesn't work like that, merely publishing an image would not require access to the source code, for it to apply you would also need to publish your image "source code"
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Psychos think if they can take something and not get caught then they have the right to take the thing.
I'm no fan of IP but the same applies to looters.
Maybe GPL violations are white-collar looting.
No doubt Orange would scream if their code was "stolen".
Too bad the damages are equal to sharing one mp3 file and the holder wasted 14 years to get trivial justice
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Psychos think if they can take something and not get caught then they have the right to take the thing.
I'm no fan of IP but the same applies to looters.
Maybe GPL violations are white-collar looting.
No doubt Orange would scream if their code was "stolen".
Too bad the damages are equal to sharing one mp3 file and the holder wasted 14 years to get trivial justice
"You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way."
A copyleft violation is not taking, stealing, or looting any more than failure to forward a chain letter can be.
The whole point is it's FREE and you need to pay it forward. Not doing so can be a lot of things, it cannot be theft.
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Psychos think if they can take something and not get caught then they have the right to take the thing.
Such as movies, songs, and software where everyone is entitled to take what they want without compensating the owner.
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The copyleft provision of the GPL originates in RMS's belief that all proprietary software is inherently unethical. The GPL is hostile to the existence of proprietary software and has the intent of making it a thing of the past.
proprietary software hasn't done a good job of making the case against this, judging by how the EU governance has to step in to make competing app store possible on a proprietary OS, among countless other proprietary measures that are hostile towards users
Re:Don't infringe copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people criticize the GPL by saying it makes companies wary of incorporating GPL code in their own. This is a feature, not a bug.
If you're making proprietary software, you shouldn't be sticking someone else's code in it without a license. Duh.
Just like you wouldn't try to do that with code from Windows or Photoshop, don't try to get away with doing it with code from Linux or Lasso.
The copyleft provision of the GPL originates in RMS's belief that all proprietary software is inherently unethical. The GPL is hostile to the existence of proprietary software and has the intent of making it a thing of the past.
That runs counter to everything in https://www.gnu.org/philosophy... [gnu.org]
Notably:
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
And https://opensource.org/osd [opensource.org]
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open source software.
RMS/GNU do make their position on distributing nonfree software to users clear, and that is OK. There is absolutely nothing wrong with MAKING OR USING proprietary software with free software any way you want. Not all is meant to be shared with the world, and you should understand that. They also make it clear that commercializing software is OK. The next point I want to make is that the ideology that using a program by dynamically linking it, or depending on it in any way necessarily makes it a derivative work subject to copy left is intellectually dishonest hypocritical overreaching bullshit and always has been. If all of inspecting, using, replacing, distributing, etc. the free components are available to the users, who or what is harmed by that?
For that matter, how does directly including a snippet of "free" code inside a "nonfree" program harm ANYONE?
Apache/BSD/MIT any day of the week. Fuck GPL.
Re: Don't infringe copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is: they chose to use this software, knowing it was under the GPL. They also had the alternative of a commercial license, but again they *chose* not to do that.
You don't have to like the GPL. It doesn't change the fact that this company is effectively a thief. The shame is that this spent 14 years in court, for what should be an obvious decision.
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You don't have to like the GPL. It doesn't change the fact that this company is effectively a thief.
No they're not. Nothing was taken. It's only code. Everything is still availabe for anyone else to use. No theft has taken place.
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The changes they made, were not available to anyone.
Hence the court case.
So they stole from everyone who used/bought their software.
Idiot very much?
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You don't have to like the GPL. It doesn't change the fact that this company is effectively a thief.
No they're not. Nothing was taken. It's only code. Everything is still availabe for anyone else to use. No theft has taken place.
That is a self-consistent position. But then no copyright infringement is theft. And while self-consistent, the position is unfortunately very inconsistent with how basically all large copyright holders and industry groups use language. So for me, your claim is borderline dishonest unless you make it clear that your interpretation applies broadly.
Also, of course. the OP wrote "effectively a thief", not "literally a thief". The first is arguably true, in that the company profited from illegally appropriat
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If you're making proprietary software, you shouldn't be sticking someone else's code in it without a license.
I can't afford a license. That's why I incorporate whatever code I want. It's not like I would have bought it anyway.
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Releasing our GPL-based software under a GPL license was never much of an i
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The GPL is hostile to the existence of proprietary software and has the intent of making it a thing of the past.
I agree with this statement 100%. This is why I prefer the BSD or MIT license. As a professional programmer, I'd much rather my code have the widest possible opportunity to be used (by anyone) and to help (anyone). I'm not exclusively interested in helping where some Karl Marx work-a-like guy says it's cool, even if he is one helluva compiler contributor.
DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)
Could you imagine if this same thoroughness were required to prove copyright interest and copyright infringement with DMCA take-down notices? (As they should be, given that they are purportedly under penalty of perjury.)
Not fully OK (Score:2)
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Lost damages is OK in this case, but could mean all GPL code must also have a commercial interest. GPL is not about commercial, but freedom interest. So did the court look at that? Or are courts not about breach of contract, but just about plus minus on the income?
"They ordered Orange to pay €500,000 in compensatory damages and €150,000 for moral damages."
"The compensatory damages were based on both lost profits of the plaintiff and disgorgement of profits of Orange. Moral damages compensate the plaintiff for harm to reputation or other non-monetary injury."
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So did the court look at that?
Obviously. Or what exactly do you think the verdict is based on?
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If Entr'Ouvert was a community without commercial interest, what would be their demand for the court? They might want to force Orange to share the modified code. I think the tribunal can't force that. Orange can argue the code was mixed with proprietary bits with another licence contract and they can't share it anymore without violating another licence. So tribunal issues a monetary compensation.
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If Entr'Ouvert was a community without commercial interest, what would be their demand for the court? They might want to force Orange to share the modified code. I think the tribunal can't force that. Orange can argue the code was mixed with proprietary bits with another licence contract and they can't share it anymore without violating another licence. So tribunal issues a monetary compensation.
It could also stop Orange from continuing to distribute the software. If they create derivative works, they need a licence from all copyright holders whose code they intermingle. Alternatively, it could force Orange to get a GPL-compatible license from the other copyright holders, so that they can fulfil their obligations. That might be expensive, but it is very much possible.
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I think this case is a bit different since his software also had a proprietary license available, like qt used to or still has. He likely argued that the GPL was violated by not sharing modifications as required, but the lost money argument comes from the proprietary license not being purchased.
I fart in your general direction. (Score:2)
I'll bet Entr'Ouvert had legal costs which exceeded the award.
Re:I fart in your general direction. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't the USA. The loser pays the legal fees for both sides and the legal fees themselves are quite a bit lower.
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Legal costs are paid be the one who loses the court battle.
No idea what your point is.
How is this an "award" (Score:5, Interesting)
It took 14 years! 14!
So in conclusion infringe copyright all you want, it will take forever and by the time a court decides something you will have moved on and made millions in the process...
This is the exact reason someone I know never bothered suing a fruit company for patent infringement.
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Now that the ruling has been made, other cases should be a lot quicker. On top of the damages, they will also have 14 years of legal fees to pay.
This is good news. Now we have courts enforcing the GPL in Europe and in China. Has it ever been enforced in the US?
Dual licensed (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. I wonder if the case would have reached the same conclusion without the option of commercial licence?
Is this an argument for always providing a dual commercial license, so you've got something to point to and say "There. Lost profits."?
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The issue with dual licensing is that other contributors know they're working for you for free.
Fulltex Court decision (Score:2)
https://www.dalloz-actualite.f... [dalloz-actualite.fr] (in French)
Outrage! (Score:1)
I demand that this be overturned, because Richard Stallman had a mattress in his office in the 70s!
But seriously, this is pretty cool :) Good outcome!
GPL ruling floodgate (Score:2)
Next comes the GPL filings for relief in other OSS that followed GPL with proprietary and un-shared modifications to open-software code bases
MIT or Apache (Score:2)
This demonstrates why all of my open-source projects are MIT or Apache licensed. Seriously, does any hobbyist programmer even really want Orange's modified GPL code?
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You're free to make that choice. Personally, I choose the GPL for my open-source projects.
How can anyone know without seeing the actual changes? Perhaps they're better overall.
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Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ... (Score:2)
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Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ...
Use software in breach of its licensing agreements.
For instance, it's perfectly fine to use some software a self-contained DLL / library that you publish the full source code to in compliance with its licence. Then your proprietary code can call that DLL as much as it likes so long as it uses the registered interfaces.
LOTS of companies / products do precisely this - you have one in your house right now, I guarantee it. They publish the GPL and the list of software used in
too little too late (Score:2)
While good news, too little too late.
The amount might be substantial to a lone developer, it took 14 years and is pocket change for a large telecom provider.
This will not change the behaviour of any large-ish company, the penalty should have been several orders of magnitude larger.