gmane.law.gpl.violations.legal

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

luke.leighton — 2013-05-19T12:24:32

 :)  *sotto voice* sorry.


 it does in some ways.  it doesn't answer the specific question, "how
do i formally get my copyright announcement updated in the linux
kernel source code" yet though but it does provide some opportunity to
point out some errors and mis-... mis-somethings, i can't think of the
exact word.


252 One implication of this ownership structure is that any attempt to change
253 the licensing of the kernel is doomed to almost certain failure.

 interesting.  this statement completely and utterly misses the point.
 it assumes that "the kernel" and "the license" are directly and
irrevocably linked.  which they most certainly are not.

 the statement *should* read as follows:

 "any attempt to change the licensing on the files which make up the
linux kernel"

which, again is mis-leading - in this case very very badly - because
it implies that somehow just because *most* of the files are under one
license, therefore automatically people should not make their *own*
mind - their own free and co

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Henrik Nordström — 2013-05-19T11:27:14

sön 2013-05-19 klockan 11:44 +0100 skrev luke.leighton:


In many european countries there is no "fair use" that applies here.
Even a 1 line change is copyrighted.

Regards
Henrik

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Ralph Corderoy — 2013-05-19T11:07:12

Hi Luke,


I don't think it's size that matters.  ;-)  Or not just that.  I've had
chunks that are 6-12 lines accepted quite happily into FSF GNU GPL
projects without copyright assignment so it seems they were considered
uncopyrightable in isolation.  I think other criteria also matter;
novelty, unobviousness, how much is language boilerplate/noise.

Cheers, Ralph.

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Ralph Corderoy — 2013-05-19T11:04:07

Hi Luke,


Sssh!  It's a Sunday morning;  hangover time for many.

Does the LICENSING section in
http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/development-process/1.Intro#L237
help?

Cheers, Ralph.

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

luke.leighton — 2013-05-19T10:44:44

 did you submit patches; did you put lines of code into files?  are
those files in the linux kernel source?  if answer "yes" then those
lines are copyright YOU.  and you **ARE** an author - joint author -
of the files that were modified.

 i believe i'm right in saying that if you are based in a country
which has signed up to the Berne Convention then you cannot de-assign
that copyright to the public domain [only transfer it].  therefore you
ARE a copyright holder, and that really is the end of the matter.

 [note: if the contributions are _really_ small, say 1 line, then
there is the possibility that people could copy that under "fair use",
but... it's a grey area that i'm not qualified to give you advice on.
they're still definitely your copyright though]

l.

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

luke.leighton — 2013-05-19T10:39:15

On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 12:03 AM, Cole Johnson
<coleharrisjohnson< at >gmail.com> wrote:

 mr linus torvalds is one person.  he is not a god.  he does not
dictate that which everyone else can choose to do.  if mr linus
torvalds is telling everyone "he will not use the GPLv3 for the
kernel" i.e. NOBODY may dual-license their copyright material in the
linux kernel then he is *MASSIVELY* overstepping a serious boundary of
both propriety and copyright law.  if i choose to release all
copyright code under dual licenses then THAT IS MY RIGHT AND NO FUCKER
IS GOING TO TELL ME OTHERWISE.

 so, let's nip this in the bud and set it straight, ok?

 i assume that what mr linus torvalds *meant* to say was "i have some
code, it is under my copyright.  i personally choose not to release
that copyright material under any license other than the GPLv2 and
that is my choice and my right as the owner of that copyright
material.  signed, mr linus torvalds".

 that choice - made by mr linus torvalds - has *nothing to do with
anybody e

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Ralph Corderoy — 2013-05-19T10:08:48

Hi Sonwon,

...
...

I was the moderator that approved Eric's post.  I've no reason to doubt
that Eric hasn't talked to the CTO.  The CTO may be fed up of Eric and
said no more than "Well sure, if you had a bunch of copyright holders
all saying they'd been infringed then we'd look at doing something about
the hosting".  Or he may be a swivel-eyed loon dieing to pull the plug
if only he had a little more evidence.  As intelligent readers we can
see Eric's interpretation of the talk has to be taken into account.

It's clear Eric thinks Chad is violating the GNU GPL.  Equally clear
that you think Chad isn't.  The list is often used to gain advice, ask
for help, and publicise violations that are *believed* to have taken
place, because a lone individual against an international corporation
often doesn't get very far.  That Chad is also an individual makes this
more personal than normal but shouldn't stop the issue being discussed;
just with more care about others' feelings.

Top tips, not aimed at anyone in parti

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Ian Stirling — 2013-05-19T09:12:54


Fork the kernel, and put it up on a repo somewhere that says you're 
trying to get it all as
GPL3.
Identify the sourcecodes origin line by line (or finer grained in some 
cases).
Get permission from those contributors to relicence as GPLV3.
At some point, you may have residual amounts of GPL2 in each subsystem 
small enough that
rewriting is easier than getting more agreement.
Do so.

When you have it all as GPLV3, release it.

You may be aided by the fact that copyright terms will run out on some 
of the code in little
more than a century, which might considerably speed up the project.

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

SonWon — 2013-05-18T18:13:08




Eric,

You know, I was fine with this post until the indirect Anthrax / Chad
Goodman bashing started.  No proof is provided just
some unsubstantiated reference to some CTO.  If you are so interested in
justice then why aren't you going after faux an admitted violator of the
GPL and the others who knowingly continue to violate the GPL?

Moderators, I feel Eric's post is inappropriate as it makes it sound like
Chad is guilty when there is no proof provided.  This is wrong to allow
slander on this list and detracts from the good work that could be done
here.

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Clemens Ladisch — 2013-05-19T08:15:49

But how does a copyright on defconfig files result in copyright on the
kernel binary?


If you are the author of an entire file, just add it to that file.
For smaller contributions, this would be impractical.


Regards,
Clemens

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders forfaster GPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Cole Johnson — 2013-05-18T23:03:11

added to the linux kernel sources?
IIRC Linus said he will NOT use the GPLv3 for the kernel. If a company begins TiVoization, that's up to them. The kernel should allow that.
—

Cole Johnson

Re: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for fasterGPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels

luke.leighton — 2013-05-18T18:27:21

 count me in.


 even if you did not explicitly put "Copyright (C) {your name}" in
them, you still retain copyright.  depending on the country you are in
you cannot even get rid of the copyright even if you say "i forever
renounce irrevocably and without restriction or limitation all
copyright and place this into the public domain signed me" - you have
to actively assign the copyright to someone else.


 you wrote something that's copyrighted.  therefore you're a copyright
holder [therefore automatically any copyright violator must request
your permission to have their GPLv2 license rights reinstated].

 my linux kernel modifications are small, too - they sort of winged
their way by a slow process of migration into tmpfs by way of selinux
xattrs.  and there are likely some unattributed contributions that
came from the xanadux.sf.net project originally (depending on whether
they were picked up or not over time)

 but that makes no odds: i am still a copyright holder, ergo a
contributor, ergo i'd like to be i

Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for faster GPLenforcement against Anthrax Kernels

Eric Appleman — 2013-05-18T07:24:31

Would anyone be interested in forming such a pool? I am willing to wait 
years for this to be resolved through certain organizations, but I 
believe we can do better.

Last I checked, I have 1 long-time poster of this list on board. Would 
anyone else like to join? Ideally I'd like to get the LKML (which I have 
CC'd) involved so that authors of critical Linux components be a part of 
this. I'm not sure if my defconfig commits to Android kernel branches 
count as contributions, so I'm not going to consider myself a Linux 
contributor unless told otherwise.

This pool would be used in the following manner:

* Formally requesting source for binaries (means to request source
* Formally requesting removal of critical copyrighted code that Linux 
cannot function without
* Informing interested parties with respect to refusals of the above

The CTO of Anthrax's hosting server is very interested in terminating 
Chad Goodman's account. Bullet point #3 might come into effect here.

If this is a bad idea, uses incorrec

sounds similar to red hat tm issue Re: Legal Digest: Ubuntu violatedthe GPL License

Paul Brewer — 2013-05-17T13:03:14

The use of trademark to stake a claim in a particular Linux O/S and
software collection is not a new development.

Red Hat Inc similarly wished to prohibit copying of their trademark.  They
agreed that Red Hat [tm] Linux could
be copied, but simply requested that all references to "Red Hat" be removed.

This led to something called "Pink Tie Linux" being distributed by
CheapBytes and others.

Paul

Re: Legal Digest: Ubuntu violated the GPL License

Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli — 2013-05-15T15:51:31

On Mon, 13 May 2013 00:34:22 +0000
p db <id3rfix< at >gmail.com> wrote:

The trademark policy is available here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/trademark-policy


That doesn't seem to have any contradiction because:
 * Trademark and copyright are different laws.
 * The restriction doesn't apply on GPL software with Ubuntu trademarks
   stripped of it. And the ubuntu trademark policy clearly state:
"Ubuntu is open source - you may freely remove the Ubuntu
trademarks from source packages, recompile the source code to
create your own binaries and thereby eliminate Canonical
copyrights, creating your own derivative distribution."
   And that's exactly what some derivative distributions of Ubuntu do,
   like Trisquel for instance. Trisquel doesn't have such
   trademarks restriction and is fully free software(so you have no
   risks of having proprietary software that is not redistributable or
   not usable commercially).

Denis.

Re: 2-bsd/isc code using gpl library, is it ok?

Jeroen Massar — 2013-05-14T10:28:48

From my POV (and I expect other more knowledgeable folks on this to jump
in and correct me, thus this is also to see how well I get it ;)

For libradius the license is independent from the other libraries as you
are just a library, not the final (object) code and you do not fully
depend on the GPL portion, as you can select another library to take
over that function.

You are not changing anything in the GPL portion, thus not deriving from
it and thus there are no patches/sources for you to provide (in case you
distribute it, which you do due to github)

If somebody choses to use your library and mix it with polarssl then
that binary + sources would need to fall under GPL as they chose to use
the GPL version.

If somebody choses to use your library and mix it with openssl/libmd
they can chose their license to be the BSD-alike variant.

Now if your library would only depend on the GPL code, then it would
need to become GPL, as it is not lgpl.

For the openvpn_radauth tool, which is a final object code, you w

2-bsd/isc code using gpl library, is it ok?

Tamas TEVESZ — 2013-05-14T00:17:09

hi,

i have a situation where i'm using juniper libradius off freebsd 
(http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/9/lib/libradius/), which is 
2-clause-bsd licensed. for some operations, it uses openssl and libmd 
(openssl- and various-but-bsd-compatible-licensed, respectively) as 
is.

in the course of events, i had to add support for libradius using 
polarssl (gpl, *not* lgpl). it was done so with an intermediate header 
that translates between openssl/polarssl/libmd calling conventions and 
a makeshift common denominator. i have licensed this 2-bsd, same as 
the rest of libradius. the rest of the application that is using 
libradius (and thus indirectly polarssl) is isc-licensed.

(if that wasn't quite clear, the current state of affairs can be seen 
on github: https://github.com/melak/openvpn_radauth).

question is: is it ok this way? if not, what options do i have to make 
it ok? i obviously can't change neither libradius' nor polarssl's 
license (also using these particular libraries for the task at hand

Re: Legal Digest: Ubuntu violated the GPL License

Marco Antonio Mauro — 2013-05-13T07:56:48

Hi Paolo Del Bene,

On May 13, 2013 8:16 AM, "p db" <id3rfix< at >gmail.com> wrote:

A quote of your own e-mail isn't really worth anything without references,
and there are sites selling Ubuntu CDs that are endorsed by canonical, so
you're most probably mistaken.


And water is wet, so what?


You're not RMS or anything close to him. Respect isn't the same as
compliance.


I don't decide anything but you add nothing to this mailing list, even
though at least now I can read your emails (sort of,) while previously
there was only incoherent rambling in there. Do whatever you want though --
you're entitled to freedom of speech but I'm entitled to ignore or reply to
your emails.

So, once more and for the last time: if it's not a violation and/or not
relevant to this list please refrain from posting.

Re: Legal Digest: Ubuntu violated the GPL License

p db — 2013-05-13T00:34:22

I want remember to Marco Antonio Mauro,

a) that : "Ubuntu's trademark policy prohibits commercial
redistribution of exact
copies of Ubuntu, denying an important freedom".

b) one point of GNU General Public License, is the possibility to sell
Free Software

Richard Matthew Stallman said in the past:

"Since the beginning of the Free Software movement I had the idea that
there was space for gain. One of the advantages of free software is
that there is an open market for any type of service or assistance, so
if you are using the software for business and want a good assistance
service you have the Possibility to choose among a vast number of
people, you can choose between various companies involved in the
sector of services.

In general must provide a quality service otherwise you turn to
someone else, with proprietary software support is a monopoly there is
only one company that usually has the source code and only her can
guarantee assistance. Consequently you're at the mercy of a monopoly
and 'the case for

Re: I am leaving this list because it is censored

Quiliro Ordóñez — 2013-05-04T15:11:44

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

El 04/05/13 03:46, luke.leighton escribió:
else) agreed to abide by - i.e. the contract that you implicitly entered
into by signing up by using the resources at the gpl-violations.org
domain. here is where you can read that:
http://gpl-violations.org/mailinglists.html#list-rules l.

Thank you for reminding me. I agree with those "rules". But I don't like
that name. I'd rather follow "recommendations". That creates an
environment of consensus and not of impositions. In case someone does
not agree with them, it is easier to help them find their need and
collaborate more effectively towards towards everyone's needs.

I am even tempted to change the topic to "I am staying on this list for
its respect of its users" :-)

- -- 
Saludos libres,

Quiliro Ordóñez
Presidente (en conjunto con el resto de socios)
Asociación de Software Libre del Ecuador - ASLE
Av de la Prensa N58-219 y Cristóbal Vaca de Castro
Quito, Ecuador
(02)-600 8579
IRC: http://webchat.freenode.n

Re: I am leaving this list because it is censored

luke.leighton — 2013-05-04T08:46:33

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 11:53 PM, Quiliro Ordóñez
<quiliro< at >congresolibre.org> wrote:

 that's great....  but may i please gently remind you (and everyone
else) of the rules that you (and everyone else) agreed to abide by -
i.e. the contract that you implicitly entered into by signing up by
using the resources at the gpl-violations.org domain.  here is where
you can read that:
 http://gpl-violations.org/mailinglists.html#list-rules

 l.