How To Fight International OSS License Violations? 54
sirshannon asks: "Frans Bouma's LLBLGen is a free, open source code generator that he licensed under the BSD license so that anyone could use it in any way, as long as they gave him some credit. Now Codease has released a product that apparently uses his code for 90% of the functionality but doesn't bother to attribute it to him. Frans lives in The Netherlands, Codease is in Singapore. What is the correct way to pursue this?"
Buy a plane ticket (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Buy a plane ticket (Score:2)
Naw man.... (Score:1, Funny)
What is the correct way to pursue this? (Score:4, Funny)
Such as...? (Score:1)
sue the users (Score:4, Funny)
Ask your lawyer! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ask your lawyer! (Score:2)
Hold up... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a last resort I yesterday asked them why they didn't simply obey the license terms and suddenly they were willing to do so. I've mailed what I wanted them to do (adding a single line to the about box, as stated in the license) however haven't heared since. I'll try mailing them later today again.
Looks like they may have changed their minds. Might want to hold off on the witch hunt... then again why they are so much fun.
Re:Don't bother (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that, to date, the BSD license is the only one of the two that has been tested in a court of law, I don't really understand your point.
(I'm referring to the AT&T/USL code settlement of the 90s.)
I suspect this guy's entire problem is that he's using the old advertising-clause BSD license, and Codease probably assumed when he said 'BSD' he meant 'modern BSD.' Were it a modern BSD license, they could use his code without attribution.
Since they've since started to acquiesce to his demands, I suspect they may have finally read his license and realized their mistake.
Re:Don't bother (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, the AT&T case had nothing to do with the BSD license and everything to do with the fact that AT&T failed to properly register its copyrights (a procedure that's no longer necessary).
EULA (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know how often you've been reading slashdot but I see a lot of people complaining if EULA is enforceable because it's at least a strange contract: you pay for a product, take it to your home or whatever, and after that you agree with a contract.
Their argument is: when you buy a copy and take it out of the store, our relation with the owner is over.
He agreed to sell you that copy and you got the produc
Re:EULA for BSD's of GPLs (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the lack of the GPL court case, read Eben Moglens (very good, short) essay Enforcing the GNU GPL [gnu.org].
Also remember that as of W32-XP, you're relationship with MS is not
Re:Don't bother (Score:3, Insightful)
You're awfully quick to jump on the *trolling* bandwagon there. It's true that licenses don't always need to be tested to be fine. Most licenses are very similar to things the court has dealt with before and hence there is no need to 'test' them. Also, well worded licenses can be good. But that doesn't mean that having a license be 'tested' isn't better.
In
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
Nobody will try disputing an obviously bulletproof contract. It's a waste of time, and you aren't going to win. OTOH, if a contract is poorly worded, there might be disputes as to meanings and it would see the inside of a courtroom much more often.
An example: you steal my GPL program and incorporate it into a proprietary program. I catch you doing that. Are you going to want to go to court, dispute the lawfulness o
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
So then the GPL isn't obviously bulletproof? Seems SCO is disputing it. My point being, that licenses are not tested for a variety of reasons, and not always because they are 'good'. The GPL is probably a fine license and likely the courts will reflect that, but you're generalizations are still wrong.
Many licenses are not tested because
A) they are not used on anything important
B) they have been violated but nobody knows
C) it's not worth going to
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
Re:Don't bother (Score:3, Insightful)
because they violated the BSD licence in some
files they have taken from BSD to SYSV.
In the end, AT&T had to retain the original
licence, and agreed to licence a few of the
UNIX(R) files to BSD under a BSD-alike licence.
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
What?
There are some parts of the MS EULA that seem perfectly fine to me, but some of their products... Well, there's no way it would be legal. I'm primarly thinking the clause that dictates the operating system cannot be separated from the PC. An installed operating system is not embedded software, so the EULA clearly violates fair use rights under current copyright law.
Re:Don't bother (Score:1, Interesting)
As far as I know, nobody in the AT&T case tried to argue that the BSD licence was invalid. Furthermore, the case was settled without a judgement.
It's certainly the case that UC never really enforced the "advertising clause".
Re:Don't bother (Score:4, Informative)
"2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
Copyright violation is copyright violation, whether it is music, software, or source code.
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
Re:Don't bother (Score:2, Insightful)
How? If they fully complied with the license a GPL author would also not see one extra penny. The code that needs to be released is *public*, i.e. it's not attributed *to* the original author and hence it's fishy if it can even be considered some form of payment.
Also, another alternative might have been that they would not touch the GPL code at all, in which case GPL author also gets no
Re:Don't bother (Score:2)
How to get punative damages (Score:2)
I wrote a multi-threading library for Delphi 1.0 (16 bit windows) and by accident released some early source with it.
I later found another company having based a product on this.
The licensing terms explicitly granted "after the fact" licensing at very high rates.
I didn't cash in because an employee had taken the code without their knowledge
It's not about money, (Score:5, Insightful)
I chose this BSD variant because it was restrictive enough so people who would build a new tool based on it would have to produce the copyright but still would be able to sell it eventually.
If it was about money, I shouldn't have had it released as sourcecode in the first place, I think.
The same way regular copyright violations... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just threat it like a regular copyright violation case:
1 - mail them
2 - if it don't work publicize, mail FSF (if that's the case)
3 - hire a lawyer in that country or an international lawyer company
If your code is under GPL, FSF may provide you some legal help, but if it's BSD or an unkown licence you're probably sol.
I've seen BSD violations myself, then I looked around for the BSD community in my country to tell them about it, but no signal of such community.
As I didn't care very much about the violator (it was non-profit) or the original author (not a friendly guy in the first place), I let that untouched.
Come on, you (BSD developers) want your name publicized (no matter what else is done with the code). How much community motivation (outside of the BSD developers field) has that cause?
Re:The same way regular copyright violations... (Score:2)
Not to mention their mastery of all things to do with online fraud...
Daniel
Re:The same way regular copyright violations... (Score:4, Informative)
Fact of the matter is that Singapore became a contracting party of the Berne Union in 1998 and so is bound by the same basic standard of copyright as the good ole US (or even Switzerland) and they're bound by the TRIPS agreement too.
So we've established that the right is enforceable in Singapore. The question then becomes are there any barriers to actually enforcing that right? Well Singapore used to be a former British colony with a common law system so you've got pretty much the same chance of enforcement there as in any common law country (UK, Canada, Australia etc). Up until just a few years ago the highest court of appeal for Singapore was England's Privy Council so with any case potentially going there for the final decision, the nature of Singapore's law has been influenced greatly by any legal developments in the UK and the nature of legal proceedings is substantially the same.
While you might have been one of the first countries to sign the convention, don't knock the latecomers! I might begin to think that you're sig might apply to the Swiss instead of Americans.
Re:The same way regular copyright violations... (Score:2)
Misplaced blame (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it isn't a downside at all, because they're not following the BSD licence terms. If they were, they *wouldn't* be able to "grab your work and act as if they spent 3 months programming". The only reason you're "losing out" is because the other party hasn't followed the rules - it's got nothing to do with the licence itself (assuming you knew the implications of released something under it in the first place).
*Exactly* the same thing could happen with GPLed code (and has - Linksys).
Yeah I knew the BSD implications :) (Score:5, Interesting)
What's annoying is that even when you release the code under a very non-strict license (BSD2 has 2 simple rules, 1 applies to the binary version of the work) people think they can even ignore that single, simple rule. This isn't the first time this happens with the code though, although this time it is so extremely obvious (.NET has nice decompilers so you can peek into the code very easily). It's so obvious because their code is non-hungarian coding style and my code in LLBLGen is written in hungarian coding style (which is uncommon in
I admit, with the GPL it wouldn't have been any different: people are still able to rip the code and use it as if it is theirs, however with the GPL you have one difference: if the license violation gets out when it is a GPL violation, there are more people who will know this because the FSF / GPL movement will make sure everybody knows it. But I'm glad someone mailed
The latest news is that there is no news: I haven't heard back from them, after they (him?) said it was acceptable to follow the BSD license after all and after I then replied that it would be ok if they added a Based on LLBLGen 1.x Copyright Solutions Design line to the about box.
Possible steps (Score:3, Informative)
2) Send more emails, make phone calls. (done?)
3) Complain on Slashdot.
4) Send postal mail.
5) Litigate.
Here's some contact info from their whois.
Codease.com contact:
Gary, Zheng sales@invenmanager.com
200 Jalan Sultan
#20-03 Textile Centre
Sg, Sg 199018
SG
90467520
Invenmanager.com contact:
CAMSOLUTION
Sales, Sales sales@invenmanager.com
21B St Michaels Road
Singapore, Singapore
SG
65-63960575
Go talk to the FSF. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Go talk to the FSF. (Score:4, Informative)
To those who'd say, "Who cares?" (Score:3, Interesting)
It's GPL but not assigned to the FSF, you'll never get any help.
I wager that open source developers, when combined under the banners of all open source licenses, become one of the largest special interest groups in the technological community.
As a SIG we wield considerable power; consider the power such groups hold in the United States Congress. Consider - would you want your name to villified online for stealing code when it is common to search the Internet for an applicant's name now? What about those companies that practice peer interviews prior to hiring?
Companies are likely to want to minimize their legal exposure as well. If your boss or shareholders know that someone has stolen code and that a controversy surrounds that code, there is a good chance the code thief will suffer from a lost job.
But these things can only happen if we act in concert; as a unified group that is capable of taking action and responsible for the actions it takes. Someone here posted that vigilante justice was the answer and in a way it is. The rule of governments are held only because the entire population does not rise up against them. Mob rule. In our situation we'll find little help for the common developer whose license has been violated... except from ourselves.
Slashdot, kuro5hin, Groklaw... these are three shining examples of what we can do as a community.
Learn your lesson next time (Score:1, Flamebait)
If you are so vain that you are willing to spend thousands of dollars to sue to have your name placed on something, have fun.
Re:Learn your lesson next time (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't want people to profit from your work, don't release it as BSD.
That's not the issue. The issue is they didn't follow the terms of his license, which has nothing to do with profit (the GPL's terms have nothing to with profit also for that matter).
If you are so vain that you are willing to spend thousands of dollars to sue to have your name placed on something, have fun.
He wrote it in the first place, so why shouldn't he deserve some recognition?
Re:Learn your lesson next time (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Learn your lesson next time (Score:2)
Your options are:
1. Ask the vendor to comply with the license.
2. Sue the vendor to force him to comply.
3. Raise hell with the user community.
Option 1 has been done already, and the vendor simply ignored the complaint.
Option 3 is probally doable, but it takes time & money to get the word out, especially since we're not talking about software that everybody is using.
Option 2 will work, but will cost
Ask your diplomats. (Score:2)
IANAL.
It has been solved! (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for all the support!