Modules that integrate non-GPL PHP apps violate the GPL.
Does anyone else realize that (past a point) none of these discussions matter much compared to actual court rulings? Of course the people that came up with the GPL are going to say that they hold the final say in what it means or doesn't. And of course others will say differently at times. If anyone really wants to find out what the GPL covers, and what it doesn't, the only way to truly do it is to lawyer up and hope that your gal/guy is more persuasive than the other side. ;) - Caleb, "lawyers rule the world", Gilbert
That is pretty much the case when it comes to any license, or any legal document. Feel free to start suing and settle it once and for all :D --Jeff On Sep 5, 2007, at 11:36 PM, Caleb Gilbert wrote:
Does anyone else realize that (past a point) none of these discussions matter much compared to actual court rulings?
Of course the people that came up with the GPL are going to say that they hold the final say in what it means or doesn't. And of course others will say differently at times. If anyone really wants to find out what the GPL covers, and what it doesn't, the only way to truly do it is to lawyer up and hope that your gal/guy is more persuasive than the other side. ;)
Caleb Gilbert skrev:
Does anyone else realize that (past a point) none of these discussions matter much compared to actual court rulings?
Of course the people that came up with the GPL are going to say that they hold the final say in what it means or doesn't. And of course others will say differently at times. If anyone really wants to find out what the GPL covers, and what it doesn't, the only way to truly do it is to lawyer up and hope that your gal/guy is more persuasive than the other side. ;)
- Caleb, "lawyers rule the world", Gilbert
Caleb, You are uninformed. GPL has stand the test of courts in both US (e.g. Drew Technologies, Inc. v. Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.) and EU (e.g. Welte v. Sitecom). The reason that GPL has not been challenged more often during its 18 years of existence is the fact that no one is willing to risk contesting it. That is, most companies realize that they will loose a lawsuit. And if it is challenged, it usually ends in a settlement (e.g. NuSphere Corporation (Progress Software) v. MySQL AB). Here are some links you can read: * http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html * http://www.opensourcelegal.org/laws.php * http://gpl-violations.org/ * http://www.groklaw.net/ Best regards, Thomas
On 9/6/07, Thomas Barregren <thomas@webbredaktoren.se> wrote:
Caleb Gilbert skrev:
Does anyone else realize that (past a point) none of these discussions matter much compared to actual court rulings?
Of course the people that came up with the GPL are going to say that they hold the final say in what it means or doesn't. And of course others will say differently at times. If anyone really wants to find out what the GPL covers, and what it doesn't, the only way to truly do it is to lawyer up and hope that your gal/guy is more persuasive than the other side. ;)
- Caleb, "lawyers rule the world", Gilbert
Caleb,
You are uninformed.
GPL has stand the test of courts in both US (e.g. Drew Technologies, Inc. v. Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.) and EU (e.g. Welte v. Sitecom). The reason that GPL has not been challenged more often during its 18 years of existence is the fact that no one is willing to risk contesting it. That is, most companies realize that they will loose a lawsuit. And if it is challenged, it usually ends in a settlement (e.g. NuSphere Corporation (Progress Software) v. MySQL AB).
Here are some links you can read:
* http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html * http://www.opensourcelegal.org/laws.php * http://gpl-violations.org/ * http://www.groklaw.net/
Best regards, Thomas
Is it accurate to say that all cases won in court are about someone integrating GPLed code in their own non-GPLed applications or devices and nothing else?
Caleb Gilbert wrote:
Does anyone else realize that (past a point) none of these discussions matter much compared to actual court rulings?
Of course the people that came up with the GPL are going to say that they hold the final say in what it means or doesn't. And of course others will say differently at times. If anyone really wants to find out what the GPL covers, and what it doesn't, the only way to truly do it is to lawyer up and hope that your gal/guy is more persuasive than the other side. ;)
- Caleb, "lawyers rule the world", Gilbert
The issue though comes down to whether Drupal.org has a vested interest in protecting its license and ultimately the community's own software. In many countries, the history of how an organization protects its copyright, trademarks, licenses, and other intellectual property is significant in determining who has ultimate ownership. If Drupal.org allows itself to distribute modules that are known to contain code that is not compatible (subject to debate I know) with the GPL license then in practice Drupal.org is not enforcing it's own license. Down the road a company could redistribute modified version of Drupal claiming and claim they are under no obligation to "give back" to the community due to Drupal.org's own historical lack of enforcing the GPL. At least that's how I interpret in a non-lawyer way the main concern if Drupal.org continues the way it goes it how it handles contributed modules. While I agree that most developers and users are not likely able to interpret in lawyer speak the impact contributed modules bridging non-GPL compatible software have to Drupal...someone in the ranks of Drupal.org needs to know. If Drupal.org isn't clear what the GPL says or doesn't say then there are bigger problems Drupal is facing then just the lawyers knocking at the door. That's just my U take on the whole matter (I wish to spread no F or D but I think questions and uncertainty in the long run). -Bryan
Bryan Ruby skrev:
The issue though comes down to whether Drupal.org has a vested interest in protecting its license and ultimately the community's own software. In many countries, the history of how an organization protects its copyright, trademarks, licenses, and other intellectual property is significant in determining who has ultimate ownership. If Drupal.org allows itself to distribute modules that are known to contain code that is not compatible (subject to debate I know) with the GPL license then in practice Drupal.org is not enforcing it's own license. Down the road a company could redistribute modified version of Drupal claiming and claim they are under no obligation to "give back" to the community due to Drupal.org's own historical lack of enforcing the GPL. At least that's how I interpret in a non-lawyer way the main concern if Drupal.org continues the way it goes it how it handles contributed modules.
Violating the very same license we require other to conform to definitely diminishes our own cause. But I cannot see how that can be used to justify, morally or legally, further violation. That would be to say: "Since you stole that bike, it is okay for me to steel it from you." Don't you agree? Best regards, Thomas
On 06.09-09:18, Thomas Barregren wrote: [ ... ]
Violating the very same license we require other to conform to definitely diminishes our own cause. But I cannot see how that can be used to justify, morally or legally, further violation. That would be to say: "Since you stole that bike, it is okay for me to steel it from you." Don't you agree?
you are of course, precisely correct but where this becomes a problem is that you _can_ run into discrimination laws, whereby, something is wholesale violated and suddenly it's an with only one party. i don't think this is a real consideration here.
When it comes to "lawyering up" How would one even go about suing someone who distributed a module that was designed to output XML specifically for a non-GPL'ed Flash image gallery test the "single system" definition? Adding a disclaimer to modules is only going to make problematic situation worse. If you take even a quick look at the Lulabot's "top 40" modules, you'll find third party code in several of them (it's easy to spot because most developers are nice enough to leave the code's credits in the module)... 40. XML SiteMap - http://drupal.org/project/gsitemap - includes gss.xml (12K) found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gstoolbox 39. Location - http://drupal.org/project/location - includes earth.inc (6K) by Ka-Ping Yee http://www.zjlfj.gov.cn/uploadimg/2007416/up1179247864278.php?action=vie...<http://www.zjlfj.gov.cn/uploadimg/2007416/up1179247864278.php?action=view&file=%2Fweb%2Fwebsite%2Fsenhemm%2Fmodules%2Flocation%2Fearth.inc> 36. Porter Stemmer - http://drupal.org/project/porterstemmer - includes the PHP implementation of Porter Stemmer by Richard Heyes available at http://www.tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/php.txt 16. Audio - http://drupal.org/project/audio - includes XSPF Flash player (139K) found at http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/ There is also Jeff Robinson's JQuery Update that still includes versions of jquery.js 1.1.2 and compat.1.0.js. Drupal's CVS maintainers don't just discourage third party code that isn't GPL compliant, they expressly forbid it regardless of license, reasons given for including it, or how nicely you ask. If including third party code was only a licensing issue, TinyMCE would be much easy to install and configure. ___ *Kevin Reynen* Integrated Media Coordinator Reynolds School of Journalism and Advanced Media Research University of Nevada, Reno On 9/7/07, ttw+drupal@cobbled.net <ttw+drupal@cobbled.net> wrote:
On 06.09-09:18, Thomas Barregren wrote: [ ... ]
Violating the very same license we require other to conform to definitely diminishes our own cause. But I cannot see how that can be used to justify, morally or legally, further violation. That would be to say: "Since you stole that bike, it is okay for me to steel it from you." Don't you agree?
you are of course, precisely correct but where this becomes a problem is that you _can_ run into discrimination laws, whereby, something is wholesale violated and suddenly it's an with only one party. i don't think this is a real consideration here.
On 9/7/07, Kevin Reynen <kreynen@gmail.com> wrote:
16. Audio - http://drupal.org/project/audio - includes XSPF Flash player (139K) found at http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/
I've been doing my best to ignore this thread but did want to point out that the XSPF players are under a BSD license. I was advised at one point that since BSD is a more permissive license it was safe to include. I've specifically not included players under a CC license. When the dust settles on this I hope someone will let me know what's permissible. andrew
On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 14:25:22 -0700, "andrew morton" <drewish@katherinehouse.com> wrote:
On 9/7/07, Kevin Reynen <kreynen@gmail.com> wrote:
16. Audio - http://drupal.org/project/audio - includes XSPF Flash player (139K) found at http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/
I've been doing my best to ignore this thread but did want to point out that the XSPF players are under a BSD license. I was advised at one point that since BSD is a more permissive license it was safe to include. I've specifically not included players under a CC license.
When the dust settles on this I hope someone will let me know what's permissible.
andrew
Including BSD code and GPL code together and licensing the combined work under the GPL is absolutely legal. Whether or not it's against d.o policy I will leave to d.o maintainers to answer. --Larry Garfield
andrew morton skrev:
On 9/7/07, Kevin Reynen <kreynen@gmail.com> wrote:
16. Audio - http://drupal.org/project/audio - includes XSPF Flash player (139K) found at http://musicplayer.sourceforge.net/
I've been doing my best to ignore this thread but did want to point out that the XSPF players are under a BSD license. I was advised at one point that since BSD is a more permissive license it was safe to include. I've specifically not included players under a CC license.
When the dust settles on this I hope someone will let me know what's permissible.
The BSD is one of several Free and Open Source (FOSS) licenses that are compatible with GPL. (However, the old version of BSD is not compatible with GPL because of the requirement of attribution.) Follow these links to read more about compatibility and which licenses are compatible with GPL: * http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#WhatIsCompatible * http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean The list of licenses compatible with GPL v3 has increased tremendous as compared with v2. Another good reason to move to GPL v3. Follow this link to see all licenses compatible with *GPL v3*: * http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html Best regards, Thomas
Quoting Bryan Ruby <bryan@cmsreport.com>:
The issue though comes down to whether Drupal.org has a vested interest in protecting its license and ultimately the community's own software. In many countries, the history of how an organization protects its copyright, trademarks, licenses, and other intellectual property is significant in determining who has ultimate ownership. If Drupal.org allows itself to distribute modules that are known to contain code that is not compatible (subject to debate I know) with the GPL license then in practice Drupal.org is not enforcing it's own license. Down the road a company could redistribute modified version of Drupal claiming and claim they are under no obligation to "give back" to the community due to Drupal.org's own historical lack of enforcing the GPL. At least that's how I interpret in a non-lawyer way the main concern if Drupal.org continues the way it goes it how it handles contributed modules.
I suggest a disclaimer statement on the drupal.org/project/Modules and drupal.org/project/Themes pages that state that the modules and themes are a Drupal community contribution that are not maintained by Drupal.org but are permitted to be distributed by Drupal.org. Each module and theme must be licensed with GPL and it is the module maintainer's responsibility to ensure that any third party application, library, module, etc is compliant with the GPL. Drupal.org itself discourages the distribution of third party libraries that are not GPL compliant via its distribution methods but there is no method in place to enforce it beyond email complaint from the third party library owners or by the Drupal community. Such a statement clearly separates core from the contributions but also separates the individual modules to its maintainers. Then we can end this debate of how contributed modules affect the whole even though "These contributed modules are not part of any official release and may not be optimized or work correctly." tries to do that now. IANAL, Earnie -- http://for-my-kids.com/ -- http://give-me-an-offer.com/
participants (10)
-
andrew morton -
Bryan Ruby -
Caleb Gilbert -
Cog Rusty -
Earnie Boyd -
Jeff Eaton -
Kevin Reynen -
Larry Garfield -
Thomas Barregren -
ttw+drupal＠cobbled.net