From oni303 at gmail.com Tue Jul 1 13:24:45 2008 From: oni303 at gmail.com (Georg von Zengen) Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:24:45 +0200 Subject: toolchain needed? Message-ID: <486A13FD.4090701@gmail.com> Hi, I have a simple question about GPL. Is it necessary to provide a Toolchain to buid running version of the firmware of an embedded device to fulfil the GPL? From stefan.altenkamp at lycos.de Mon Jul 21 12:26:57 2008 From: stefan.altenkamp at lycos.de (Stefan Altenkamp) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:26:57 +0200 Subject: GPL violation by Olympia Business Systems Vertriebs GmbH Message-ID: <48846471.4000504@lycos.de> Dear all, the german based company Olymia ( www.olympia-vertrieb.de) sells a nice internet radio Webradio 300. I checked into one of the latest firmware updates and found : hexdump -C OLYMPIA_R-1.0.3.51.upg 00126150 6e 65 6c 2e 00 4c 69 6e 75 78 20 76 65 72 73 69 |nel..Linux versi| 00126160 6f 6e 20 32 2e 34 2e 32 30 2d 75 63 30 20 28 72 |on 2.4.20-uc0 (r| 00126170 6f 6f 74 40 43 6f 6d 70 69 6c 65 53 65 72 76 65 |oot at CompileServe| 00126180 72 29 20 28 67 63 63 20 76 65 72 73 69 6f 6e 20 |r) (gcc version | 00126190 32 2e 39 35 2e 33 20 32 30 30 31 30 33 31 35 20 |2.95.3 20010315 | 001261a0 28 72 65 6c 65 61 73 65 29 28 43 6f 6c 64 46 69 |(release)(ColdFi| 001261b0 72 65 20 70 61 74 63 68 65 73 20 2d 20 32 30 30 |re patches - 200| 001261c0 31 30 33 31 38 20 66 72 6f 6d 20 68 74 74 70 3a |10318 from http:| 001261d0 2f 2f 66 69 64 64 65 73 2e 6e 65 74 2f 63 6f 6c |//fiddes.net/col| 001261e0 64 66 69 72 65 2f 29 28 75 43 6c 69 6e 75 78 20 |dfire/)(uClinux | 001261f0 58 49 50 20 61 6e 64 20 73 68 61 72 65 64 20 6c |XIP and shared l| 00126200 69 62 20 70 61 74 63 68 65 73 20 66 72 6f 6d 20 |ib patches from | 00126210 68 74 74 70 3a 2f 2f 77 77 77 2e 73 6e 61 70 67 |http://www.snapg| 00126220 65 61 72 2e 63 6f 6d 2f 29 29 20 23 37 30 38 31 |ear.com/)) #7081| So this is evidence for me, that they use the Linux kernel. On their homepage I cannot find any information about them using GPL licensed software, nor any source code. I have contacted them and asked for the source code. Regards Stefan Altenkamp From robertlipe at gpsbabel.org Wed Jul 30 05:13:38 2008 From: robertlipe at gpsbabel.org (Robert Lipe) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:13:38 -0500 Subject: GPL violation: GPSconverter vs. GPSBabel In-Reply-To: <82a839a50807292008y539114ddpa7586b07bfdaeb38@mail.gmail.com> References: <82a839a50807292008y539114ddpa7586b07bfdaeb38@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <82a839a50807292013g24dc555fl809c74c55bc54695@mail.gmail.com> Hello. I'm here to ask for help in resolving a license issue. I'm the creator and lead developer of GPSBabel, a GPL-licensed program that's reasonably popular and available at http://www.gpsbabel.org. This program converts between something like 130 file formats and communicates with over a hundred different GPS receivers. The list of formats, as you might expect, contains the big names in that market but also has a rather unique combination of eclectic formats. I was recently searching for something on the internet and was surprised to find another program supported more than one of these eclectic formats. I looked more carefully and found the list of supported was a subset of those supported by GPSBabel. I studied the program at http://mcrenox.com.ar/gpsconverter/. There is no doubt that substantial part of this program is GPSBabel. Undocumented features in GPSBabel are clearly visible in the executable. Typos and unique spacing/punctuation that originated in GPSBabel are similarly visible in the gpsconvt.exe distributed. strings gpsconvt.exe | egrep "(initialise|nuke)" %s -x nuketypes%s nuketypes nukewpt nuke_placer WBT-100/200: Can't initialise port "%s" 0Force selected GPS data types (nuketypes filter) strings gpsbabel| egrep "(initialise|nuke)" nuketypes nuke_placer WBT-100/200: Can't initialise port "%s" nuketrk nukerte nukewpt The contributor of the Wintec module was British. We added the nuketrk and nukerte later. :-) Of the 829 strings in gpsconvt.exe that are 50 bytes or longer, 724 of them appear identically in GPSBabel. But some strings don't match exacly. Here's one that's different, along with the one before and after it. main: Invalid point in time to call 'pop_args' GPSconvt Version %s. http:/www.mcrenox.com.ar %s [options] -i INTYPE -f INFILE -o OUTTYPE -F OUTFILE vs main: Invalid point in time to call 'pop_args' GPSBabel Version %s. http://www.gpsbabel.org: %s [options] -i INTYPE -f INFILE [filter] -o OUTTYPE -F OUTFILE So this seems to go beyond "oops, I forgot to include COPYING" and into the land of consciously scrubbing code to obscure its origin. I could go on, but it's pretty clear that this program, uuuuh, liberated the GPSBabel source. However, this program is sold for 30 Euro and Licensed "single user, single machine" with no copy of of the GPL and no mention of source availability. I'd like that to not happen. Can this crowd please advise how to best dispose of this problem? I'm a mere programmer and don't know enough about international law on copyright/licensing issues to know if I have a right to be more than annoyed here or if there are corrective actions that are cost-effective. The contact info given on their web site is: Xxxxxxxxxx Privacy of Peersonal Data made us remove the entire address AR Phone: 00-123-4567980 Email: webmaster mcrenox.com.ar Thanx in advance for any help offered. RJL -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/attachments/20080729/488cb7d2/attachment.htm From gpl at onkelinx.com Wed Jul 30 10:22:42 2008 From: gpl at onkelinx.com (Filip Onkelinx) Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:22:42 +0200 Subject: GPL violation: GPSconverter vs. GPSBabel In-Reply-To: <82a839a50807292013g24dc555fl809c74c55bc54695@mail.gmail.com> References: <82a839a50807292008y539114ddpa7586b07bfdaeb38@mail.gmail.com> <82a839a50807292013g24dc555fl809c74c55bc54695@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1217406162.16424.9.camel@rndserv001.visysglobal.com> Hi Robert, I had a similar issue twice a couple of years ago, and the infringing party was not even answering my emails (one was an individual, the other a rather large US company). As the website distributing their software was US based, I sent an DMCA Take-Down notice to both themselves and the ISP hosting their website. US hosting companies are very strict about this, and require the infringing party to remove the offending material immediately or prove that they are the legal copyright owner, if not the ISP takes down the website (usually within 24 hours or so; if they do not do this they can be held responsible for illegally distributing licensed materials) I still should have the original e-mail if you're looking for an example, can sent it to you later today (when I'm back home). Cheers, F!l!p. On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 22:13 -0500, Robert Lipe wrote: > Hello. > > I'm here to ask for help in resolving a license issue. > > I'm the creator and lead developer of GPSBabel, a GPL-licensed program > that's reasonably popular and available at http://www.gpsbabel.org. > This program converts between something like 130 file formats and > communicates with over a hundred different GPS receivers. The list > of formats, as you might expect, contains the big names in that market > but also has a rather unique combination of eclectic formats. > > I was recently searching for something on the internet and was > surprised to find another program supported more than one of these > eclectic formats. I looked more carefully and found the list of > supported was a subset of those supported by GPSBabel. > > I studied the program at http://mcrenox.com.ar/gpsconverter/. There > is no doubt that substantial part of this program is GPSBabel. > Undocumented features in GPSBabel are clearly visible in the > executable. Typos and unique spacing/punctuation that originated in > GPSBabel are similarly visible in the gpsconvt.exe distributed. > > strings gpsconvt.exe | egrep "(initialise|nuke)" > %s -x nuketypes%s > nuketypes > nukewpt > nuke_placer > WBT-100/200: Can't initialise port "%s" > 0Force selected GPS data types (nuketypes filter) > > strings gpsbabel| egrep "(initialise|nuke)" > nuketypes > nuke_placer > WBT-100/200: Can't initialise port "%s" > nuketrk > nukerte > nukewpt > > The contributor of the Wintec module was British. We added the > nuketrk and nukerte later. :-) > > > Of the 829 strings in gpsconvt.exe that are 50 bytes or longer, 724 of > them appear identically in GPSBabel. But some strings don't match > exacly. Here's one that's different, along with the one before and > after it. > > main: Invalid point in time to call 'pop_args' > GPSconvt Version %s. http:/www.mcrenox.com.ar > %s [options] -i INTYPE -f INFILE -o OUTTYPE -F OUTFILE > > vs > main: Invalid point in time to call 'pop_args' > GPSBabel Version %s. http://www.gpsbabel.org: > %s [options] -i INTYPE -f INFILE [filter] -o OUTTYPE -F OUTFILE > > So this seems to go beyond "oops, I forgot to include COPYING" and > into the land of consciously scrubbing code to obscure its origin. > > I could go on, but it's pretty clear that this program, uuuuh, > liberated the GPSBabel source. However, this program is sold for 30 > Euro and Licensed "single user, single machine" with no copy of of the > GPL and no mention of source availability. I'd like that to not > happen. > > Can this crowd please advise how to best dispose of this problem? > I'm a mere programmer and don't know enough about international law on > copyright/licensing issues to know if I have a right to be more than > annoyed here or if there are corrective actions that are > cost-effective. > > > Thanx in advance for any help offered. > RJL > > > > >