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."
Richard Stallman... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Richard Stallman... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 sou
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They only have an obligation to give source to those whom they already gave the binaries *IF they ship binaries and source together.* If they ship binaries without source, then they do indeed have to give source to anyone that requests it.
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I mean, after the first two parties, you are probably a little drunk anyway. If the third party sucks, you might just get totally pissed or fall asleep, leaving you open to any of many problems
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Sorry, wrong: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, not true.
If they have a stand-alone part that is unchanged they still have to distribute the source of it.
If they have stand-alone part they modified they have to license their modifications under the GPL and distribute the whole part's source (not just the deltas).
The only thing they can avoid *GPLing and distributing source for is a stand-alone part that they wrote from scratch - and then (since it's a single software load rather than a distribution containing clearly separable components) only if the underlying code was licensed under the LGPL rather than the full-blown GPL.
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Er, no. You can pretty safely bet it will--but the GPL does not require this.
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The recipient is still, of course, perfectly entitled to post that source code on a public web site.
What an effing minefield (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What an effing minefield (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't RTFA but, in general, if someone gives you something with conditions then it's reasonable to expect you to understand and honour those conditions - otherwise, don't take it in the first place!*
In this case, Cicso has (according to the summary) used GPL code, and hasn't fulfilled it's share of the bargain. It doesn't sound like a business "getting completely strangled by
*I think the GPL is different to an EULA... (my personal bias shining through)
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It is. It's just a plain old L, it's the EU and "A" that make EULAs bullshit.
Re:What an effing minefield (Score:5, Insightful)
* The article misrepresents the GPL by stating: "The GPL license requires the company to publish the code that it develops for the phone." This is not true; GPL requires that modifications to GPL code be released, not that code developed for a GPL platform be released. Such confusions are exactly why it is a minefield out there. Even if you're in compliance, you get accused of not being so.
* Hemel has not actually identified any code that is in violation (according to the article, though it also says he's identified the MTD as being in violation). As he says, "I'm not going to do their work for them." But without some clear identification, this becomes a fishing expedition. He says "you're not in compliance" and
* Cisco, as noted by the article, was "very open to his report, [Hemel] said. The company subsequently fixed omissions on a few products that Hemel identified." Every indication is given in the article that Cisco has worked with Hemel in good faith to ensure GPL compliance. This is very different from Apple's announcement of an apparently violating trademark while literally in the middle of negotiations over whether they could use it. Regardless of the merits of either, comparing the two is absurd. They have nothing in common except a vague "IP violation" umbrella.
* As Hemel notes in the way of a hunch, large companies often acquire code from partners, acquisitions, and contractors. Ensuring that none of these sub-parties has violated GPL is a significant burden, and in most cases impossible to do 100%. Minefield #3. Companies should be judged for their good faith in these situations and particularly how they react when problems are discovered. Nothing in this article indicates that Cisco has behaved except in good faith.
The original poster was quite correct that the GPL is a minefield. The fact that you often know when you're entering it (unlike software patents) does not remove the minefield. The only way to avoid the minefield is to completely avoid GPL platforms and code, or to GPL absolutely everything you produce. If you wish to work somewhere between those two poles (which Linux seems to encourage), then there are going to be some legal issues to watch out for, and legal issues that don't have really clear answers because the GPL is unlike any other "license agreement" that came before.
The good news is that the GPL creates exactly the kinds of problems for propriety-software companies that RMS wanted it to cause. The bad news is the the GPL can be a bit of a minefield for proprietary-software companies.
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.
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The FSF would rather you use glibc than you didn't. They are happy for you to dynamically link against it. They would rather people standardise on free software than there be lots of proprietry libraries, none of them tested as well as glibc for example.
They get very unhappy if you statically link however!!
In general if you link or use LGPL software in such a way that you could remove the LGPL item and replace it with something else not of that license (that may or may not exist, you just have
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just like any other licence. except maybe public domain, which isn't exactly a license as such.
"...then there are going to be some legal issues to watch out for, and legal issues that don't have really clear answers because the GPL is unlike any other "license agreement" that came before."
it is unlike in some aspects, but in general, almost all licence agreements that exceed two sentences have weird clauses, clauses that are open to misinte
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You can just as easily wind up with problems between different pieces of proprietary code. Even if they use the "same" licence...
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Quick mod him up insightful! He hasn't read the article up for discussion but has an opinion that meshes well with
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
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An EULA restricts the rights you have by copyright law.
You might as well compare apples with lumber. All they have in common is that they come from a kind of plant known as a "tree". A more meaningful comparison for the GPL would be a publishing contract.
(As for something to compared with an EULA you'd have a hard time finding something which wasn't practiced by a con artist.)
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Yes, I realize Cisco's suit is about trademark, and not copyright; however, Larry Lessig goes into great detail in most of his writings to explain why the complete redirection in copyright law in 1976 laid the groundwork for such backwards and insane laws as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act [wikipedia.org] and of course, the not
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F
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This is the point that the OP was trying to make. Patents are dangerous because something you made up can be infringing. If there were a patent on "songs sung to mark the celebration of the anniversary of an individual's birth", then even if you wrote a happy birthday song for your friend you would be in violation.
Incidentally if you think the above analogy is a silly one - no one could patent such a thing; then it is a perfect lesson in w
Offhand... (Score:2)
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Patents are a minefield, copyrights aren't. Code under the GPL is crystal clear about what you may and may not do with it. If Cisco doesn't comply with the GPL, it's a deliberate, premeditated rip-off of open source developers.
Cisco doesn't even have any moral high ground to stand on, given how possessive they are of their own copyrights, how little they have contributed to the community, and the rate at which they
no suprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyways the WIP300 sucks bad.
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Apparently you have a different definition of the word "large" when it involves two dozen handsets.
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It was like pulling teeth to get the wifi accesspoint/routers GPL code released a few years ago, this is standard operating proceedure by Cisco. I remember the foaming at the mouth all over slashdot about that.
That was Linksys at the time when the code was released. The only reason Cisco does this today is that it was out of the bag before they bought Linksys. Cisco release source code...ha.. steal or lift it now that I can believe. Software shops do this all the time and it is routine, even between c
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Of course (Score:2)
On the other hand, it's a nice bit of karma. Er, but not in the
Re:Of course (Score:4, Interesting)
The copyright holders could sell lets say 50 percent of their copyrights to Apple, which might be happy to pay a generous amount of money for them to have some ammunition against Cisco. The original copyright holders get a nice amount of money, they can still sue Cisco for copyright infringement, and Apple can do the same. The GPL status of the software wouldn't be affected. (If they sold _all_ copyrights to Apple, the software would be just as free, but only Apple could sue any GPL abusers, and of course Apple could build a non-free version itself).
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Now you see if you could see why someone might
Single page version of the article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Single page version of the article (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, get out, you're such a sympathy whore.
Maybe true, but irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
iPhone is a trademark dispute between Apple and Cisco.
The other appears to be a vague accusation the Cisco didn't abide by a usage restriction (not related to apple in the least) on source code....
I mean, perhaps this could be considered ironic, but irony is not a legal challenge and in any case, even if the GPL has been violated, it has no bearing at all on the case between Apple and Cisco.
I'm not a big fan of the way either of these companies use their legal teams, but you don't have to be a lawyer to realize that Apple is wrong here. They gave away their entire negotiating position when they announced iPhone before securing the rights to the name. They either pony up what Cisco wants, or choose a new name. It's not that difficult.
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Could Cisco lose that trademark because of some legal reason? Let's assume the answer is yes (I have no idea). I don't understand how that helps Apple any time soon. It will take years before they lose the trademark because of legal action.
Just because Cisco loses the trademark doesn't mean that Apple gets to have it. The best that Apple could hope for is the term becomes generic. Well... does a
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I am aware of that. Cisco might have lost the right to use it because they trademarked it way back and haven't used it. It appears there are some (sane) laws in place that makes it harder to just trademark a lot of names for the purpose of suing whoever tries to use them. This is what I've heard, do not in any way take it as gospel ;-)
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Same thing as Cisco decided to do in Norway... I guess.
The funny thing about trademarks is nobody has a right to any name. They are granted a right to a name for a specific application. Apple is trying to say that Cisco has the name for a VoIP phone and they want it for a cell phone.
But we all know that the Apple Phone has to be a VoIP phone eventually, so bs on that.
It's all nebulous - if I decided to
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Perhaps true, but ultimately irrelevant to Apple's desire to launch the phone in 5+ months. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and Cisco will surely get an injunction against Apple's iPhone if it goes on sale. You may be right about everything, and it won't mean a thing, because the burden will be on Apple to prove the trademark is unenforceable.
An
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Apple wants to release the iPhone in June. They _will_ release it in June, but possibly not under the name iPhone.
Cisco is officially in possession of the trademark "iPhone", but they might lose it.
The name "iPhone" has lots of value for Apple. It has very little or no value for Cisco, except to use it to get money from Apple.
If Apple releases the iPhone lets say as "Apple Phone" or "The Phone", Cisco has no chance to get any money from Apple.
So wha
GPL is NOT an agreement (Score:5, Informative)
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And not accepting it means you have no legal right to use the code or have a copy of it on your machine at all
Hate to be nit-picky; but you have every right to have a copy of it on your machine without accepting into agreement with the GPL. The GPL only applies if you distribute derivative works. On a side note, that's a weird issue when it comes to GUI installers. Especially win32 installers that make you click "Accept" on the GPL posting. Seems strange that the people using the GPL, who generally hate EULAs, basically implement the same sort of thing in their own installers.
Maybe I'm way off, but I think
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By the way, I believe at least Debian has removed some of those (which they, arguably, have the right to do under the terms of the GPL). I don't remember from which specific pieces of software, though.
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GPL doesn't add any restrictions that copyright law doesn't already have. It grants additional privileges to the licensee that otherwise would not be legal - like
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your usage is not restricted and you are now allowed to give away copies and modify yours in whatever way you want - provided that if you give away a modified copy you need to give away the source code.
Again, it's nit-picky; but we are talking about licenses and copyrights, which are nit-picky by nature. Anyway, your usage IS restricted. You don't have to "agree" to the GPL in order to install and use the software; but try clicking "Decline" or "Cancel" and see how your install goes.
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Ok, you have a point - the click-through licence/agreement shouldn't bind people to the GPL. Maybe it should start with "if you wish to distribute this software or a modified version of it then...". However, it's perfectly
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Quite wrong. Without the GPL, you have no right to copy the code at all. The GPL gives you that right; if you didn't accept it, you'd be violating the author's copyright.
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The GPL is the document that grants the right to have your own personal copy of the code, but it's unconditional; you don't have to accept the GPL, or do anything else that would constitute 'agreeing' to it. Everyone has the right to have GPLed software on their machines, granted by the GPL, whether they accept the GPL or not.
However if they don't accept the GPL, they don't have the rights to modify or distribute or distribute
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Legally, if you copy the software onto your machine, you have "accepted the GPL" in its entirety. It's just that almost all of the terms of the GPL pertain to distribution, so when th
Doesn't demand anything NOT (Score:2)
You can argue about legal definitions all you want, but as a practical matter the GPL is indistinguishable in effect from a "licensing agreement" to those that intending to distribute derivative code.
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No, the proprietary software was never illegal, never infringing on copyright. Then the owners of this original work decide that they want to incorporate GPL'd code in their application. In order to do this legally, they must GPL their own code too. T
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It's not clear which source code you are talking about, but the point is that copyright law says nothing about having to distribute the new part of a derivative work, it just says you can't distribute anything without permission. The requirement to GPL your added code is part of the terms u
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Not at all. My argument doesn't have anything to do with public domain.
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In any case the debate is about whether the GPL demands something (which it does as I described before), not about the relative niceness of the GPL vs. proprietary legalities.
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Hmmm... I see what you're saying, and maybe we're getting into debating the finer points of something that most
not only iPhone (Score:2, Interesting)
Cisco has a line of Fibre Channel switches called Cisco MDS [cisco.com]. They are used for Storage Area Networks and provide FC, iSCSI and FCIP capabilities. The high-end series, 95xx, look pretty much like Catalysts 65xx (with FC interfaces, of course), and 92xx use 7200 chasis.
Those systems are povered by Linux, given, you have a SmartNet contract, you can download updates for them containing kernel with initd and rootfs. Moreover, by simply observing boot process, one can conclude, they are Linux-powered. However,
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Re:Big Company (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh, Large companies would have you believe that Trademark, Trade Secrets, Copyright & Patents (along with other intangible or government granted monoopolies) all fall into the 'Intellectual Property' basket.
Oh, and I could have been referring to either Cisco or Apple with my comment. Apple's complained about people violating it's copyright/look'n'feel/whatever countless times. But seems to have absolutely no problem violating some small guy's copyright [virtuelvis.com]
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Exactly. The problem isn't "intellectual property" per se from a business standpoint, it's when lawyers and politicians start talking about "intellectual property" from a legal or policymaking standpoint.
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Re:Oh Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
When an open-source "expert" announces that Cisco "might" have violated the GPL...
Please note that Slashdot posters are not a homogeneous mass. Different claims are typically posted by different people with different opinions.
Also please note that there are different types of "IP" involved in the differing infringements:
- In the Apple-Cisco dispute it is a trademark issue. (Last news I saw makes it look like Cisco had let the trademark lapse - which leaves it open to the next claimant.)
- In the Cisco-GPL dispute it is a matter of whether Cisco failed to abide by copyright licensing terms, along with an attempt by a party to whom those terms grant rights to require performance.
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: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
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The FSF goes on to state that the REASON for the right is for people who obtained the binaries to be able to obtain the source. But the right itself is not dependent on the requester having the binaries.
The vendor has the choice of distributing the source with the binaries or providing it (at no more than a nominal copying
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Having been bitten by that one before... lemme say... NOPE
We had a service guy using one of our serial numbers for another device to get replacement parts for it under warrantee. When ours needed the same parts, the manufacturer got a tad suspicious, and we had to fight hard in order to be able to get our part.
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Et voila.
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By that point I was a tad miffed, so we made sure to use the onsite support option that we paid for =-)
Nope: ANYONE who asks, because they missed a) (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL (v2) REQUIRES that a commercial distribution of the software as object EITHER be accompanied by the source OR by an offer, good for three years, to sell a copy of the source to ANY THIRD PARTY for no more than a nominal copying fee. (Non-commercial distributions, under some circumstances, have a third option of just forwarding the offer they got from upstream.)
Since they didn't distribute the source, in machine-rea
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Got it now?
Hmmm.... I'm not sure I agree with your optimistic, yet unlikely interpretation. I am not aware of a requirement that the written offer can be exercised by anyone other than an actual recipient of the binary. Furthermore, "any third party" is not the same as "every third party
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The stated REASON for the requirement is to let anyone who got the binaries to get the source. But the requirement itself isn't dependent on the requester having the binaries.
It's like the militia clause of the second amendment: It states an important reason for the right. But it doesn't limit the right to those who are
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Oh wait, they can't because it's a common word. Hence why it's "Microsoft Windows."
You could argue that "i" is just a letter, but I(tm) beg to differ. Besides, if you think that common words aren't allows, do you really think they'd allow a single letter?
Re:Do they want to score points or Cisco to fix it (Score:2)
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The timing *is* susipcious though.. some nice anti-cisco rants just after they go after Apple for trademark violation.
Yet these groups *still* do nothing about the blatant GPL violation in the broadcom kernels (which are linux kernels released with huge proprietary precompiled binary parts, and of what source there is it's all marked with restrictive nonredistribution licenses).
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