
Allwinner GPL violations - iwwr
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/linux-sunxi/78MbtijKraY/cZSxI_59sg4J
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scott00
Seems like pretty blatant and long-lived violations. Anybody know why somebody
doesn't take them to court and try to get an import ban, monetary damages, or
both?

If the punishment for blatantly violating the GPL or LGPL for years at a time
while raking in millions of dollars in profits is getting bitched at on the
internet, it seems likely to me that a lot of companies will do the cost-
benefit analysis and decide that GPL compliance isn't really worth the hassle.

~~~
JohnTHaller
The simple answer is "because money". It costs quite a bit to be able to do
any of that. And that's not something most open source projects or developers
can come anywhere close to affording.

Source: I run PortableApps.com and have had my GPL software used illegally by
competing projects in other countries as well as at least one Fortune 500 here
in the states.

~~~
arcatek
You made PortableApps ? I used it like seven years ago, and it was great - it
helped me and a few others to learn programming on our school computers which,
as you might guess, didn't have a lot of tools dedicated to that purpose.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Glad you liked it. We're still going strong. A larger percentage of our users
these days now use it either locally or on a synced cloud folder. Our platform
installer even detects and offers to install to Dropbox, Box, One Drive and
Google Drive.

~~~
tracker1
That's awesome, I've got a few things in my dropbox like that... makes it a
lot easier even for those bits that I add to my windows path.

For Linux and OSX, it would be cool to see similar things.. though I've seen
some interesting things using Dropbox that may yeild a portable *nix app
solution one day.

~~~
JohnTHaller
You can run them on Linux via Wine and on OS X via Crossover, Wineskin, etc.
We check for running via Wine in our tools and work around a few bugs where we
can.

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ausjke
Allwinner is the rare, if not the only SOC ARM chip vendor, from China that
sort of embraced Linux/GPL/LGPL in a public way to some extent. The rest of
those similar companies does pretty much nothing meaningful at all, they use
Linux too, just no public release whatsoever. In that sense, it's the least
evil as far as GPL violation goes.

~~~
joezydeco
I'll have to disagree there.

Freescale does an excellent job of putting all of their stuff up on Github.
The iMX6 family is a joy to work with thanks to their efforts.

[https://github.com/freescale](https://github.com/freescale)

They also go above and beyond with documentation. No NDA/MDA needed. Tens of
thousands of pages of freely available technical reference including the
entire TRMs for the SoCs:

[http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?co...](http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX6Q&fpsp=1&tab=Documentation_Tab)

~~~
swinglock
Freescale isn't Chinese.

~~~
joezydeco
True. Sorry to misread the parent post.

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plaes
Oh well, [http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations](http://linux-
sunxi.org/GPL_Violations)

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bhouston
What recourse does one have against a Chinese company? Has anyone ever shown
the GPL to have weight in China?

~~~
rwmj
They sell worldwide. Allwinner are the leading supplier of SoCs for tablets,
and are especially popular in "second tier" tablets and phones. All those
tablets you see for sale in shops that aren't iPads, but have strange unknown
names and sell for $150 - they will have AllWinner-designed chips* and
AllWinner-compiled kernels/userspace full of binary blobs. So you can go after
that.

It's a real shame because their SoCs are cheap, powerful and very popular
amongst Linux/ARM hobbyists - see [http://linux-
sunxi.org/Category:Devices](http://linux-sunxi.org/Category:Devices)

* Well, AllWinner cut and paste ARM cores together. I wonder if ARM have this much trouble with licensing too?

~~~
TorKlingberg
> I wonder if ARM have this much trouble with licensing too?

As far as I know, no. To actually produce chips Allwinner and others have to
go through one of a small number of fabs. TSMC, Globalfoundries, UMC and
Samsung will not make chips with pirated blocks.

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lfam
Allwinner's SOCs are popular as Raspberry Pi-ish single-board computers for
hobbyist Linux users who want a dirt-cheap home server.

What are some alternatives that have better track records with the GPL?

~~~
simosx
As far as I understand, until recently Allwinner has been doing kernel
development with sole focus to get Android shipped as fast as possible. It is
a fact that they did not work to get mainline Linux support for their SoCs.

Developing for mainline might be slower but in the long-run it's better and
even cheaper. I think that they are seeing this now.

You can check the slides at
[https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/allwinner_upstream/](https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/allwinner_upstream/)
for the current level of support. This is about the community work for
mainline support.

~~~
pseudonom-
> It is a fact that they did not work to get mainline Linux support for their
> SoCs.

Though it is possible. I got mainline Linux running on an A10.

~~~
khuey
Yeah, because the sunxi community formed and did all the work.

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pseudonom-
Yeah, I didn't mean that as an endorsement of Allwinner. Just a potentially
useful piece of information.

~~~
khuey
Allwinner boards are quite nice if you want to run mainline Linux on ARM. I've
got an A20 based board for that myself.

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jacob019
Nothing will come of this. Who will bother to sue?

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Busybox have filed multiple lawsuits over GPL violations, and won:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits)

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ksk
Always interesting to see people's reactions to copyright for GPL Code vs
Music/Movies/Games.

~~~
tspiteri
What is interesting about comparing reactions to GPL copyright against music
copyright? Without saying that either of the two copyright cases is
right/wrong, there are major differences. In GPL copyright violation, the
violation hinders sharing. In music copyright violation, the violation usually
helps sharing. So the comparison is a bit meaningless.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
How does it 'hurt sharing?' Maybe in the most trivial sense. The original code
is still out there.

How does not paying for works not hurt sharing? If return on investment on
works is being hurt then that's a demotivator for future works. Monument
Valley had something like a 95% pirating rate on Android. That affects the
expectations of indie devs and investors. Brushing this under the carpet
doesn't change the facts.

If pirating was more under control, we'd see more innovation and top notch
applications in the Android market. Instead, we see all the top notch
applications go to iOS either exclusively or only to Android after they've
made money on iOS and then publishers decide to push out a port because its
just going to get pirated anyway. The difference between these two ecosystems
is proof enough that pirating games hurts innovation, companies, and
customers.

~~~
Anderkent
The usual argument for how nonGPL hurts sharing is that people write
improvements to the open work that the original release cannot replicate, thus
outperforming it. This causes people to use different (closed-source) works on
different platforms, fragmenting the community and hurting sharing.

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ExpiredLink
Merely a minor LGPL violation.

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zdw
This makes me think of Bunnie's "From Gongkai to Open Source":

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

And the general lack of compatibility between western and eastern models of
imaginary property.

In this example allwinner is applying the eastern "share, modify, pass around"
model, which isn't compatible with the western model of strict license
adherence.

In Bunnie's case they're trying to adapt hardware/software developed with no
apparent western-style license to a functional project.

~~~
rwmj
(a) They are not sharing the source at all. (b) Don't apologise for a huge
company operating worldwide and breaking the law.

~~~
4ad
I don't think he was apologising for anything, he was merely drawing a
parallel.

As for not sharing the source at all, I agree, this is why I think the analogy
doesn't hold, but just for reference, the Chinese companies in Bunnie's case
don't officially share share anything either, and yet in practice everything
is shared. It's piracy, but no one minds because they all benefit from it.

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oracle2025
They only people who may complain about those violations are the
copyrightholders of the code that has been violated. Everyone else who is
chiming in here and bashing the offender is IMHO suffering from some kind of
torches and pitchforks mob mentality.

GPL violations as far as I understand it are always a matter to be settled
between the original authors and the offenders. I am not aware that the GPL
gives bystanders and angry fanboys'n girls the right to sue anyone.

~~~
dubya
I don't know of the legal status, but I believe the GPL originated when
Stallman and others wanted access to the source code for the drivers of a
printer. Anyone who uses the software, which is anyone who uses the hardware,
should have standing to demand the code.

~~~
p8952
The history is correct. However the enforcement comes between the author of
the code and the distributor.

The author(A) allows the distributor(D) to distribute their(A) code so long as
they(D) provide the source plus any modifications to the recipient.

The recipient has no right to demand the code due to there being no agreement
to provide it between the distributor and the recipient.

So the author, on behalf of the recipient, must be the one to enforce the
conditions of the agreement they made with the distributor.

In cases involving projects like Linux or BusyBox this can be anyone who has
committed code, as these projects do not require copyright assignment.

In cases involving projects like GNU and Ubuntu all committed code is owned by
the parent organization, the FSF and Canonical respectively. So they are the
only ones who can enforce the GPL.

That said, the end user can report violations to groups like The Software
Freedom Law Center and GPL-Violations.org. These groups have contacts to
various copyright holders and will assist with enforcing them on a pro bono
basis.

