[HN Gopher] Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)
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Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)
Author : ladyanita22
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-02-19 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.devever.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.devever.net)
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _Linus Torvalds seems to speak as though he has the power to
| interpret the GPL._
|
| IANAIPL but intent of the parties does _generally_ matter to any
| legal analysis of an agreement. This is especially true when
| discussing written evidence of intent. Arguably, the discussion
| of GPL_ONLY could be taken to mean that those without such a
| marking are being granted an exception by the authors, which is
| perfectly well within their power to do.
|
| https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/the-parol-evidence-rul...
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| But parole evidence is trickier to apply here than you might
| imagine. It only applies where there is an ambiguity in the
| text, and probably matters much less where 3rd parties are to
| be bound by a license, instead of two parties to a contract.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _It is rather ironic that in some ways, one has more freedom in
| how one licences a kernel driver for Windows than the freedom one
| supposedly has in writing a kernel module for Linux._
|
| it is not ironic at all: freedom in Free Software is the freedom
| of USERS of the software to be able to see and modify the source.
| This is a freedom granted by the writers of the software, and
| copyleft means that this right is ensured through any chain of
| modifications by additional authors.
|
| In this same way, the GPL and like licenses are the _most
| permissive licenses_ from the perspective of every eventual user
| aaomidi wrote:
| Yeah this is not a "no license" freedom situation. People
| routinely get this wrong.
| crazypython wrote:
| > So if you violate the licence, it is terminated. That's it.
| Given that "you" may refer to a corporation, this creates the
| following disturbing possibility:
|
| GPLv3 fixed this, after being notified of a violation, you have
| 30 days to remedy it
| charcircuit wrote:
| I used to use the GPL license to license my software, but now it
| seems like it is too much of a legal nightmare, so I've stopped
| using it.
| yardstick wrote:
| What did you switch to?
| nix23 wrote:
| GPL is a nice idea...but you need lawyers lots of money and
| time. I hate lawyers and i don't have time for that bs nor do
| it have/want money to spend for lawyers, i was a diehard gpl
| evangelist in my 20`s, now it's BSD/MIT/ISC (and not diehard
| anymore...more like IDGAS)...and i really don't care for
| religion anymore...just quality and real freedom.
| tssge wrote:
| >GPL is a nice idea...but you need lawyers lots of money and
| time.
|
| This applies to any license. BSD/MIT/ISC rules can be broken
| as well and the only means to rectify it in the case that the
| other party refuses to cooperate is to resort to litigation.
| nix23 wrote:
| >BSD/MIT/ISC rules can be broken as well
|
| No one cares and no one has interests to break them for
| financial gain...not even lawyers (that's the good part)
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| My company does whatever it can to comply with GPL
| requirements and it is nothing short of a goddamn nightmare.
| Nothing like sitting in a conference room for hours with
| lawyers while we poured through the licenses for 250
| different packages; we would have been better off just
| burning the money. My conclusions are that most Linux
| distributions are an amalgam of software packages with
| licenses that are _fundamentally incompatible_ with each
| other; the GPL is extremely poorly written with lots of
| vagaries. I don 't think there is a path to 100% compliance;
| you just make sure your heart is in the right place and hope
| for the best.
|
| Ultimately, we concluded we are moving to BSD on future
| projects where possible. Not because of some overwhelming
| need to keep source closed from customers, rather just to
| avoid the mess.
| jka wrote:
| The other way to avoid this would be to lean copyleft for
| your own codebase(s). If they're made public and you
| include the appropriate source code references for the
| dependencies you rely on, then you should be in the clear
| legally (and perhaps morally, although that's a separate
| topic).
| nix23 wrote:
| >short of a goddamn nightmare
|
| It is....don't touch lawyers if you want to get real wok
| done.
| posguy wrote:
| Those 250 packages likely don't have custom forks of the
| GPL license. Handling of legal requirements for each
| package should be templatable by management based on
| whether a particular package is GPLv2, GPLv3 or AGPLv3 and
| has a linking exception.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > and i really don't care for religion anymore...just quality
| and real freedom.
|
| The freedom that GPL is about isn't about the developer's
| freedom to do whatever they please but about the user's
| freedom from the developers' whims. This isn't some arbitrary
| nebulous religion-like dogma but comes from the very
| practical issue of developers inherently having power over
| the programs they write and, by extension, power over the
| users who rely on those programs.
|
| Remember that the entire free software thing didn't start
| because the Emacs god visited Stallman in his sleep but
| because he was denied access to the source code that would
| help him fix his lab's printer.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > The userspace ABI is stable and intended not to cause anything
| targeting it to become a derived work. But once again, this seems
| to be a way in which the kernel project seems to think it has the
| power to interpret the GPL. In their minds, targeting the
| userspace ABI doesn't make a derived work, but writing a module
| does, unless it only targets GPL_ONLY symbols, in which case for
| some reason it isn't.
|
| I think this whole part applies as much to the text of the GPL
| itself as to the common Linux explanation. The GPL draws a
| distinction between dynamic linking, static linking, and use over
| a network or through a CLI style interface to decide if a work is
| a derived work of the GPL program. But, this distinction is just
| a novel legal theory proposal at best - there is nothing in
| copyright law that would make the GPL distinctions authoritative.
|
| A license simply doesn't get to decide what constitutes a derived
| work - that's entirely up to copyright law itself and the court
| system to decide.
|
| On the other hand, unless and until Congress decides to
| explicitly legislate how copyright should apply to software, the
| courts can very well take common industry practice into
| consideration for judging what is and is not a derived work of a
| program, and in this sense the Linux kernel developers' opinion
| is in no way less impactful than the proposals in the GPL itself.
|
| Furthermore, in a matter of contract law (so assuming that the
| work is indeed judged to be derived according to copyright law,
| but now judging whether the GPL may offer some relevant
| exemptions), the stated intentions and interpretations of the
| parties of the contract are indeed relevant. If there is a long
| history of kernel developers publicly stating that as long as you
| are not using GPL_ONLY symbols, your work should not be
| considered to be under the purview of the GPL, and if this has
| not been commonly publicly contested, I think that in an actual
| trial this will matter much more than other interpretations of
| the GPL.
| Borealid wrote:
| I think there's some confusion in the above post.
|
| The relevant "derived work" definition for the purpose of
| linking isn't one stemming from copyright law, it's the one in
| the GPL itself. This is because the GPL defines what licensees
| are permitted to do with the licensed work, and it imposes
| restrictions on those rights. Copyright law by default lets you
| make very little use of the software - the GPL broadens that
| out to include various forms of use, if (and only if) "derived
| works" fall within its scope.
|
| You could ignore the GPL and static-link a piece of software to
| a GPLed library, but if you did so, you'd legally need a
| different right to use the GPLed library, because you hadn't
| complied with its license terms and so only have your minimal
| rights to use someone else's intellectual property.
|
| Said differently, the GPL doesn't try to apply itself to
| "derived works" because of some contralegal dictum they don't
| have a different creative origin. It merely says "you have two
| choices - license the things you link with OUR stuff under OUR
| terms, or you don't have the right to use our stuff".
| temac wrote:
| > I think this whole part applies as much to the text of the
| GPL itself as to the common Linux explanation. The GPL draws a
| distinction between dynamic linking, static linking, and use
| over a network or through a CLI style interface to decide if a
| work is a derived work of the GPL program.
|
| I just rechecked and it does not seem the GPLv2 does such
| things. I've not rechecked for v3, but from memory it does not
| do that either.
|
| I completely agree with you that clear intent is important
| though.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| I think she/he's trying to say -- the FSF draws such
| distinctions, but I think you're right the GPLv2 doesn't, and
| these are all just post-hoc rationalizations.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Never mind a clean room interpretation; if we can get one project
| to wrap the ABI and everyone build against that project then
| there's only project that can be sued :-)
| btdmaster wrote:
| This is no cure, but quite a few kernel developers have signed
| this: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.16/process/kernel-
| enforce...
| oxguy3 wrote:
| While it's not ideal to have Linux being used in ways that aren't
| permitted by the license, it's not necessarily a violation of
| anyone's rights. These license-incompatible uses of Linux are
| ongoing and readily apparent. There's a decent argument to be
| made that anyone contributing to Linux should have reasonably
| expected that their contributions would be used in this way, even
| if it wasn't in the license. Courts have to deal with resolving
| disputes where the terms of agreement weren't clearly documented
| all the time.
|
| Obviously that's a bit flimsy and it'd be preferable that the
| license be bulletproof, but it is what it is. It only becomes a
| problem if someone gets litigious. If that happens, and it's
| someone who's made a small contribution, then their code can
| probably just be purged and rewritten. If it happens with a
| bigger contributor, then the argument that they should have known
| what was going on becomes stronger.
|
| Hopefully it never becomes an issue. /shrug
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| The problem (for me) is that nowadays most of our IT
| infrastructure depends on Linux. Depending on an operating
| system hoping that nobody ever gets litigious because it's
| licensed in such a way that it creates this risk is, for me, a
| bit problematic.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| *2015
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Is it any less relevant?
| dang wrote:
| It's just the convention on HN to put the year in the title
| when it's an older story. Users often point it out as a hint
| to whoever can add it to the title. No criticism is implied!
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| My bad! I wasn't aware of such a convention.
|
| Good to know!
| [deleted]
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| I believe there may be some reasons why you may want proprietary
| (or incompatibly licensed) kernel modules. In such cases, as long
| as you didn't take code from the Kernel, I believe it shouldn't
| be considered a derivative work. I believe my opinion is quite
| unpopular and not share within the FOSS community.
|
| I honestly speaking prefer BSD or MIT for the linking purposes. I
| believe forbidding linking makes it too restrictive for some use
| cases.
|
| Particularly striking to me is this sentence: "It is rather
| ironic that in some ways, one has more freedom in how one
| licences a kernel driver for Windows than the freedom one
| supposedly has in writing a kernel module for Linux. "
|
| It makes me believe there's something wrong in the current state
| of things.
| RustyRussell wrote:
| Sure, but when I was a kernel dev I considered it a reasonable
| line: it's not that hard to create your own kernel if you want
| a different licence.
|
| It was one reason I worked on the kernel: that all your
| software should be hackable. I probably would have found
| something else to do if the licence were different.
| fao_ wrote:
| > I believe it shouldn't be considered a derivative work
|
| Isn't the point of the majority of this document, that nobody,
| not individual rightsholders, nor the FSF, not even the Linux
| Kernel Project, has the legal authority or knowledge to
| interpret the LGPLv2. That fundamentally the LGPLv2 is a legal
| document and therefore the only people able to create an
| interpretation of this document are lawyers, and even then,
| their interpretation is subject to how a judge might decide in
| a court of law?
|
| So therefore, your beliefs, my beliefs, anyone's beliefs on
| this are mere conjecture or supposition, and can be considered
| essentially worthless. Ultimately, how it plays out depends on
| legal precedence, jurisdiction, judge, hell- the weather on the
| day of the trial and the specific circumstances in which it is
| brought up in the court system.
|
| Ergo, isn't it more than a little presumptuous to debate on
| this matter? To put forth your opinion and opine it as what you
| believe, and therefore as some degree of possibility or fact,
| despite there being essentially no reference point unless a
| lawyer was actually contacted and was able to provide an
| interpretation?
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| I believe this reply is presuntous.
|
| Edit: Also, this is about the GPL2, not the LGPL.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Good writeup on the intricacies and consequences of the Linux
| kernel being GPLv2 licensed.
|
| The actual headline is debatable.
|
| However, It seems to me that the license doesn't matter that
| much, since everyone has a vested interest in Linux being exactly
| the way it is, GPL_ONLY weirdness and all. It's unlikely that
| someone will show up and fork Linux and explicitly break the
| license (using GPL_ONLY symbols in a non-GPL context), because
| that person or company would be excommunicated from the Linux
| fold.
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| How feasible is it to avoid using GPL_ONLY symbols? Because if
| you for sure need GPL modules for some use cases[1], then I
| believe the point still stands.
|
| [1] This is, being unable to even reimplement the functions
| yourself in a self-contained module.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Except if VMware does it. In that case, they're welcome to join
| the Linux Foundation. (previously on HN
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9151799 )
| [deleted]
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Actually, it gets worse. Here's what the GPLv2 says about
| termination:
|
| > So if you violate the licence, it is terminated. That's it.
| Given that "you" may refer to a corporation, this creates the
| following disturbing possibility:
|
| This is called the GPL death penalty, has actually happen in the
| past even before the article was written.
|
| It is yet another thing fixed by the oft-maligned GPLv3. Samba
| switched to GPLv3 because of it.
| https://ftp.samba.org/pub/samba/slides/linuxcollab-why-samba...
| rosenjcb wrote:
| I agree: neither Linus nor FSF have authority to interpret the
| GPL. The way you find out if a license is enforceable is if you
| take it to arbitration or court. There's not enough case law in
| this area to smooth out our understanding of what is and isn't
| allowed.
| Comevius wrote:
| I rather use Mozilla Public License 2.0, Eclipse Public License
| 2.0, or EUPL 1.2 for copyleft purposes.
|
| Strong copyleft as a concept has no legal reality. Linking a
| program to another don't produce a derivative work.
|
| https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/news/why-viral-l...
|
| FSF is full of baloney about how static or dynamic linking is
| different than communicating for example through sockets. To be
| able to use the program I have to link it. What manner I choose
| to do that or available to me should not matter. I should also be
| able to reproduce portions of a program necessary for linking.
| Interoperability does not interfere with the legitimate interest
| of the licensor, or conflict with normal usage.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| I wish the FOSS community would rally around this idea.
|
| Re: GNU/FSF, I think they've done a real disservice to the FOSS
| community misrepresenting the state of American copyright law.
| Yes, to a certain extent it's understandable. But also -- I
| wish someone with credibility with devs/FOSS users would
| finally say: "This is such an illusion, it's mostly a joke."
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| That'd be more akin to the Apple Public License, right?
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