VX30 Ad-Stats Code Online

tmk writes "Drunkenblog has done it again. After deconstructing Maui X-Stream has GPL Violations with reproducable proof, he put a copy of the VX30 Ad-Stats source online. There is also a copy of the phpAdsNew source to compare. Drunkenbatman says 'This is a community problem, and it's pretty much up to you.'"

So..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

So when is it okay to use GPL code? I mean it seems alot of companies use it n beta "to test stuff" or "to use untill we code our own for the full version". When does this start becoming "well, it's easier"?

I mean unless you read every single bit of OSS code and every single bit of closed source code you'd never going to catch all these things.

How long is it untill people start to use GPL code in closed source software and sue anyone who reversse engineers it?

Re:The GPL isn't all that

[Marcion]

You are misinformed on many points. Get a better laywer I think.

The GPL is not holding the GNU/Linux OS itself back, only people who want to hoard the code. If you use the software only in-house then there are some limited exceptions within the GPL, so you again should get a better lawyer.

"no business will ever be able to use it. "

Well IBM and many other companies have been able to get on with it. The GPL divides smart and innovative people from the cut and paste brigade. If you can't make a profit then it is your own stupid fault.

"Its draconian requirements"

You are clearly confused and are reading the situation backwards. A normal software license gives you no rights to use the code at all.

The GPL however gives you all the rights but one: you do not have the right to remove the rights of others. You can use the code that has been created at much expense only if you do not attempt to make free software unfree.

No one is forcing you to use GPL'd code. If you want to buy in code to save time then you have to pay for it. The cost for GPL'd software is that you have to share improvements.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, stop crying about it and get on with your life.

Re:The GPL isn't all that

[jjleard]

...and so one day me and my buddies stumble upon this remarkable tower which soared into the clouds. We talked to the natives who explained that local peasants had built the tower over a thousand years and that everyone was welcome inside. We were told we could even live in the tower, modify it or add to it if we wanted. Anywho, my buddies and I spent about three months adding a room to the top of the tower. That place was decked out too -- shag carpet, wall-to-wall speakers with a phat 8-track STEREO sound system, posters, a big fountain. I'm tell you, that place was the... well, it was quite nice. So one day we get a knock on the door. The local peasants want to come in and have a look at our addition. They said, "we often are inspired by the ideas of others and would like to see what you have done." Can you believe that?! Fucking pricks. Coming in to STEAL our ideas?! After all the work we had done even! Man, I just don't know about peasants sometime. I don't think they understand anything.

Community problem? Business ethics!

[winchester]

It's not a community problem... it's a business ethics problem. As long as companies can get away with using open source software in closed source products, they will continue to do so.

Only when the first cases are brought before court, we might see an improvement. Until that moment, this will continue.

Having worked with Token Ring...

[Peter Simpson]

...I wouldn't see lack of Token Ring support as a negative. More like leading the way.

But seriously...I have seen this exact text before. The author seems to have an agenda.

If you don't want to release the source code to your customer (who, by the way, paid you for "your hard work"), don't use GPL'd code as a basis for your work. Write it all yourself from scratch. Then, you own it all!

And, by the way, using GCC does not in any way, subject the code you compile with it, to the GPL.
I'd suggest you get a second opinion from another law firm.

this not about profits

[tota]

it is about abusing the license

Re:Community problem? Business ethics!

[mpcooke3]

You mean GPL'd software in closed source products. Open source = many licenses (including LGPL, MIT and BSD which can be used in closed source products.)

Re:Community problem? Business ethics!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're taking them court for "copyright violation" not "GPL violation". Note well that not even the "truly free" BSD licenses allow you to pass someone else's work off as your own. Also that code has been "freely released" provided a few simple rules are followed. When proprietary sw companies enforce their licences it's "understandable". When FOSS projects stop a proprietary company from plagiarizing them they're "being pricks". I don't get it.

In what way is stopping a plagiarizer from taking credit for your work "being a prick"?

Re:Community problem? Business ethics!

[pcmanjon]

" You write a program and make it freely available, including source code.
Someone takes that program, makes a few changes and releases it as their own.
You take legal action against them for "GPL violation" all you're really doing is being a prick.
"

Actually they're being a prick.

You see, they took the code but failed to open source it.

We code our hearts out and open source something only to have someone steal it, enhance it, and then not release the code like we did?

That's pretty prickish to me. That's like 'Hey, cool, nice code, lets fix this, there, and there, BUY OUR PRODUCT (source not included) PROFIT!!!'

In this case, the original developers of the code can't apply the enhancements made to their code. That isn't fair, or morally acceptable.

Threatoning to sue them if they don't open source their product under the GPL swiftly isn't being a prick, it's only fair.

Re:The GPL isn't all that

[fymidos]

>The GPL is inconvenient in that it appears to be
>deliberately designed to be incompatible with other
>licences. Many other vendors bar us from releasing
>their code

See, it's not the GPL, it's the programmers that chose to license their work under the GPL.
You whould think of it as "The programmers bar us from *not* releasing their code."

BTW, if you some vendors bar you from releasing *their* code, can you please explain what does "None of them make any requirements on derived works." mean?

Re:The GPL isn't all that

[binarytoaster]

This would work, but the reason that companies that don't comply with the GPL don't do this is that it takes much more work than just "s/phpAdsNew/AdStats/g" and whatnot.

They'd have to WORK for it. And even that patch to allow all the functions of the program to be accessible by API would be a huge plus.

Re:The GPL isn't all that

[fymidos]

>I can not use GPL code with other code that is not
>licensed under the GPL. The GPL is incompatible
>with every other licence I've seen. Every other
>licence I've seen is incompatible with precisely
>one licence - The GPL.

Ok, i'll bite..
1) If another license is less restrictive than GPL that means that you are allowed to change the license for that code (considering that this is basically the restriction GPL enforces). So you can GPL the code, and the license is compatible with GPL.
2) If the license is more restrictive than GPL, and you cannot change it, I agree that you have a problem. But it's a problem with the other license, (at least) as much as it's a problem with GPL, no?

Re:Gotta trackback...

[TheoMurpse]

I don't understand what the gripe with making new verbs is. I consider it one of English's great strengths, that one can make new verbs at will. English is very flexible due to this.

If nominalization in English is acceptable, I would hope the opposite (verbification) is OK. Among other languages, Japanese and Latin both have it.

Please, just give me one reason why what the gp said was poor communication (and that is, after all, the whole point of language -- to communicate).

GPL *AND* DMCA violation

[FellowConspirator]

I looked into the Maui X stuff and checked, and yes, they are very cleraly violating the GPL. It strikes me, however, that by making it impossible to obtain the source code, they are circumventing the technological measure of access control (namely, the source code in ASCII form).

The DMCA doesn't necessarily require an access control measure to lock someone out of access to a work (how it is typically employed). Specifically, a technical measure is:

(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

I'd argue that distributing source code so as to grant access to the work is an effective measure to do so, and that in the normal course of it's operation (communicating the structure of an application) that it requires the application of information (headers, expert knowledge, software analysis tools), a process or treatment (at the very least, a system tath can decode ASCII and render it as glyphs on a display or printed page), and the authority of the copyright owner (a license; namely the GPL).

It seems to mee that if you contact their ISP you can have their site shut down. Further, you can complain to the FBI since it's now a federal criminal complaint:

(a) VIOLATIONS REGARDING CIRCUMVENTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES- (1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.

Re:Community problem? Business ethics!

[greenrd]

You write a program and make it freely available, including source code. Someone takes that program, makes a few changes and releases it as their own. You take legal action against them for "GPL violation"

Although *technically* you are justified for taking action, in reality, all you're really doing is being a prick.

I think you missed the money aspect of it here. Personally, if someone's going to make money out of selling the product of my labour, I'm willing to let it go if they abide by the GPL - but if they don't abide by the GPL and they're making money out of it, I want to see some of that money. And/or I want them to stop.

I think that people from most political ideologies - from free market to Marxist - can agree that for another person to take the product of your labour, and sell it without your permission, and give you nothing in recompense, is immoral. Who exactly is being a prick here?

Also, the whole point of the GPL, the intention of it, is to stop things like this happening. Putting the GPL on something is like putting a big sign on it saying "DO NOT TURN THIS INTO PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!"

It's not a technicality. It's the whole point of the GPL!

Re:The GPL isn't all that

[Tom]

... lack of Token Ring support ... unable to defrag its ext2 file system ... copyrighted under something called the GPL

You, sir, have no idea what you're talking about, neither technically nor legally.

Also, you were surprised that your access to the source code came with some conditions? Please remind me to never hire you as a consultant. Checking facts like that first before you invest considerable time and money is one of the most basic skills you should have.

btw.: It's not copyrighted under the GPL, it's copyrighted under the Berne Convention. It is licensed under the GPL. Big difference.

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released.

Fire your lawyer and hire someone who can read [fsf.org].

Re:i have suspicions about this,

[killmenow]

I don't see what suing the VX30 peeps would accomplish other than getting them to distribute their source with the product when they sell it... or is that the point?

The point is compliance with the license. If you do not comply with the license the software is distributed under, you have no right to it. Comply with the terms of the license, or remove the unlicensed code. (Note: The previous statement is not license-specific. It applies to *ALL* licenses.)

You can't really argue that they're hurting phpAdsNew profits -- because there aren't any.

Oh, Adrian. You just don't understand. Your assertion is incorrect. Your statement belies an ideology concerned only with money. Remuneration comes in other forms, however. Payment in kind is consideration just the same as cash money. The profits (that is, the benefit, the consideration, the payment given) in OSS is in additional code, not cash. Let's look at the following:

1. Software development takes time
2. time = money
3. Donating code = Donating time = Donating money (ie., donating code is just as good as paying cash money)

By taking the software (phpAdsNew), and disregarding the license, MXS committed a copyright violation, and the copyright holder has a right now to sue MXS to force them to: (a) stop infringing by removing all of phpAdsNew from AdStats; (b) pay damages; (c) comply with the license and pay for phpAdsNew by way of contributing their modifications (if any) back to the project; or (d) some combination of the above.

This is Copyright/Econ 101 stuff here.

Community ethics? Business ethics!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe. Very funny. Were's all the "It's inevitable now. You can't stop it, so you might as well give in to it" [slashdot.org] talk? Or everyone's favourite "Free advertising!" [slashdot.org]. It sounds great when you're talking about someone elses work. It's a different thing when it's YOUR work being exploited.

Re:The GPL isn't all that

[arkanes]

No. If you create a derived work of a GPL product - or, for that matter *any* copyrighted work - you have no distribution right. Period. You may aquire such a right via licensing, but you do not "lose" it, because you never had it. The hyothetical situaion you imply, where you have an application that you suddenly lose rights to because you include GPL code, isn't accurate and doesn't match reality. You always have full rights over your own code. When you "lose" the rights is when what you're distributing isn't yours anymore - for example, when you include GPL code. The hypothetical application *isn't yours*, and you never had the right to distribute it in that form. It's like making an album, and then taking another bands album onto the end. You always have the rights to *your* album. But you do not, and never did, have the right to distribute your album AND the other bands album.

If you could compile a version of your application which contained no GPL code, then you could distribute that all you want - thats yours, and you have the rights to it. You're claiming that somehow you lose rights because you can't distribute GPL code alongside yours, which is false. Do you feel that you lose rights because you can't distribute your application without having paid money to commercial library vendors? It's the same thing. You aren't losing a right because you never had one in the first place.