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1. aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:18:53 JST aeva

   A funny bit of trivia from the GPL's wikipedia page: Area Man Violates Own License

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:18:51 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva VMWare has been sued multiple times over taking parts of Linux source code and integrating it in to their closed source software I guess

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:18:52 JST aeva

     in reply to

     A question for open source licensing nerds out there: has anyone ever been taken to court over a GPL violation for anything other than the requirements involving the mere availability of source code?

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:42:21 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva Well, besides code availability it was also the fact that the code of the app that (statically) integrated the source was under a license which is incompatible. You can't integrate GPL code in any way with proprietary software according to the license, as the license is viral. Anything that uses GPL code needs to be licensed under the GPL as well.

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:42:22 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT that would be an example of what I mean by involving source code availability

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:43:37 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva So the lawsuit was more about *code theft* than them not releasing the Linux parts of their product. The fact that the product used any part of Linux at all made it a violation.

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:48:54 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva Some CC licenses also fall under this. You can’t integrate GPL code under a license which is deemed incompatible with the GPL, the FSF maintains a list of compatible licenses.

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:58:38 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva in this case the Linux component was open source but the rest of their software was closed source.

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 12:58:39 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT right so was the source code available and simply under an incompatible license or was the source code also not available?

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:01:27 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva basically the lawsuit was about the fact that VMWare should both license the Linux components and EVERYTHING that touched it that they had written under the GPL, which amounts to basically all of VMWare’s custom written kernel stuff.

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:02:40 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva at least I see it slightly different from companies that eg take blender and slap some extra features on it and sell it as closed source software.

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:11:47 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva I think it’s a bit outside of the garden variety due to the nature of the court case (it went on for a bit over 10 years due to the complex nature of the lawsuit and escalation through courts), though yeah.

     It’s not too much different from other instances of freedom restriction, like companies pulling a TiVo by making it near impossible to reflash firmware either by DRM or design.

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:11:48 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT yes that's great but that's still a fairly garden variety example of viral license compliance litigation for the purpose of (among other things) making code available to the general public that was not previously available to the general public, is it not?

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:12:56 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva thing with companies pulling a TiVo on Linux is that the kernel is released under GPL 2, so it’s technically not illegal. So companies can do it without too many problems as long as they use a similarly licensed user space.

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:15:30 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     • MrCopilot

     @mrcopilot @aeva if the device runs Linux then it’s not a violation as GPL 2 does not restrict adding software or hardware measures to prevent software from being modified.

   • MrCopilot (mrcopilot@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:15:31 JST MrCopilot

     in reply to

     @aeva I worked on a commercial device that shipped with some PC software & the embedded device sources were just packaged on that CD.

     There was definitely no feasible way for the customer/end user or even manufacturer to update that code without removing a bunch of silicone and soldering on a serial interface, but you know, "letter of the law". Back then I was just happy to be putting another penguin off the end of a production line.

     Now, I am conflicted with a few decisions made above me.

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:15:32 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • MrCopilot

     @mrcopilot so in theory the copyright holder for whatever GPL library that game used could sue in hopes of getting the code released under a compatible license or to get the game pulled from distribution or collect damages or whatever else it is that people who file lawsuits hope to achieve

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:15:33 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • MrCopilot

     @mrcopilot ok so here's a contrived example: let's say someone makes a game that has an unmodified GPL dependency, and they distribute the game with the game's source code, but because they don't understand how licenses work they put their own source code under CC-BY-NC-ND which forbids modification, commercial use, and doesn't grant any useful rights specific to software. That's several GPL violations despite their source code being available to the public.

   • MrCopilot (mrcopilot@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:15:34 JST MrCopilot

     in reply to

     @aeva what else could you violate?

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:22:03 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     • MrCopilot

     @mrcopilot @aeva GPL is such a shitshow of edge cases and other restrictions that, in some cases, makes it hard to work with.

     Kind of why I've moved over to BSD 2-clause licenses long ago for my software, just a lot less of a headache.

   • MrCopilot (mrcopilot@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:22:04 JST MrCopilot

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT @aeva instead of aiding in following the letter, I should have been the keeper of the spirit.

   • MrCopilot (mrcopilot@mstdn.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:22:05 JST MrCopilot

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT @aeva agreed but I now realize I was in a position to engineer that capability and had a responsibility to at least advocate we did so.

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:29:24 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva The FSF probably not, the FSC if the dev lets them know about it, possibly?

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:29:25 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT for example, suppose you released a reasonably unimportant program under a GPL-compatible license but you added a restriction where it couldn't be used "for evil", but your program as distributed dynamically links GNU Readline. Is it a GPL violation? Yes. Would the copyright holder of GNU Readline take you to court over it if you refused to change it? Well, I should certainly hope the FSF wouldn't consider it worth their time. So this would be below the threshold.

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:29:26 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT so the indirect purpose of my question was finding examples that might point to what the minimum viable license compliance violation is from an enforcement standpoint

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:31:03 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva Or the dev could sue directly in private, like one of the linux netfilter devs did and got like millions of euro for before linux maintainers kicked them out and they were obliterated in court for not meaningfully being a "co-author" of linux.

   • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live (lunafoxgirlvt@vt.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:39:46 JST Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     in reply to

     @aeva idk, some people in the free software space would be petty enough to do that, I think.

     And yeah, whether a technical GPL violation is worth pursuing legal fights over is an individual opinion. My personal opinion being that unless it's a massive company or at least a company with massive reach; not really.

   • aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 23-Mar-2023 13:39:47 JST aeva

     in reply to

     • Luna 🇩🇰🦊 //nullptr::live

     @LunaFoxgirlVT I don't think a lawsuit is a realistic outcome for that hypothetical situation, because quite frankly there's nothing to be gained from it, and there's always going to be plenty of more impactful cases to pursue.

     Now, if you feel that any technical GPL violation at all is worth pursuing a costly legal battle over no matter how small or petty, I'm not here to argue with you over that belief.