

Chinese Tablet Manufacturers breaking the GPLv2 - ch0wn
http://www.elpauer.org/?p=1146

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ams6110
The author is "surprised" that Chinese manufacturers are not honoring
intellectual property licensing terms? What planet does he live on?

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wcoenen
I think he is surprised not by the violation, but by the lack of legal action
to correct the situation.

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adestefan
It will never stop so why waste the money. Cisco has had their OSs ripped out
of their image files and placed onto cheap Chinese switches and routers for
over a decade now.

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trotsky
The simple answer is that pursuing an import ban at the ITC against down
market chinese tablets would be an exercise in futility. Unlike major
manufacturers that are tied to their brands any no name tablet that pulled a
ban would just get a face lift and a new name.

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ZeroGravitas
This comment is full of interesting info:

[http://www.elpauer.org/?p=1146&cpage=1#comment-101986](http://www.elpauer.org/?p=1146&cpage=1#comment-101986)

Things are in this case a lot better than it seems at first.

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yason
Somehow people don't mind Windows being pirated all over in China. How is this
different? Everything in China is copied.

That's what no copyright means: pirated commercial software, putting GPL
software in proprietary software (that gets copied, too), downloading warez
and movies and music. And that's all right!

No GPL developer starves to death because China is ripping his source code all
over, similarly to no Western software developer starves to death because
anything from Windows to Photoshop to games to $younameit is copied around in
China.

Software isn't written to suck up money via any half-imaginable channel.
Software is written either because it's fun or that there's someone who ends
up _paying enough_ so that the development becomes feasible.

Crying out for the loss of income _if only the Chinese had bought original
copies of the programs_ would be akin to MAFIAA crying out loud for the loss
of income _if only everyone who pirated a song_ would've bought the damn album
otherwise.

GPL is a good weapon in Western countries because in the west these companies
also actively go against pirating _their_ software and content.

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unwind
Huh?

Nobody is crying about loss of income. People taking GPL:d software and using
it in closed products represents a _loss of freedom_ , for the people using
said products.

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pnathan
If I read it right, he's satirizing the people who think copyright should be
abolished.

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rbanffy
This is silly. Without copyright, licenses like the GPL don't have teeth and
cannot be enforced.

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gonzo
Neither the FSF nor Apple have standing to get the injunction enforced. Though
it might be interesting for Apple to contribute to Linux in order to be able
to do exactly this.

Maybe when the Linux toolchain is LLVM instead of gcc...

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adestefan
LLVM is licensed under the UI license, which is basically the BSD license. The
only part that is GPL in LLVM is some C/C++ code derived from GCC.

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rbanffy
That would be enough, but I doubt tablets come with C/C++ compilers.

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mikehuffman
I've had products produced in China. They remind me of that honey badger
video. If you have money they will do whatever you want. I was shocked at the
ease with which I could contact one of their companies and request that they
change and rebrand some of their own proprietary products for me to sell, and
they complied without blinking for what, in my mind, was a fairly low amount
of $$$. I can't imagine US companies even contemplating that without
practically owning the results.

