GPL violation and fake GPL compliance

Denis Fedorishenko nuclearcat at nuclearcat.com
Wed Mar 29 14:31:13 CEST 2006


Hi

There is very impudent GPL violation.

Story begins:
http://openwrt.org/?p=27#more-27
" It has recently come to our attention that the company known as
“Sveasoft”  has violated the licensing terms of portions of 
OpenWrt
which are distributed  under the GPL. This message serves as a notice that in
accordance with section  4 of the GNU General Public License, their license 
has
been automatically  terminated. Further distribution of the OpenWrt code by
Sveasoft is strictly  prohibited."

Part of Sveasoft comments:
The GPL itself is an “all or nothing” license based on the 
economic
and  political theories of Karl Marx. It claims it can subsume any other
license if  a single line of “GPL” licensed source code is used
anywhere in the source  files. Should this occur, all source code files become
magically GPL licensed  in their entirety. Naturally this claim by the GPL has
never been tested in  court and the GPL folks have adroitly avoided any and 
all
court cases that  might lead to a thorough legal review of the GPL license
terms.

And finally "fake" GPL compliance (it is old, 2004 year), for payers/buyers in 
forum:
http://www.sveasoft.com/modules/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2823
Shortly: "The Free Software Foundation has reviewed the Sveasoft subscription 
model and concluded that it fulfills all stipulations of the GPL license:"

--
Denis Fedorishenko




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