Ask Slashdot: When and How To Deal With GPL Violations? 151
jd writes "There are many pieces of software out there, such as seL4 (kindly brought to my attention by another reader), where the vendor has indeed engineered something that they're entitled to Close Source, but where their closed-source license includes the modifications to GPLed software such as the Linux kernel. Then there's a second type of behavior. Code Sourcery produced two versions of their VSIPL++ image processing library — one closed-source, one GPLed. It was extremely decent of them. When Mentor Graphics bought Code Sourcery, they continued developing the closed-course one and discontinued, then deleted, the GPL variant. It's unclear to me if that's kosher, as the closed variant must contain code that had been GPLed at one point. Here's the problem: complaining too much will mean we get code now that maybe four or five people, tops, will actually care about. It will also make corporations leery of any other such work in future, where that work will be of greater value to a greater number of people. So, the question I want to ask is this: When is it a good time to complain? By what rule-of-thumb might you decide that one violation is worth cracking down on, and another should be let go to help encourage work we're never going to do ourselves?"
Re:Their code, their rules (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a little more complex. I'll clarify. There were two code bases - one optimized and closed-source, one regular and GPLed. There was quite a lot of code shared between them, but there was code that solely existed in the GPLed version (all the non-optimized functions, for example). I believe the GPLed version took code contributions* and any that applied to the shared code would then exist in both versions. I do NOT know if the GPLed version included code from pre-existing VSIPL code bases for which Code Sourcery had rights under open source licenses but did not own that software - it seems entirely possible but it's not certain.
*The USAF paid for several years for Code Sourcery to have the GPLed version and paid them to have developers maintain it. It's a safe bet that the USAF wouldn't have paid extra specifically for that license if having it closed would have been just as effective. At the very least, it can be assumed the US Government contributed patches to the GPLed code.
Mentor buys Code Sourcery and continues the closed-source version. That's their right. That's fine. Provided, of course, that the closed-source version Mentor currently deploys has no software that Code Sourcery had no right to close. (I'll assume Code Sourcery played nice and didn't break any licenses themselves.) I'd consider it a possibility, but it would be extremely hard to test. Since the USAF now uses the closed source version, whatever it was that was contributed CAN be assumed to be in the closed version.
The open source version is another matter, in that it depends on whether Mentor is the true owner of it or if they are merely the owner of a fork. Since the GPLed code was produced under contract to the DoD and since any bits pulled from other projects would still be nominally owned by their original authors, it's impossible to assume Mentor bought the full rights. They're more likely to have bought only Code Sourcery's fraction of the rights.
Again, though, even if we assume it's all fully legal - which it may well be, it does not seem in the ethos of open source (hence the usage of kosher) to prohibit access to that part of the code which was shared and has not been changed since. What they do with the bits that are theirs that replaced the open source stuff, that's their business, along with the code that was never shared and always closed. The remainder --- uhhhhhh. It feels very icky that anyone, owner included, can retroactively alter the rights to something.