Expert Says Cisco's iPhone violates GPL 193
Stony Stevenson writes "Even while Cisco Systems is suing Apple for violating its iPhone trademark, an open-source enthusiast is accusing Cisco itself of infringing copyright in the same product.
From the article: "Cisco has not published the source code for some components of the WIP300 iPhone in accordance with its open-source licensing agreement, said Armijn Hemel, a consultant with Loohuis Consulting and half of the team running the GPL Violations Project, an organization that identifies and publicizes misuse of GPL licenses and takes some violators to court."
Re:it bears repeating (Score:3, Informative)
Single page version of the article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anyone who owns one of these phones ask? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, according to the GPL, if they don't provide the source with every phone then they DO have to give it to anyone in the general public upon request - until they've sold or otherwise "distributed" the last one and for a period of time thereafter.
(You never know who ends up with the black box containing the object code, after all, and writing the GPL so it would require successive box owners to maintain a paper trail of ownership in order to obtain the source code would have subverted its purpose.)
Re:Richard Stallman... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Richard Stallman... (Score:3, Informative)
The idea behind that section is that someone who has a binary under the GPL but hasn't requested the source shouldn't be required to acquire the source before distributing the binary. With that section, they can distribute the binary and rely on the original provider to provide the source directly.
Nevertheless, this has come up a few times before on Slashdot. For example, see
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=212978&cid=17
Re:Anyone who owns one of these phones ask? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, according to the GPL, if they don't provide the source with every phone then they DO have to give it to anyone in the general public upon request - until they've sold or otherwise "distributed" the last one and for a period of time thereafter.
Actually, according the the GPL, they don't. They just have to give it to anyone who uses the binary. However, most of the time anyone in the general public could be a user, but that's not assured.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.htm
and
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.htm
GPL is NOT an agreement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GPL is NOT an agreement (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What an effing minefield (Score:4, Informative)
Its defining derivative (which differs between the LGPL and the GPL and also how you link to libraries) which is the other mine field.
In general if you dynamically link LGPL libraries or system call to binaries of either type you are safe from having to release your own code as GPL/LGPL
One of the other compliance issues that is uner the GPL that is trrival to meet but many companies fail to do so is that when you do use GPL code in such a way that you dont have to release your own code, you still have to aknowlege the use of such GPL code and either provide a copy of the source code in machine readable form or provide instructions to where it can be found (a few links to sourceforge is usually sufficient) since this is trivial to do it understanably annoys FOSS advocates when companies fail to do so.
GPL vs. EULA (Score:3, Informative)
An EULA restricts the rights you have by copyright law.
You have no obligation whatsoever to accept the GPL, and if you don't you are still free to use the software as you seem fit. An EULA will try to tell you that you can't use the software unless you agree with it.
What the GPL does is to allow you to redistribute the software under certain conditions, something you have otherwise no right to do under copyright law.
What an EULA is to disallow some uses of the software, something you are otherwise free to do under copyright law.