

Android and the GPLv2 death penalty - sciurus
http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/455013/7b3cbe56fc85e6d3/

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click170
This paragraph from the bottom of the article presents a vector of attack
(albeit a small one) on the kernel that I hadn't considered before, but it
seems like one we may quickly encounter in the future.

"One would guess that a copyright troll with a small ownership [of kernel
code] would succeed mostly in getting his or her code removed from the kernel
in record time. Big holders could pose a bigger threat. Imagine a company like
IBM, for example; IBM owns the copyright on a great deal of kernel code. IBM
also has the look of one of those short-lived companies that doesn't hang
around for long. As this flash-in-the-pan fades, its copyright portfolio could
be picked up by a troll which would then proceed to attack prior infringers.
Writing IBM's code out of the kernel would not be an easy task, so some other
sort of solution would have to be found. It is not a pretty scenario."

~~~
vogonj
"IBM also has the look of one of those short-lived companies that doesn't hang
around for long."

this is probably the funniest sentence I have ever read.

~~~
sixtofour
It's conceivable that Motorola Mobile might have had GPL-licensed linux code.
That story might be playing out differently had Microsoft bought them instead
of Google.

~~~
jrockway
In the end, the code gets removed and rewritten. Most of Linux is drivers for
hardware that you don't have anyway, so the chances of this affecting the
average person are minimal.

Honestly, nothing but good could come from being forced to remove key parts of
Linux. A lot of it needs a good rethinking, but breaking compat would not be
tolerated. If it's legally required, then people don't have a choice.

~~~
sixtofour
"In the end, the code gets removed and rewritten."

Undoubtedly true, but what about deployed/sold devices? I wasn't real
impressed at the pace of the update getting to my Epic, which I believe was
caused in part by different motivations between Samsung and Sprint. What about
devices that are no longer supported by updates? They're "out there."

~~~
jrockway
I guess they get an emergency patch or Samsung pays damages. Just like they
already do for the eight billion patents various trolls claim their phones
infringe on.

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tzs
The gist of it _seems_ to be that yes, once you violate GPLv2 you need
explicit permission to get your license restored (which would be hard to do in
the case of the Linux kernel), but hey, don't worry about it. The copyright
owners are nice people who just want the source distributed, so go ahead and
ignore the license as long as you intend to eventually comply--there won't be
any serious consequences.

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aninteger
This is a subscriber-only article. By linking to a subscriber link we are not
helping LWN.

Quoting LWN: "Reader subscriptions are a necessary way to fund the continued
existence of LWN and the quality of its content."

~~~
jrockway
But LWN has a feature specifically for sharing subscriber-only articles on
social news sites, and that's why everyone can see this article. Presumably if
this is killing them, they'd just turn that feature off.

~~~
aninteger
Fair enough I guess. I don't work for LWN. I just felt slightly guilty by
accessing a subscriber link that was probably intended more for "friends of a
subscriber" than the whole internet community.

~~~
jandevos
Aren't we all friends here? :)

Honestly, though, if LWN was worried about this, they could put some sore of
limit on the number of times a subscriber link could be used (per time unit?)
or something. I don't think they are, and rightly so: the exposure to their
content (which is very good value for the small amount of money they ask
subscribers), as well as their liberal policy on these 'friend links' probably
lead to more subscribers. Personally, I want to read the LWN articles when
they appear there (on their RSS feed, to be precise), and not when someone
gets around to posting a link on Hacker News.

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Uchikoma
What I did not understand in the original article: For what is the license
void? For BusyBox or for BusyBox 1.0.3. Is it valid again - new distribution -
with BusyBox 1.0.4? Or is it the "same" software?

[edit] Just saw this is also discussed in the linked article.

PS: In philosophy this problem is known as Ship of Theseus.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus>

~~~
lurker19
Software doesn't violate licenses, people do. Anyone who violates the license
of a work loses their license to the work. A more pointed question then is
about who violates/loses the license: an individual coder? A
corporation/foundation?

~~~
jandevos
I think the gist was: if you lose your license to distribute Busybox X, does
that impact your rights with respect to Busybox Y?

My take on this (but IANAL) is that you do not really lose the rights to
distribute a specific version, but the rights to distribute specific code (or
compiled versions of it), and that would carry through to all code in version
Y that was already in version X, but not any newer code that is unique to
version Y. That won't be very useful, though.

[Edit] Just read the part of the article that deals with this question.
Personally, I hold to my take on this matter -- that the scope is not a
particular version of the distribution containing the code, but to all the
bits of code of which the license was violated -- even if you also have access
to the code in another way. My reasoning for this is that this could otherwise
open up a pretty simple loop-hole: you'd only have to get someone else, whose
license is not yet revoked, to fork the project, and release a new 'version'
of the program, to get your rights to the code back. That can not have been
the intention of that clause in the GPL.

~~~
lurker19
Ah I thought you were naming BusyBox as an infringing work, not an infringed.
Anyway, it does seem, as mentioned in the article, that if the copyright
holder rereleases a similar work under a similar license, a past infringer
gets a fresh shot, unless the author specifically publishes their revision
history as a single work.

The point of the GPL really is about sharing, as the article suggests, not
about punitive damages or post-violation injuctions. GPL-using authors do not
want to prohibit infringers from future sharing, they want derived works
published freely.

Much of the point of GPL and Free Software is about freedom for users, not
making war against others. A past infringer gaining access to to code is not a
loophole, it is part of the goal of the Free Software movement, which is
unrestricted access for anyone to exploit software privately or to share it
publicly (but not to allow public exploitation of non-shared code).

------
nokcha
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems that under Section 6 of GPL, a
former violator could get a new license by simply receiving another copy of
the software from anyone who still has a valid license:

> 6\. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
> Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original
> licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms
> and conditions.

