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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A recent federal district court decision denied a motion to dismiss a complaint brought by Artifex Software Inc. ("Artifex") for breach of contract and copyright infringement claims against Defendant Hancom, Inc. based on breach of an open source software license. The software, referred to as Ghostscript, was dual-licensed under the GPL license and a commercial license. According to the Plaintiff, those seeking to commercially distribute Ghostscript could obtain a commercial license to use, modify, copy, and/or distribute Ghostscript for a fee. Otherwise, the software was available without a fee under the GNU GPL, which required users to comply with certain open-source licensing requirements. The requirements included an obligation to "convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License" of any covered code. In other words, under the open source license option, certain combinations of proprietary software with Ghostscript are governed by the terms of the GNU GPL.
Plaintiff alleged that because Defendant did not have a commercial license for Ghostscript, its use and distribution of Ghostscript constituted consent to the terms of the GNU GPL, Section 9 of which states:
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program...However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
Plaintiff further alleged that Hancom failed to comply with key provisions of the GNU GPL, including the requirement to distribute the source code for Hancom's software.
Hancom responded to these allegations with three arguments. First, it alleged Plaintiff failed to state a claim for breach of contract and that any such claim is preempted by copyright law. Second, it alleged Plaintiff's copyright claim must be dismissed in part because Plaintiff has failed to allege that Defendant committed a predicate act in the United States. Finally, Defendant moved to strike portions of the relief sought in the complaint.
The Court rejected all three arguments. On the first issue, the court stated: "Defendant contends that Plaintiff's reliance on the unsigned GNU GPL fails to plausibly demonstrate mutual assent, that is, the existence of a contract. Not so. The GNU GPL, which is attached to the complaint, provides that the Ghostscript user agrees to its terms if the user does not obtain a commercial license." The Court added: "Plaintiff's allegations of harm are also adequately pled. Plaintiff plausibly alleges that Defendant's use of Ghostscript without obtaining a commercial license or complying with GNU GPL deprived Plaintiff of the licensing fee, or alternatively, the ability to advance and develop Ghostscript through open-source sharing. Indeed, as the Federal Circuit has recognized, there is harm which flows from a party's failure to comply with open source licensing: "[t]he lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration" because "[t]here are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties."
[...] This case highlights the need to understand and comply with the terms of open source licenses. Many companies use open source without having adequate open source usage policies or understanding of the legal risks of using open source. As this case highlights one of the key risks with using open source is that in certain circumstances, a company may be required to release the source code for its proprietary software based on usage of open source code in the software. It also highlights the validity of certain dual-licensing open source models and the need to understand when which of the options apply to your usage. If your company does not have an open source policy or has questions on these issues, it should seek advice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @07:37PM (9 children)
I see it this way:
If you're profiting off of the generous free work done by others, you have the societal and moral obligation to make any improvements or modifications made on the code freely available for the public good. You're essentially standing on the shoulders of giants, and it doesn't hurt to become that very giant yourself upon whom others may stand on and continue to improve the quality of products we produce.
I see GPL more as a symptom of a toxic intellectual property litigation culture, not as a trendy meme in legalese.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by marcello_dl on Sunday September 10 2017, @09:07PM (5 children)
> you have the societal and moral obligation
BTW
"Freely you have received, freely give". Matthew 10:8
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @11:06PM
"We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me." 1 Timothy 8-11.
Whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @11:53PM
but isn't that communism and thus why republicans are not supporters of christianity? ALso why they aren't stewards of the earth and stuff?
I'm not getting mixed messages, am I? I thought most companies just pirated their stuff until lawyers got involved anyway. the BSA is for libtards or something.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @12:37AM (2 children)
You didn't quote the whole thing: "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give." It's telling us to get rid of BSD.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Monday September 11 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
But which dead operating system are we supposed to raise instead?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by martyb on Tuesday September 12 2017, @12:41AM
So sorry! Haven't you... "Hurd"? :)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday September 10 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
But what about non-improvement, rather: simple use - in commercial software?
(And by use, I don't restrict that to simply compiling against libraries, but also embedding huge chunks of source code into another product).
I rather suspect that happens far more times than the anyone actually improves or adds to opensource packages.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @09:56PM
I honestly think this is where existing rules and regulations fail and no clear alternative presents itself.
It's one thing to say, for instance, have dozens of calls to jq in a glue script that realistically only executes once in a blue moon -- It's another matter entirely to, say, base your subscription-based RSS reader on a couple of jq calls that runs thousands of times in a similar script. Do you make your entire RSS reader open-source that may or may not contain business logic inside of it? Or do you attribute nothing to jq developers because you technically haven't modified a single character of the source code?
I think it may be naiive of me to say this, but a shoutout at the very least towards said open source projects would be a good start, or maybe even cursory sharing of profits if the company in question feels like it. It's much better to make something a common practice out of basic civic duty rather than a compulsory compliance towards a regulation.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday September 10 2017, @11:29PM
Ah, but I am not modifying the open source code that I use in any way. I merely call the parsing and mathematical routines in the two open source packages that I use. And since we statically link the executables we distribute, using GPL licensed code would require us to open source our code. We could use LGPL licensed code if we provide an additional object file that can be linked against modified versions of any LGPL licensed library incorporated into our code, which is a hassle.
I do agree with the principle you state, that improvements to open source code should be made available to the project. It's just that I'm not making any.