From janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si Thu Jun 18 16:57:59 2009 From: janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si (Janez Pers) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:57:59 +0200 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? - correction In-Reply-To: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> Message-ID: <4A3A55F7.9010803@fe.uni-lj.si> Janez Pers wrote: > 3. I write my (proprietary) application "B" in a way that uses > library A's services through TCP sockets, and do not publish > this source. I sell the binaries of B and bundle them with > binaries of socketized version of A. I even put it on > sourceforge - no hidden tricks here. Sorry for this mixup - no, I dont put my proprietary source on sourceforge, just the socketized version of the library A, but I keep my proprietary software (the client) secret. From janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si Thu Jun 18 16:55:41 2009 From: janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si (Janez Pers) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:55:41 +0200 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? Message-ID: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> Dear All, I have a bit unortodox question. I cannot find any better place to get an answer, if there is, please point me in that direction. The main question seems silly: does connecting the proprietary application with the GPLed one constitutes "linking" in terms of GPL license? The straightforward answer would probably be no, right? But, consider a following scenario: 1. I take the GPLed/LGPLed library "A" and "socketize" it - meaning, I write the interface to the library that provides its funcionality via TCP sockets. 2. I publish the source code to this interface as required per GPL, as the new improved library clearly constitutes derived work. 3. I write my (proprietary) application "B" in a way that uses library A's services through TCP sockets, and do not publish this source. I sell the binaries of B and bundle them with binaries of socketized version of A. I even put it on sourceforge - no hidden tricks here. I can even reasonably argue, that I added valuable new functionality to the library - now it can work over the network. But, this way I circumvented the protection of the GPL which perhaps author assumed when he choose GPL license. By letter of GPL, I did nothing wrong, right? But it is a clear violation of the intent of the GPL, I guess. Now, a related question. Can the copyright holder of A revoke the GPL licensing of the existing library? Or is his only option to either continue new GPLed versions, or scrap it alltogether? Can I provide the downloadable sources of his previous GPLed library, regardless of his wishes? BTW, the original idea is not as evil, as it may sound here - my original intent was to provide way in which a large number of low powered, low cost networked devices could use advanced signal processing/computational libraries. Then I figured that actually I could use GPLed libraries this way as well. Am I correct? Am I evil? (Please answer separately, if possible). Janez. From janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si Thu Jun 18 18:11:31 2009 From: janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si (Janez Pers) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:11:31 +0200 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? - correction In-Reply-To: <4A3A63CA.2030202@figuiere.net> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> <4A3A55F7.9010803@fe.uni-lj.si> <4A3A63CA.2030202@figuiere.net> Message-ID: <4A3A6733.4060000@fe.uni-lj.si> Hubert Figuiere wrote: > On 06/18/2009 10:57 AM, Janez Pers wrote: >> Janez Pers wrote: >> >>> 3. I write my (proprietary) application "B" in a way that uses >>> library A's services through TCP sockets, and do not publish >>> this source. I sell the binaries of B and bundle them with >>> binaries of socketized version of A. I even put it on >>> sourceforge - no hidden tricks here. >> Sorry for this mixup - no, I dont put my proprietary source >> on sourceforge, just the socketized version of the library A, but I >> keep my proprietary software (the client) secret. > > Why don't you juste share it? After all somebody share the library so > that you can use it, so it would be fair that in exchange you give > something back. > > Don't you think? Well, I asked for a legal view. Regarding the spirit of open source, I am pretty much sure that it violates it, but the spirit is not enforceable. Few side comments: I did not yet do any of this, I am asking for clarification to plan my future activities. The reason for this would be for example that the development would be paid by someone else who does not want the financed product to be available to everyone, not my/our greediness. And the initial motivation, as I described, comes from different idea. Regarding giving something back - a socketized (or 'net enabled') version IS something that would be given back to community, enabling many more applications to use the library (of course, since the non-GPLed ones would be able to use it as well, this is a two-edged sword). Janez. From hub at figuiere.net Thu Jun 18 17:56:58 2009 From: hub at figuiere.net (Hubert Figuiere) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:56:58 -0400 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? - correction In-Reply-To: <4A3A55F7.9010803@fe.uni-lj.si> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> <4A3A55F7.9010803@fe.uni-lj.si> Message-ID: <4A3A63CA.2030202@figuiere.net> On 06/18/2009 10:57 AM, Janez Pers wrote: > Janez Pers wrote: > >> 3. I write my (proprietary) application "B" in a way that uses >> library A's services through TCP sockets, and do not publish >> this source. I sell the binaries of B and bundle them with >> binaries of socketized version of A. I even put it on >> sourceforge - no hidden tricks here. > > Sorry for this mixup - no, I dont put my proprietary source > on sourceforge, just the socketized version of the library A, but I > keep my proprietary software (the client) secret. Why don't you juste share it? After all somebody share the library so that you can use it, so it would be fair that in exchange you give something back. Don't you think? Hub From mathfox at xs4all.nl Thu Jun 18 18:09:09 2009 From: mathfox at xs4all.nl (Peter Roozemaal) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:09:09 +0200 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? In-Reply-To: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> Message-ID: <4A3A66A5.30909@xs4all.nl> Janez Pers wrote: > 1. I take the GPLed/LGPLed library "A" and "socketize" it - meaning, > I write the interface to the library that provides its funcionality > via TCP sockets. > > 2. I publish the source code to this interface as required per GPL, > as the new improved library clearly constitutes derived work. > > 3. I write my (proprietary) application "B" in a way that uses > library A's services through TCP sockets, and do not publish this > source. I sell the binaries of B and bundle them with binaries of > socketized version of A. I even put it on sourceforge - no hidden > tricks here. You should throw in a copy of the text of the GPL and (an offer for) the sources with your binary distribution. In my opinion you are in a grey area where your intent (to avoid GPL licensing) can be used against you. OTOH, copyright has inherent limits and you may find a judge that thinks you are right. I don't know of a legal precedent for your case. If you are trying to stretch the limits, be sure to follow the letter of the GPL to the latest dot. If you slip up, that might be used as an excuse to settle the legal question at your cost. > Now, a related question. Can the copyright holder of A revoke the GPL > licensing of the existing library? Or is his only option to either > continue new GPLed versions, or scrap it alltogether? Can I provide > the downloadable sources of his previous GPLed library, regardless of > his wishes? Revoking the GPL from an existing work is either impossible or too hard to try. However the license automaticly ends when you violate it and revoking the distribution rights from a specific individual (for cause) might be possible in some jurisdictions. [Ask a lawyer for details.] The authors of a program can collectively decide to change the license for the next version; but all copyright holders with rights in the new version need to agree. It is wise to try to keep good relationships, it avoids a lot of the inconvenience of seeing people in court. Peter. From allan.hardy at lmco.com Thu Jun 18 21:53:12 2009 From: allan.hardy at lmco.com (Hardy, Allan) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:53:12 -0400 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? In-Reply-To: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> Message-ID: <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> First, you have to consider who owns the rights to the work. The copyrights holder can interpret the GPL terms as they see fit. As example the Linux Kernel team does not take the same interpretation as the FSF/Gnu folks do. Other GPL holders may look to the FSF (free software foundation) for assistance, so overall, figuring out what the FSF's position is on this issue is probably the most conservative way to go. That said, your question isn't really about linking, its about what constitutes a derived work, in short when would your work which uses the GPL work be subject to the GPL requirement for reciprocity, when does your work need to be licensed under GPL This is a very old question and it's been discussed I'm sure thousands of times. You are in an area where there is no case law, no judges rulings to go by, for the most part. You will in the end be making a risk assessment. The GPL/FSF pushes copyright law and definitions to extremes, especially in definition of a derived work, and simply no one knows what will ever hold up in court. So you will in the end be deciding on the risk factors of FSF/Copyright holder taking issue with you, and the risk factors if a Court Judge rules if your form of use is a derived work, etc. Measure into your risk factors that Open source licenses, as of last Dec 08, are covered under copyright law, per supreme court. So you have statutory damages of up to I think $150k per incident. So 10 users could be $1.5M in damages. (These are just illustrations), also consider the non financial aspects, bad publicity, etc. Now with that background in mind, the next point is that the Technical form of the integration doesn't matter as much as you would like it to. FSF Looks at the whole picture, they look at not just the technical form, but even the 'semantics' of how well these two applications know each other, how intimate they are. Here is a general rule of thumb: If your applications depends 100% on the GPL application - you have a derived work in FSF's view. Makes sense in some way. If your applications cannot function without the GPL application, that's a derived work and FSF expects you to reciprocate the benefits of open source and make your application open source. Note: Regardless of the technical form of the integration. So if my application sits on a server in New Zealand and my MySQL (GPL) database is in France, it wouldn't matter. My application is 100% dependent on that GPL database and I am vulnerable to MySQL-Sun/FSF not being happy with me. As another illustration, a recent example we had to deal with involved a a Jabber Server, opensource GPL, and a client application my guys had written and wanted to distribute. The client used a standard protocol and could technically talk to any server, commercial or open source, that used that protocol. Where we 'dependent' on the GPL server? Hard to say, there is strong technical case of no we were not dependent because of use of a standard protocol. However we had only tested against the GPL server, we only offered support for that server, we directed the customer to acquire and use that server, etc. So we made them test/document against at least 2 other servers. We had the documentation/marketing materials go agnostic so to speak, we made sure to slant the server choice as a customers choice, etc. All of this was to get us away from any appearance of dependency, and it made our product/marketing a bit more robust as well. So this is the kind of issues and considerations you need to make when making your risk assessment. Without court cases and rulings, you, like all of us will be guessing. In the end, you won't get black and white answers, just data to make a more informed risk assessment by. In my analysis your Proprietary Application B is a derived work of the GPL Work A. It uses it and seems to depend on it. I could care less if its sockets, dlls, static compiling, etc. Your adding of a sockets wrapper is moot. However, you may find that the original copyright holder doesn't care, perhaps they like and want to encourage your approach because it gets more people using their product. Who knows. Ask them. Look for any other examples where they have allowed, not taken action against, or even encouraged this form of integration. Ask them if they would release an LGPL version. I've had a good amount of success just asking he copyright holder for their view in different usage scenarios. You are evil. Just kidding Allan Oh, PS GPL cannot be revoked once released The author/copy right holder can offer the same product under as many licenses as they desire, dual, triple, licensing The author can decide to stop offering the GPL version whenever they please, they are free to choose their licensing approach, they just cannot revoke backwards. -----Original Message----- From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Janez Pers Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 10:56 AM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: what does constitute "linking"? Dear All, I have a bit unortodox question. I cannot find any better place to get an answer, if there is, please point me in that direction. The main question seems silly: does connecting the proprietary application with the GPLed one constitutes "linking" in terms of GPL license? The straightforward answer would probably be no, right? But, consider a following scenario: 1. I take the GPLed/LGPLed library "A" and "socketize" it - meaning, I write the interface to the library that provides its funcionality via TCP sockets. 2. I publish the source code to this interface as required per GPL, as the new improved library clearly constitutes derived work. 3. I write my (proprietary) application "B" in a way that uses library A's services through TCP sockets, and do not publish this source. I sell the binaries of B and bundle them with binaries of socketized version of A. I even put it on sourceforge - no hidden tricks here. I can even reasonably argue, that I added valuable new functionality to the library - now it can work over the network. But, this way I circumvented the protection of the GPL which perhaps author assumed when he choose GPL license. By letter of GPL, I did nothing wrong, right? But it is a clear violation of the intent of the GPL, I guess. Now, a related question. Can the copyright holder of A revoke the GPL licensing of the existing library? Or is his only option to either continue new GPLed versions, or scrap it alltogether? Can I provide the downloadable sources of his previous GPLed library, regardless of his wishes? BTW, the original idea is not as evil, as it may sound here - my original intent was to provide way in which a large number of low powered, low cost networked devices could use advanced signal processing/computational libraries. Then I figured that actually I could use GPLed libraries this way as well. Am I correct? Am I evil? (Please answer separately, if possible). Janez. From janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si Thu Jun 18 22:19:21 2009 From: janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si (Janez Pers) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:19:21 +0200 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? In-Reply-To: <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: <4A3AA149.9010208@fe.uni-lj.si> Hardy, Allan wrote: > In my analysis your Proprietary Application B is a derived work of the > GPL Work A. It uses it and seems to depend on it. I could care less if > its sockets, dlls, static compiling, etc. Your adding of a sockets > wrapper is moot. > Oh, PS > GPL cannot be revoked once released > The author/copy right holder can offer the same product under as many > licenses as they desire, dual, triple, licensing > The author can decide to stop offering the GPL version whenever they > please, they are free to choose their licensing approach, they just > cannot revoke backwards. Thank you, this is VERY informative answer, and it is exactly what I was looking for. Janez. From chris at freaklabs.org Fri Jun 19 04:46:20 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:46:20 +0900 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Message-ID: Hi. I'm running an open source project to implement the Zigbee Protocol stack. The code is currently protected by the GPL, however there's been a challenge to the validity of the license. The problem comes from the fact that the Zigbee Alliance requires membership in order to use its spec for commercial projects. Although my code is license free, it's claimed that the membership requirement is a licensing fee. If it turns out that the code is incompatible with the GPL, I will need to go mod-BSD. However I'd like to get a professional opinion on the validity of the claim first. Can someone offer some advice? More details can be found on this blog post: http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Zigbee/Zigbee-Linux-and-the-GPL.html Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/attachments/20090619/f6317e8d/attachment.htm From clemens at ladisch.de Fri Jun 19 08:48:50 2009 From: clemens at ladisch.de (Clemens Ladisch) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:48:50 +0200 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A3B34D2.3050301@ladisch.de> Akiba wrote: > I'm running an open source project to implement the Zigbee Protocol stack. > The code is currently protected by the GPL, however there's been a challenge > to the validity of the license. The problem comes from the fact that the > Zigbee Alliance requires membership in order to use its spec for commercial > projects. Although my code is license free, it's claimed that the membership > requirement is a licensing fee. Only for somebody who wants to read the specification. As far as I can tell from the part quoted in your blog post, there is no restriction on releasing developed code to (commercial) third parties who do not use the specification document. On other words, the membership requirement does not affect the _code_. Best regards, Clemens From twaffle at gmail.com Fri Jun 19 14:17:37 2009 From: twaffle at gmail.com (Thomas Charron) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:17:37 -0400 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <4A3B34D2.3050301@ladisch.de> References: <4A3B34D2.3050301@ladisch.de> Message-ID: <30dfe2a80906190517s321fd535s3fb87bd75fbbb281@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 2:48 AM, Clemens Ladisch wrote: > Akiba wrote: >> I'm running an open source project to implement the Zigbee Protocol stack. >> The code is currently protected by the GPL, however there's been a challenge >> to the validity of the license. The problem comes from the fact that the >> Zigbee Alliance requires membership in order to use its spec for commercial >> projects. Although my code is license free, it's claimed that the membership >> requirement is a licensing fee. > Only for somebody who wants to read the specification. ?As far as I can > tell from the part quoted in your blog post, there is no restriction on > releasing developed code to (commercial) third parties who do not use > the specification document. > > On other words, the membership requirement does not affect the _code_. The key trick really is, the protocol is covered by IP. The document gives you a free license to the IP, if you are a non commercial entity, or a memory of the alliance. The best people to ask is the alliance themselves. It's their IP. This isn't a code licensing issue, unless, of course, you release it under the gpl3. -- -- Thomas From allan.hardy at lmco.com Fri Jun 19 15:00:00 2009 From: allan.hardy at lmco.com (Hardy, Allan) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:00:00 -0400 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0174DC@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> I agree, requirements for the membership, restrictions on type of use, those are all imho violations of the spirit and letter of the GPL. "Though shall not wrap other restrictions around this license" - ok its not in the terms exactly like that. For even more folks opinions, try the debian-legal discussion, they deal with this stuff all the time. Ask them if they would consider the Alliances terms to fit the open source definition/if they would include this in a debian free category. Allan From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 10:46 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi. I'm running an open source project to implement the Zigbee Protocol stack. The code is currently protected by the GPL, however there's been a challenge to the validity of the license. The problem comes from the fact that the Zigbee Alliance requires membership in order to use its spec for commercial projects. Although my code is license free, it's claimed that the membership requirement is a licensing fee. If it turns out that the code is incompatible with the GPL, I will need to go mod-BSD. However I'd like to get a professional opinion on the validity of the claim first. Can someone offer some advice? More details can be found on this blog post: http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Zigbee/Zigbee-Linux-and-the-GPL.html Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/attachments/20090619/a0ddb75f/attachment.html From chris at freaklabs.org Fri Jun 19 16:40:14 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:40:14 +0900 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0174DC@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: Thanks for the responses. That's the issue in a nutshell. The restriction placed on the license for using the spec looks like it's enough to block it form being integrated into the Linux kernel. Also, it seems to imply that the GPL would need an exception for the case that you're a commercial entity that's not a member of the Alliance. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org _____ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 10:00 PM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body I agree, requirements for the membership, restrictions on type of use, those are all imho violations of the spirit and letter of the GPL. "Though shall not wrap other restrictions around this license" - ok its not in the terms exactly like that. For even more folks opinions, try the debian-legal discussion, they deal with this stuff all the time. Ask them if they would consider the Alliances terms to fit the open source definition/if they would include this in a debian free category. Allan From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 10:46 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi. I'm running an open source project to implement the Zigbee Protocol stack. The code is currently protected by the GPL, however there's been a challenge to the validity of the license. The problem comes from the fact that the Zigbee Alliance requires membership in order to use its spec for commercial projects. Although my code is license free, it's claimed that the membership requirement is a licensing fee. If it turns out that the code is incompatible with the GPL, I will need to go mod-BSD. However I'd like to get a professional opinion on the validity of the claim first. Can someone offer some advice? More details can be found on this blog post: http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Zigbee/Zigbee-Linux-and-the-GPL.html Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/attachments/20090619/0f7fd70c/attachment.htm From janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si Fri Jun 19 17:00:49 2009 From: janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si (Janez Pers) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:00:49 +0200 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A3BA821.1080400@fe.uni-lj.si> Akiba wrote: > Thanks for the responses. That?s the issue in a nutshell. The > restriction placed on the license for using the spec looks like it?s > enough to block it form being integrated into the Linux kernel. Also, it > seems to imply that the GPL would need an exception for the case that > you?re a commercial entity that?s not a member of the Alliance. I think the best analogy here are software patents. AFAIK, nothing prevents YOU from writing GPL code, that relies on patented technology, but end user of the code may get into trouble by using your code in commercial application - regardless of how well he adheres to the GPL. Same applies here: you are (I assume) not working for profit, and therefore you are free to work on ZigBee. If, on the other hand your GPLed code ends in someone's product, he will be in breach of the ZigBee license, even if he does everything what GPL demands from him. This way, your code is essentially non-free. I don't know exactly how patents are handled in GPL V3 (and assume they are not at all in V2) - if using patented technology is considered a breach of GPL (since it may make code non-free), then the use of ZigBee specs has the same effect. And, standard disclaimers apply: I am not the layer and this is purely my opinion, not advice. Janez. From janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si Fri Jun 19 17:09:29 2009 From: janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si (Janez Pers) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:09:29 +0200 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? In-Reply-To: <87r5xgs7hv.fsf@ebb.org> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> <87r5xgs7hv.fsf@ebb.org> Message-ID: <4A3BAA29.8090002@fe.uni-lj.si> Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > My advice to Janez is to get a lawyer who specializes in > software copyright and FLOSS and ask them this question. Asking a list > like this will give you a bunch of information, none of which will help > you analyze the legal risk of what you seek to do, since it won't be > legal advice. > I'm often amazed at the trouble and effort people go to when seeking the > legal boundaries of copyright derivative works. I suspect that more > energy is expended sometimes on that consideration than is on the > proprietary code itself that might take advantage of the edges, if such > edges can even be determined. You misunderstood my intentions - seeing that that route COULD be a problem is enough for me. In absence of clear "yes, you can do this, the license allows this, but we don't like it nevertheless" I have no intentions of pushing this thing any further. And, as I explained, the idea of "socketizing" the libraries comes from different need, the only thing that changes for me now is that I will let GPLed libraries out of this and everybody will be happy. From chris at freaklabs.org Fri Jun 19 17:12:33 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:12:33 +0900 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <4A3BA821.1080400@fe.uni-lj.si> Message-ID: That's the analogy that started this whole issue. The spec's IP is analogous to patented IP and the issue is whether this is in violation of the GPL. Unfortunately, it looks like it is. And the assumption is correct with the project being non-profit. One of the goals is to check the power balance between the semiconductor vendors who are trying to lock people in to hardware through their proprietary stack's software licenses. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -----Original Message----- From: Janez Pers [mailto:janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 12:01 AM To: Akiba Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Akiba wrote: > Thanks for the responses. That's the issue in a nutshell. The > restriction placed on the license for using the spec looks like it's > enough to block it form being integrated into the Linux kernel. Also, it > seems to imply that the GPL would need an exception for the case that > you're a commercial entity that's not a member of the Alliance. I think the best analogy here are software patents. AFAIK, nothing prevents YOU from writing GPL code, that relies on patented technology, but end user of the code may get into trouble by using your code in commercial application - regardless of how well he adheres to the GPL. Same applies here: you are (I assume) not working for profit, and therefore you are free to work on ZigBee. If, on the other hand your GPLed code ends in someone's product, he will be in breach of the ZigBee license, even if he does everything what GPL demands from him. This way, your code is essentially non-free. I don't know exactly how patents are handled in GPL V3 (and assume they are not at all in V2) - if using patented technology is considered a breach of GPL (since it may make code non-free), then the use of ZigBee specs has the same effect. And, standard disclaimers apply: I am not the layer and this is purely my opinion, not advice. Janez. From bkuhn at ebb.org Fri Jun 19 15:01:00 2009 From: bkuhn at ebb.org (Bradley M. Kuhn) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:01:00 -0400 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? In-Reply-To: <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> (Allan Hardy's message of "Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:53:12 -0400") References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: <87r5xgs7hv.fsf@ebb.org> Allan Hardy wrote at 15:53 (EDT) on Thursday: > That said, your question isn't really about linking, its about what > constitutes a derived work, Quite correct. > This is a very old question and it's been discussed I'm sure thousands > of times. Indeed. It comes up, almost on cue, on some email list related to the GPL every few months. This list appears to be "the place" this quarter of the year. ;) > You are in an area where there is no case law, no judges rulings to go > by, for the most part. Actually, there is various case law in the United States. What I think you mean to say is that no court has applied this case law on copyright derivative works of software to a situation involving the GPL. BTW, this old interview with my colleague, Dan Ravicher, might be of interest on this subject: http://lwn.net/Articles/62202/ My advice to Janez is to get a lawyer who specializes in software copyright and FLOSS and ask them this question. Asking a list like this will give you a bunch of information, none of which will help you analyze the legal risk of what you seek to do, since it won't be legal advice. Meanwhile, I think other posters have a good point: Why don't you just do the right thing *ethically* regardless of the specific license requirements, and share your software under a license that respects your freedom and everyone else's? I'm often amazed at the trouble and effort people go to when seeking the legal boundaries of copyright derivative works. I suspect that more energy is expended sometimes on that consideration than is on the proprietary code itself that might take advantage of the edges, if such edges can even be determined. BTW, IANAL and none of this is legal advice. -- -- bkuhn From klaas.van.gend at mvista.com Fri Jun 19 19:35:37 2009 From: klaas.van.gend at mvista.com (Klaas van Gend) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:35:37 -0700 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A3BCC69.8000507@mvista.com> Hi Akiba, To me, this case appears to have similarities to the USB gadget (device) case and the (old) SD case - and the results are quite different. You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices without a USB forum membership (and registering official IDs), but that does not affect the Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for PCI by the way. The membership is required to keep the standardization effort afloat and pay for the organization - not to keep things secret. The opposite example is the SD card forum. My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack for SD back in 2004 and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from the SD forum (and we were a member of the forum!) because they did not allow a GPL version of the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been lessened about two years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linux devices with real SD support - not just MMC support. Klaas Akiba wrote: > Hi. > > I?m running an open source project to implement the Zigbee Protocol > stack. The code is currently protected by the GPL, however there?s been > a challenge to the validity of the license. The problem comes from the > fact that the Zigbee Alliance requires membership in order to use its > spec for commercial projects. Although my code is license free, it?s > claimed that the membership requirement is a licensing fee. If it turns > out that the code is incompatible with the GPL, I will need to go > mod-BSD. However I?d like to get a professional opinion on the validity > of the claim first. Can someone offer some advice? > > > > More details can be found on this blog post: > > http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Zigbee/Zigbee-Linux-and-the-GPL.html > > > > Akiba > > FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project > > http://www.freaklabs.org > > > -- Best regards, Klaas van Gend Senior Solutions & Services Architect MontaVista Software Phone: (408) 572 7962 (Santa Clara Office) Phone: +31 40 2801386 (for European calls) From chris at freaklabs.org Fri Jun 19 20:02:11 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:02:11 +0900 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <4A3BCC69.8000507@mvista.com> Message-ID: Hi Klaas. I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't limit its use of the spec to members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the use of the USB logo, trademarks, and certification are for members. This is the major difference between Zigbee. The similar situation exists between Bluetooth where the spec can only be used by members, but the lowest tier of membership is free. I believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in the Linux kernel. I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and have discussed it with people on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a compelling argument that the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the input though. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -----Original Message----- From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 AM To: Akiba Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Akiba, To me, this case appears to have similarities to the USB gadget (device) case and the (old) SD case - and the results are quite different. You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices without a USB forum membership (and registering official IDs), but that does not affect the Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for PCI by the way. The membership is required to keep the standardization effort afloat and pay for the organization - not to keep things secret. The opposite example is the SD card forum. My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack for SD back in 2004 and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from the SD forum (and we were a member of the forum!) because they did not allow a GPL version of the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been lessened about two years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linux devices with real SD support - not just MMC support. Klaas Akiba wrote: > Hi. > > I'm running an open source project to implement the Zigbee Protocol > stack. The code is currently protected by the GPL, however there's been > a challenge to the validity of the license. The problem comes from the > fact that the Zigbee Alliance requires membership in order to use its > spec for commercial projects. Although my code is license free, it's > claimed that the membership requirement is a licensing fee. If it turns > out that the code is incompatible with the GPL, I will need to go > mod-BSD. However I'd like to get a professional opinion on the validity > of the claim first. Can someone offer some advice? > > > > More details can be found on this blog post: > > http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Zigbee/Zigbee-Linux-and-the-GPL.html > > > > Akiba > > FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project > > http://www.freaklabs.org > > > -- Best regards, Klaas van Gend Senior Solutions & Services Architect MontaVista Software Phone: (408) 572 7962 (Santa Clara Office) Phone: +31 40 2801386 (for European calls) From twaffle at gmail.com Sun Jun 21 02:54:15 2009 From: twaffle at gmail.com (Thomas Charron) Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:54:15 -0400 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? In-Reply-To: <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: <30dfe2a80906201754q606d1bf1i75946613f6466959@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Hardy, Allan wrote: > Makes sense in some way. If your applications cannot function without > the GPL application, that's a derived work and FSF expects you to > reciprocate the benefits of open source and make your application open > source. Note: Regardless of the technical form of the integration. > So if my application sits on a server in New Zealand and my MySQL (GPL) > database is in France, it wouldn't matter. My application is 100% > dependent on that GPL database and I am vulnerable to MySQL-Sun/FSF not > being happy with me. I'd have to say most MySQL users in commercial environments disagree with that statement. That is a gross exaggeration, and I have never heard of anyone even questioning if their application, using Postgresql, MySQL, or any other database provider, would be held accountable to the license of their database server. > As another illustration, a ?recent example we had to deal with involved > a a Jabber Server, opensource GPL, and a client application my guys had > written and wanted to distribute. ?The client used a standard protocol > and could technically talk to any server, commercial or open source, > that used that protocol. ?Where we 'dependent' on the GPL server? ?Hard > to say, there is strong technical case of no we were not dependent > because of use of a standard protocol. ?However we had only tested > against the GPL server, we only offered support for that server, we > directed the customer to acquire and use that server, etc. ?So we made > them test/document against at least 2 other servers. ?We had the > documentation/marketing materials go agnostic so to speak, we made sure > to slant the server choice as a customers choice, etc. ?All of this was > to get us away from any appearance of dependency, and it made our > product/marketing a bit more robust as well. That was just good logical sense to ensure it was compliant with several implementations of XMPP. That would be like saying a web browser which has only been tested against Apache would be potentially subject to the Apache license. > In my analysis your Proprietary Application B is a derived work of the > GPL Work A. ?It uses it and seems to depend on it. ?I could care less if > its sockets, dlls, static compiling, etc. ?Your adding of a sockets > wrapper is moot. Based on that blanket analysis, anything that runs under Linux is also subject to the GPL. He was asking for a legal impression, not a general personal opinion. -- -- Thomas From allan.hardy at lmco.com Mon Jun 22 12:50:00 2009 From: allan.hardy at lmco.com (Hardy, Allan) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 06:50:00 -0400 Subject: what does constitute "linking"? In-Reply-To: <30dfe2a80906201754q606d1bf1i75946613f6466959@mail.gmail.com> References: <4A3A556D.6010502@fe.uni-lj.si> <231B442F8AB2B24AA15BF005FD7780260A0172A5@emss09m10.us.lmco.com> <30dfe2a80906201754q606d1bf1i75946613f6466959@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C48CDE8@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Thomas, I am not sure but we may be talking about different customers/usages? My point about vulnerable and risk came into play with distribution. Using MYSQL as an In-House database, be it in a commercial company, school, etc - is not at the same risk/concern level. So where I said: "I am vulnerable to MySQL-Sun/FSF not being happy with me." It was for application developers/solutions providers, etc that use mysql databases for their deliverables/selling products. Sorry if I didn't clarify, I assumed it was in context. I should have clarified more like this: When my application is 100% dependent on that GPL database, I am vulnerable to MySQL-Sun/FSF not being happy with me IF I DISTRIBUTE my application under a non-gpl compliant license. With this clarification do you still feel it is a gross exaggeration of risk if someone sells/distributes applications that use a GPL based product, like MySQL? --"That was just good logical sense to ensure it was compliant with several implementations of XMPP" It was extra work that wasn't in schedule or plan. For this thread it was a legitimate reaction/response to dealing with risks/unknowns in the land of building applications that somehow interact with GPL products. --"Based on that blanket analysis, anything that runs under Linux is also subject to the GPL." Not at all, well not when you read the rest of my post which discussed how one needs to consider how the copyright owner themselves interprets GPL terms. As example, The linux kernel team has an interpretation that is well known to be at odds with the FSF's interpretation. More specifically concerning User Space applications 'on' linux versus Kernel based (ex: KLMs, drivers) applications. "He was asking for a legal impression, not a general personal opinion." That's cool. I was giving a legal impression so he seems to have gotten what he was looking for. Was it a personal opinion? Sure in some way. Its also an opinion that is well thought out, support by legal, at least where I work, and guides a great deal of policy. Which leads me to always want to be accurate and update the view. Did you have some specific point of analysis/law I should look at? -----Original Message----- From: Thomas Charron [mailto:twaffle at gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 8:54 PM To: Hardy, Allan Cc: Janez Pers; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: what does constitute "linking"? On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Hardy, Allan wrote: > Makes sense in some way. If your applications cannot function without > the GPL application, that's a derived work and FSF expects you to > reciprocate the benefits of open source and make your application open > source. Note: Regardless of the technical form of the integration. > So if my application sits on a server in New Zealand and my MySQL (GPL) > database is in France, it wouldn't matter. My application is 100% > dependent on that GPL database and I am vulnerable to MySQL-Sun/FSF not > being happy with me. I'd have to say most MySQL users in commercial environments disagree with that statement. That is a gross exaggeration, and I have never heard of anyone even questioning if their application, using Postgresql, MySQL, or any other database provider, would be held accountable to the license of their database server. > As another illustration, a ?recent example we had to deal with involved > a a Jabber Server, opensource GPL, and a client application my guys had > written and wanted to distribute. ?The client used a standard protocol > and could technically talk to any server, commercial or open source, > that used that protocol. ?Where we 'dependent' on the GPL server? ?Hard > to say, there is strong technical case of no we were not dependent > because of use of a standard protocol. ?However we had only tested > against the GPL server, we only offered support for that server, we > directed the customer to acquire and use that server, etc. ?So we made > them test/document against at least 2 other servers. ?We had the > documentation/marketing materials go agnostic so to speak, we made sure > to slant the server choice as a customers choice, etc. ?All of this was > to get us away from any appearance of dependency, and it made our > product/marketing a bit more robust as well. That was just good logical sense to ensure it was compliant with several implementations of XMPP. That would be like saying a web browser which has only been tested against Apache would be potentially subject to the Apache license. > In my analysis your Proprietary Application B is a derived work of the > GPL Work A. ?It uses it and seems to depend on it. ?I could care less if > its sockets, dlls, static compiling, etc. ?Your adding of a sockets > wrapper is moot. Based on that blanket analysis, anything that runs under Linux is also subject to the GPL. He was asking for a legal impression, not a general personal opinion. -- -- Thomas From m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk Mon Jun 22 21:10:36 2009 From: m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk (mp) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:10:36 +0100 Subject: The_GPL_in_court Message-ID: <4A3FD72C.4080404@lancaster.ac.uk> Hi, Can any one help, I am looking for a list of the GPL's encounter with the law - any better sources than this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#The_GPL_in_court ? thx, mp From allan.hardy at lmco.com Mon Jun 22 22:24:10 2009 From: allan.hardy at lmco.com (Hardy, Allan) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:24:10 -0400 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: <4A3BCC69.8000507@mvista.com> Message-ID: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> I just wanted to make a comment on a point made in the blog. I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this legal stuff :) just for fun. Where you said: "However after a bit more investigation, it turned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would remove the GPL violation." Why is payment or $ the basis of your analysis? The GPL doesn't stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product. It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for something that your customers can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL doesn't prevent that. I would have thought the right conclusion would have been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs. Is there anything about the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, meaning it deny's me rights or makes me surrender rights. Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most applicable here. I copied them below just for reference. As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL based software. If you choose to pay you can then use the software under the GPL. Meaning you can give it away for free. (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice). What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also charge. I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you. Same goes with registration. I can offer you my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download. You can then offer the product to others under the GPL. What I cant do is tell you that if you offer the product to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even at some other site, even if its free registration. That would be me adding a superset of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not allow. So back to Zigby You release a linux implementation of the Zigby specification. What Zigby doesn't want is a hardware guy embedding that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn't matter) What license can you release your ziby/kinux stack under? BSD, GPL, ? Doesn't matter, what ever it is it must carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up. Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has spelled them out with the restrictions on commercial use. So, the way I am looking at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved, but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which GPL doesn't allow or support. That restriction could be a free registration or a paid one, doesn't matter, it's a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL product. I think whomever put up the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in the areas of commercial or not. As to why Bluetooth doesn't have the same issue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for trademark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole different ballpark. Allan From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Jun 19 15:25:57 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:25:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. -----Original Message----- From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Klaas. I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't limit its use of the spec to members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the use of the USB logo, trademarks, and certification are for members. This is the major difference between Zigbee. The similar situation exists between Bluetooth where the spec can only be used by members, but the lowest tier of membership is free. I believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in the Linux kernel. I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and have discussed it with people on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a compelling argument that the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the input though. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -----Original Message----- From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 AM To: Akiba Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Akiba, To me, this case appears to have similarities to the USB gadget (device) case and the (old) SD case - and the results are quite different. You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices without a USB forum membership (and registering official IDs), but that does not affect the Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for PCI by the way. The membership is required to keep the standardization effort afloat and pay for the organization - not to keep things secret. The opposite example is the SD card forum. My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack for SD back in 2004 and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from the SD forum (and we were a member of the forum!) because they did not allow a GPL version of the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been lessened about two years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linux devices with real SD support - not just MMC support. Klaas --Boundary_(ID_oAH4ZqLPebeCYwFs16GwVw) Content-type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

I just wanted to make a comment on a point made in the blog.  I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this legal stuff :) just for fun.

 

Where you said:

 

"However after a bit more investigation, it turned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would remove the GPL violation."

 

Why is payment or $ the basis of your analysis?  The GPL doesn’t stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product.  It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for something that your customers can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL doesn’t prevent that. 

 

I would have thought the right conclusion would have been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs.  Is there anything about the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, meaning it deny's me rights or makes me surrender rights.

 

Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most applicable here.  I copied them below just for reference.

 

As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL based software.  If you choose to pay you can then use the software under the GPL.  Meaning you can give it away for free.  (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice). 

 

What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also charge.  I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you.

 

Same goes with registration.  I can offer you my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download.  You can then offer the product to others under the GPL. 

 

What I cant do is tell you that if you offer the product to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even at some other site, even if its free registration.  That would be me adding a superset of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not allow.

 

So back to Zigby

 

You release a linux implementation of the Zigby specification.  What Zigby doesn’t want is a hardware guy embedding that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn’t matter)

 

What license can you release your ziby/kinux stack under?  BSD, GPL, ?  Doesn’t matter, what ever it is it must carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up.  Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has spelled them out with the restrictions on commercial use.

 

 

So, the way I am looking at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved, but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which GPL doesn’t allow or support.  That restriction could be a free registration or a paid one, doesn’t matter, it’s a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL product.

 

I think whomever put up the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in the areas of commercial or not.

 

 

As to why Bluetooth doesn’t have the same issue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for trademark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole different ballpark.

 

Allan

 

 

From GPL V2

 

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

 

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM
To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body

 

Hi Klaas.

I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't limit its use of the spec to

members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the use of the USB logo, trademarks,

and certification are for members. This is the major difference between

Zigbee. The similar situation exists between Bluetooth where the spec can

only be used by members, but the lowest tier of membership is free. I

believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in the Linux kernel.

I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and have discussed it with people

on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a compelling argument that

the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the input though.

 

Akiba

FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project

http://www.freaklabs.org

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com]

Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 AM

To: Akiba

Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org

Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a

standards body

 

Hi Akiba,

 

To me, this case appears to have similarities to the USB gadget (device)

case and the (old) SD case - and the results are quite different.

 

You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices without a USB forum

membership (and registering official IDs), but that does not affect the

Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for PCI by the way.

The membership is required to keep the standardization effort afloat and

pay for the organization - not to keep things secret.

 

The opposite example is the SD card forum.

My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack for SD back in 2004

and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from the SD forum (and we

were a member of the forum!) because they did not allow a GPL version of

the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been lessened about two

years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linux devices with real

SD support - not just MMC support.

 

 

Klaas

 

 

 

--Boundary_(ID_oAH4ZqLPebeCYwFs16GwVw)-- From janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si Mon Jun 22 23:45:30 2009 From: janez.pers at fe.uni-lj.si (Janez Pers) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:45:30 +0200 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> References: <4A3BCC69.8000507@mvista.com> <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: <4A3FFB7A.3040805@fe.uni-lj.si> Hardy, Allan wrote: > As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL > based software. If you choose to pay you can then use the software > under the GPL. Meaning you can give it away for free. (which makes me > changing upfront sorta dumb business practice). > > What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also > charge. I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you. > Same goes with registration. I can offer you my GPL products and > require you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download. > You can then offer the product to others under the GPL. Precisely that's why there is a problem. Licensing scheme for ZigBee requires that everyone who is developing the code for commercial purpose is member of organization ($3000 = non free, $0 = free, although this could be debatable). To use the code, you would have to comply both with GPL and ZigBee alliance's licensing requirements. Following GPL you cannot override the rights that GPL affords the user of the code, but following the ZigBee alliance license (based on which you were allowed to develop GPLed code in the first place), you HAVE TO. (the user has to be alliance member if he wants to develop the code further for commercial purpose, or he cannot use it for commercial purpose, if he is not member). Therefore, in general, the code cannot be used without breaking one of those two licenses, which essentially makes the alliance requirements incompatible with GPL (since GPL cannot be changed, the alliance licensing rules have to be changed to be compatible with GPL). AFAIK. From caroline.ford.work at googlemail.com Mon Jun 22 23:53:03 2009 From: caroline.ford.work at googlemail.com (Caroline Ford) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:53:03 +0100 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <4A3FFB7A.3040805@fe.uni-lj.si> References: <4A3BCC69.8000507@mvista.com> <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> <4A3FFB7A.3040805@fe.uni-lj.si> Message-ID: 2009/6/22 Janez Pers : > Hardy, Allan wrote: > >> As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL based >> software. ?If you choose to pay you can then use the software under the GPL. >> ?Meaning you can give it away for free. ?(which makes me changing upfront >> sorta dumb business practice). >> What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also >> charge. ?I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you. > >> Same goes with registration. ?I can offer you my GPL products and require >> you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download. ?You can >> then offer the product to others under the GPL. > > Precisely that's why there is a problem. Licensing scheme for ZigBee > requires that everyone who is developing the code for commercial > purpose is member of organization ($3000 = non free, $0 = free, > although this could be debatable). > > To use the code, you would have to comply both with GPL and ZigBee > alliance's licensing requirements. Following GPL you cannot override > the rights that GPL affords the user of the code, but following > the ZigBee alliance license (based on which you were allowed to > develop GPLed code in the first place), you HAVE TO. (the user has to > be alliance member if he wants to develop the code further for > commercial purpose, or he cannot use it for commercial purpose, > if he is not member). > > Therefore, in general, the code cannot be used without breaking one of those > two licenses, which essentially makes the alliance > requirements incompatible with GPL (since GPL cannot be changed, > the alliance licensing rules have to be changed to be compatible with > GPL). If the alliance would like linux support for their widgets then they know what to do, right? Why would you want to restrict yourself to windows and mac? You didn't say what zigbee was - but your link mentioned IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Personal Area Networks. If the IEEE are involved then there may be a way round this. Caroline From chris at freaklabs.org Tue Jun 23 03:02:50 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:02:50 +0900 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: * a) The modified work must itself be a software library. * b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. The Zigbee membership requirement for commercial projects becomes an implied licensing fee because what you're doing is paying the membership fee in order to gain permission to use their IP. If the lowest tier of membership had no charges attached to it, even if other tiers did, then people who wanted to make a commercial product based on GPL'd software would not need to pay the Zigbee Alliance to license their IP. Hence clause 2-c is satisfied. This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. I'm a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can't expect my users to be. So the membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the software, since it uses Zigbee's IP. As far as we can see, this is a violation of (at least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the Zigbee protocol to be allowed to use the GPL, we're still trying to get a definite answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it's ambiguous. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org _____ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 5:24 AM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body I just wanted to make a comment on a point made in the blog. I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this legal stuff :) just for fun. Where you said: "However after a bit more investigation, it turned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would remove the GPL violation." Why is payment or $ the basis of your analysis? The GPL doesn't stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product. It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for something that your customers can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL doesn't prevent that. I would have thought the right conclusion would have been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs. Is there anything about the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, meaning it deny's me rights or makes me surrender rights. Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most applicable here. I copied them below just for reference. As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL based software. If you choose to pay you can then use the software under the GPL. Meaning you can give it away for free. (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice). What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also charge. I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you. Same goes with registration. I can offer you my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download. You can then offer the product to others under the GPL. What I cant do is tell you that if you offer the product to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even at some other site, even if its free registration. That would be me adding a superset of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not allow. So back to Zigby You release a linux implementation of the Zigby specification. What Zigby doesn't want is a hardware guy embedding that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn't matter) What license can you release your ziby/kinux stack under? BSD, GPL, ? Doesn't matter, what ever it is it must carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up. Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has spelled them out with the restrictions on commercial use. So, the way I am looking at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved, but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which GPL doesn't allow or support. That restriction could be a free registration or a paid one, doesn't matter, it's a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL product. I think whomever put up the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in the areas of commercial or not. As to why Bluetooth doesn't have the same issue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for trademark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole different ballpark. Allan From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Jun 19 15:25:57 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:25:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. -----Original Message----- From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Klaas. I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't limit its use of the spec to members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the use of the USB logo, trademarks, and certification are for members. This is the major difference between Zigbee. The similar situation exists between Bluetooth where the spec can only be used by members, but the lowest tier of membership is free. I believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in the Linux kernel. I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and have discussed it with people on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a compelling argument that the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the input though. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -----Original Message----- From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 AM To: Akiba Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Akiba, To me, this case appears to have similarities to the USB gadget (device) case and the (old) SD case - and the results are quite different. You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices without a USB forum membership (and registering official IDs), but that does not affect the Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for PCI by the way. The membership is required to keep the standardization effort afloat and pay for the organization - not to keep things secret. The opposite example is the SD card forum. My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack for SD back in 2004 and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from the SD forum (and we were a member of the forum!) because they did not allow a GPL version of the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been lessened about two years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linux devices with real SD support - not just MMC support. Klaas ------=_NextPart_000_0024_01C9F3E9.C5838470 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

The issue is = that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as = mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2:

 =

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any = portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and distribute = such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that = you also meet all of these conditions:

    * a) The modified work must itself be a software = library.
    * b) You must cause the files modified to carry = prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any = change.
    * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be = licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this = License.

 =

The Zigbee = membership requirement for commercial projects becomes an implied licensing fee = because what you’re doing is paying the membership fee in order to gain permission to use their IP. If the lowest tier of membership had no = charges attached to it, even if other tiers did, then people who wanted to make = a commercial product based on GPL’d software would not need to pay = the Zigbee Alliance to license their IP. Hence clause 2-c is satisfied. This = was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the = spec’s compatibility with GPL’d software.

 =

I’m a = member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can’t expect my users to be. So the = membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the software, since = it uses Zigbee’s IP. As far as we can see, this is a violation of (at = least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the Zigbee protocol to = be allowed to use the GPL, we’re still trying to get a definite = answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it’s = ambiguous.

 =

Akiba

FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee = Project

http://www.freaklabs.org

From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, = 2009 5:24 AM
To: Akiba; = legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question = regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body

 

I just wanted to make a comment on a point = made in the blog.  I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this = legal stuff :) just for fun.

 

Where you said:

 

"However after a bit more investigation, = it turned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would = remove the GPL violation."

 

Why is payment or $ the basis of your = analysis?  The GPL doesn’t stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product.  It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for = something that your customers can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL doesn’t prevent that. 

 

I would have thought the right conclusion = would have been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs.  Is there = anything about the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, = meaning it deny's me rights or makes me surrender = rights.

 

Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most = applicable here.  I copied them below just for = reference.

 

As I understand the GPL I can charge you say = $1000 to acquire my GPL based software.  If you choose to pay you can then = use the software under the GPL.  Meaning you can give it away for = free.  (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice).  =

 

What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then = tell you that you must also charge.  I cant override/change the rights the = GPL affords you.

 

Same goes with registration.  I can = offer you my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to = get the download.  You can then offer the product to others under the = GPL. 

 

What I cant do is tell you that if you offer = the product to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even = at some other site, even if its free registration.  That would be me adding = a superset of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not = allow.

 

So back to Zigby

 

You release a linux implementation of the = Zigby specification.  What Zigby doesn’t want is a hardware guy = embedding that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without = them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn’t = matter)

 

What license can you release your ziby/kinux = stack under?  BSD, GPL, ?  Doesn’t matter, what ever it is it = must carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up.  Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has = spelled them out with the restrictions on commercial = use.

 

 

So, the way I am looking = at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved, but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which = GPL doesn’t allow or support.  That restriction could be a free registration or a paid one, doesn’t matter, it’s a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL = product.

 

I think whomever put up = the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in the areas of commercial = or not.

 

 

As to why Bluetooth doesn’t have the = same issue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for trademark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole = different ballpark.

 

Allan

 

 

From GPL V2

 

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or = distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, = and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, = parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will = not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full = compliance.

 

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or = any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license = from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to = these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not = responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this = License.

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM
To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a = standards body

 

Hi Klaas.

I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't = limit its use of the spec to

members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the = use of the USB logo, trademarks,

and certification are for members. This is = the major difference between

Zigbee. The similar situation exists between = Bluetooth where the spec can

only be used by members, but the lowest tier = of membership is free. I

believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in = the Linux kernel.

I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and = have discussed it with people

on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't = found a compelling argument that

the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the = input though.

 

Akiba

FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee = Project

http://www.freaklabs.org

 

-----Original = Message-----

From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com]

Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 = AM

To: Akiba

Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org

Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and = membership requirements for a

standards body

 

Hi Akiba,

 

To me, this case appears to have similarities = to the USB gadget (device)

case and the (old) SD case - and the results = are quite different.

 

You're not supposed to create/ship USB = devices without a USB forum

membership (and registering official IDs), = but that does not affect the

Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true = for PCI by the way.

The membership is required to keep the = standardization effort afloat and

pay for the organization - not to keep things = secret.

 

The opposite example is the SD card = forum.

My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software = stack for SD back in 2004

and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter = from the SD forum (and we

were a member of the forum!) because they did = not allow a GPL version of

the code. Fortunately, that requirement has = been lessened about two

years ago - and lately everybody happily = ships Linux devices with real

SD support - not just MMC = support.

 

 

Klaas

 

 

 

------=_NextPart_000_0024_01C9F3E9.C5838470-- From allan.hardy at lmco.com Tue Jun 23 03:53:08 2009 From: allan.hardy at lmco.com (Hardy, Allan) Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:53:08 -0400 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C5999F6@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> >> The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: Zigbee terms are not GPL compliant we agree on that. I respectfully disagree that it is because of a membership fee. Requiring membership at all is enough to be in conflict with GPL. Assume Zigbee membership is free: If I took a standard GPL product and embedded it in my hardware Device what are my GPL requirements? - Primarily to provide source code for the GPL components. If I take a Zigbee embedded in a linux distro, then put in my device what are my requirements? - To become a member of Zigbee alliance, to follow what ever additional requirements are put on members, and to provide source code for GPL components. The Zigbee terms are not GPL compatible because it discriminates against a class of users, as example commercial hardware vendors, it puts additional restrictions on my ability to use the GPL product, takes away freedoms of use I had, etc. The fact that it also involves $ is a secondary issue, imho, not the main issue. Zigbee could drop their fee to $1 or $0 and it still would be GPL incompatible. >> This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. Discussed where? Even if it was the central point of the discussion, it is not the central point of GPL incompatibility. At least that's my central point. : ) Allan From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:03 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: * a) The modified work must itself be a software library. * b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. The Zigbee membership requirement for commercial projects becomes an implied licensing fee because what you're doing is paying the membership fee in order to gain permission to use their IP. If the lowest tier of membership had no charges attached to it, even if other tiers did, then people who wanted to make a commercial product based on GPL'd software would not need to pay the Zigbee Alliance to license their IP. Hence clause 2-c is satisfied. This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. I'm a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can't expect my users to be. So the membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the software, since it uses Zigbee's IP. As far as we can see, this is a violation of (at least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the Zigbee protocol to be allowed to use the GPL, we're still trying to get a definite answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it's ambiguous. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org ________________________________ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 5:24 AM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body I just wanted to make a comment on a point made in the blog. I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this legal stuff :) just for fun. Where you said: "However after a bit more investigation, it turned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would remove the GPL violation." Why is payment or $ the basis of your analysis? The GPL doesn't stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product. It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for something that your customers can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL doesn't prevent that. I would have thought the right conclusion would have been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs. Is there anything about the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, meaning it deny's me rights or makes me surrender rights. Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most applicable here. I copied them below just for reference. As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL based software. If you choose to pay you can then use the software under the GPL. Meaning you can give it away for free. (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice). What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also charge. I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you. Same goes with registration. I can offer you my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download. You can then offer the product to others under the GPL. What I cant do is tell you that if you offer the product to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even at some other site, even if its free registration. That would be me adding a superset of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not allow. So back to Zigby You release a linux implementation of the Zigby specification. What Zigby doesn't want is a hardware guy embedding that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn't matter) What license can you release your ziby/kinux stack under? BSD, GPL, ? Doesn't matter, what ever it is it must carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up. Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has spelled them out with the restrictions on commercial use. So, the way I am looking at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved, but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which GPL doesn't allow or support. That restriction could be a free registration or a paid one, doesn't matter, it's a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL product. I think whomever put up the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in the areas of commercial or not. As to why Bluetooth doesn't have the same issue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for trademark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole different ballpark. Allan From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Jun 19 15:25:57 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:25:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. -----Original Message----- From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Klaas. I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't limit its use of the spec to members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the use of the USB logo, trademarks, and certification are for members. This is the major difference between Zigbee. The similar situation exists between Bluetooth where the spec can only be used by members, but the lowest tier of membership is free. I believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in the Linux kernel. I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and have discussed it with people on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a compelling argument that the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the input though. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -----Original Message----- From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 AM To: Akiba Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Akiba, To me, this case appears to have similarities to the USB gadget (device) case and the (old) SD case - and the results are quite different. You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices without a USB forum membership (and registering official IDs), but that does not affect the Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for PCI by the way. The membership is required to keep the standardization effort afloat and pay for the organization - not to keep things secret. The opposite example is the SD card forum. My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack for SD back in 2004 and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from the SD forum (and we were a member of the forum!) because they did not allow a GPL version of the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been lessened about two years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linux devices with real SD support - not just MMC support. Klaas --Boundary_(ID_+Az1uPY/jrmqP93OPCqT1A) Content-type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable

>> The= issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing f= ees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2:

 =

Zigbee terms are not GPL compliant we agree on that.

I respectfully disagree = that it is because of a membership fee.  Requiring membership at all is enough= to be in conflict with GPL.

 =

Assume Zigbee membership= is free:

 =

If I took a standard GPL= product and embedded it in my hardware Device what are my GPL requirements?  &= #8211; Primarily to provide source code for the GPL components.<= /p>

 =

If I take a Zigbee embed= ded in a linux distro, then put in my device what are my requirements? -  To be= come a member of Zigbee alliance, to follow what ever additional requirements ar= e put on members, and to provide source code for GPL components.

 =

The Zigbee terms are not= GPL compatible because it discriminates against a class of users, as example co= mmercial hardware vendors, it puts additional restrictions on my ability to use the = GPL product, takes away freedoms of use I had, etc.

 =

The fact that it also in= volves $ is a secondary issue, imho, not the main issue.    Zigbee co= uld drop their fee to $1 or $0 and it still would be GPL incompatible.

 =

>> Thi= s was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec’= s compatibility with GPL’d software.

 =

Discussed where?  E= ven if it was the central point of the discussion, it is not the central point of = GPL incompatibility.

At least that’s my= central point.  : )

 =

Allan<= /p>

 =

 =

From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:03 PM
To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for = a standards body

 

The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provid= ed free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2:=

 

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library o= r any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

    * a) The modified work must itself be a software library= .
    * b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominen= t notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
    * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed= at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

 

The Zigbee membership requirement for commercial projects becom= es an implied licensing fee because what you’re doing is paying the membership fee in order to gain permission to use their IP. If the lowest t= ier of membership had no charges attached to it, even if other tiers did, then people who wanted to make a commercial product based on GPL’d softwar= e would not need to pay the Zigbee Alliance to license their IP. Hence clause= 2-c is satisfied. This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec’s compatibility with GPL’d software.

 

I’m a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can’t ex= pect my users to be. So the membership requirement would constitute a restrictio= n placed on the software, since it uses Zigbee’s IP. As far as we can s= ee, this is a violation of (at least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the Zigbee protocol to be allowed to use the GPL, we’re still trying to get a definite answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it’s ambiguous.

 

Akiba

FreakLabs = Open Source Zigbee Project

http://www= .freaklabs.org

From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 5:24 AM
To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for = a standards body

 

I just wanted to make a comment on a point made in = the blog.  I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this legal stuff :) just for fun.

 

Where you said:

 

"However after a bit more investigation, it tu= rned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would remove the G= PL violation."

 

Why is payment or $ the basis of your analysis?&nbs= p; The GPL doesn’t stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product. = ; It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for something that your custome= rs can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL doesn’t prevent that. 

 

I would have thought the right conclusion would hav= e been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs.  Is there anything about= the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, meaning it den= y's me rights or makes me surrender rights.

 

Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most applica= ble here.  I copied them below just for reference.

 

As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 = to acquire my GPL based software.  If you choose to pay you can then use = the software under the GPL.  Meaning you can give it away for free.  (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice).  =

 

What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell y= ou that you must also charge.  I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you.

 

Same goes with registration.  I can offer you = my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download.  You can then offer the product to others under the GPL.&nbs= p;

 

What I cant do is tell you that if you offer the pr= oduct to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even at some othe= r site, even if its free registration.  That would be me adding a supers= et of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not allow.=

 

So back to Zigby

 

You release a linux implementation of the Zigby specification.  What Zigby doesn’t want is a hardware guy embedd= ing that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn’t matte= r)

 

What license can you release your ziby/kinux stack under?  BSD, GPL, ?  Doesn’t matter, what ever it is it mus= t carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up.  Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has spelled t= hem out with the restrictions on commercial use.

 

 

= So, the way I am looking at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved,= but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which GPL doesn’t allow or support.  That restriction co= uld be a free registration or a paid one, doesn’t matter, it’s a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL product.=

 

= I think whomever put up the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in = the areas of commercial or not.

 

 

As to why Bluetooth doesn’t have the same iss= ue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for tradem= ark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole different ballpark.

 

Allan

 

 

From GPL V2

 

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distrib= ute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherw= ise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties wh= o have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance= .

 

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any w= ork based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from = the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to thes= e terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible = for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM
To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a stand= ards body

 

Hi Klaas.

I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't limit = its use of the spec to

members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the use of = the USB logo, trademarks,

and certification are for members. This is the majo= r difference between

Zigbee. The similar situation exists between Blueto= oth where the spec can

only be used by members, but the lowest tier of membership is free. I

believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in the Lin= ux kernel.

I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and have discussed it with people

on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a compelling argument that

the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the input t= hough.

 

Akiba

FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project

http://www.freaklabs.org

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.= com]

Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 AM

To: Akiba

Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org

Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership = requirements for a

standards body

 

Hi Akiba,

 

To me, this case appears to have similarities to th= e USB gadget (device)

case and the (old) SD case - and the results are qu= ite different.

 

You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices with= out a USB forum

membership (and registering official IDs), but that= does not affect the

Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for P= CI by the way.

The membership is required to keep the standardizat= ion effort afloat and

pay for the organization - not to keep things secre= t.

 

The opposite example is the SD card forum.

My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack = for SD back in 2004

and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from = the SD forum (and we

were a member of the forum!) because they did not a= llow a GPL version of

the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been le= ssened about two

years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linu= x devices with real

SD support - not just MMC support.

 

 

Klaas

 

 

 

--Boundary_(ID_+Az1uPY/jrmqP93OPCqT1A)-- From chris at freaklabs.org Tue Jun 23 04:06:27 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:06:27 +0900 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Message-ID: Hi Allan. According to your argument, then Bluetooth would also be incompatible since it requires that any users of the Bluetooth spec become members of the Bluetooth SIG. The membership is free at the lowest tier. However there is a Bluetooth Linux project and it looks like it has been deemed compatible with the GPL. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org _____ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:53 AM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body >> The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: Zigbee terms are not GPL compliant we agree on that. I respectfully disagree that it is because of a membership fee. Requiring membership at all is enough to be in conflict with GPL. Assume Zigbee membership is free: If I took a standard GPL product and embedded it in my hardware Device what are my GPL requirements? - Primarily to provide source code for the GPL components. If I take a Zigbee embedded in a linux distro, then put in my device what are my requirements? - To become a member of Zigbee alliance, to follow what ever additional requirements are put on members, and to provide source code for GPL components. The Zigbee terms are not GPL compatible because it discriminates against a class of users, as example commercial hardware vendors, it puts additional restrictions on my ability to use the GPL product, takes away freedoms of use I had, etc. The fact that it also involves $ is a secondary issue, imho, not the main issue. Zigbee could drop their fee to $1 or $0 and it still would be GPL incompatible. >> This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. Discussed where? Even if it was the central point of the discussion, it is not the central point of GPL incompatibility. At least that's my central point. : ) Allan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/attachments/20090623/d7e1fc6c/attachment.htm From allan.hardy at lmco.com Tue Jun 23 07:28:48 2009 From: allan.hardy at lmco.com (Hardy, Allan) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:28:48 -0400 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599A67@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Hi, Perhaps. I'd like to understand the differences, the devil is usually in the details. Do you have access to the Bluetooth terms? I went to Bluetooth.com and the latest spec document. (see excerpt below) I'm am not seeing the requirements for membership if I use the linux drivers? I am starting to wonder what exactly my obligations are under either products license. I thought I had read the Zigbee terms to apply to not just the Specification but works derived from the specification. I just went back to their site and re-read: "No part of this specification may be used in development of a product for sale without becoming a member of ZigBee Alliance." Ok, but if you build a driver for linux, offer it for free, it seems fine for you. If I then take your product and use it - does that equate to me "using the specification for development?" If I am a consumer of your free implementation, that doesn't seem to make me a user of the specification. So aim going to go back and challenge my original scenario. If I use your free implementation, I don't seem to have any obligation to Zigbee? I don't need to join zigbee if I just use/consumer of your free implementation. Also Zigbee doesn't seem to force any restrictions on your software license, other then make it free. You can license your software under any license, with or without source code, etc? If I use your software my only obligation is to you, as copyright holder. I appear to have been completely wrong about my having any obligation to ZigBee? Anyway that is the key question for me, if you build it, and if I use it in a commercial hardware device, does that make me a user of the specification? Right now I don't think so, which leads me to ask, what's the problem? : ) Thanks for making me think on this Allan Disclaimer and Copyright Notice The copyright in these specifications is owned by the Promoter Members of Bluetooth SIG, Inc. ("Bluetooth SIG"). Use of these specifications and any related intellectual property (collectively, the "Specification"), is governed by the Promoters Membership Agreement among the Promoter Members and Bluetooth SIG (the "Promoters Agreement"), certain membership agreements between Bluetooth SIG and its Adopter and Associate Members (the "Membership Agreements") and the Bluetooth Specification Early Adopters Agreements ("1.2 Early Adopters Agreements") among Early Adopter members of the unincorporated Bluetooth special interest group and the Promoter Members (the "Early Adopters Agreement"). Certain rights and obligations of the Promoter Members under the Early Adopters Agreements have been assigned to Bluetooth SIG by the Promoter Members. Use of the Specification by anyone who is not a member of Bluetooth SIG or a party to an Early Adopters Agreement (each such person or party, a "Member"), is prohibited. The legal rights and obligations of each Member are governed by their applicable Membership Agreement, Early Adopters Agreement or Promoters Agreement. No license, express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise, to any intellectual property rights are granted herein. From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 10:06 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Allan. According to your argument, then Bluetooth would also be incompatible since it requires that any users of the Bluetooth spec become members of the Bluetooth SIG. The membership is free at the lowest tier. However there is a Bluetooth Linux project and it looks like it has been deemed compatible with the GPL. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org ________________________________ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:53 AM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body >> The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: Zigbee terms are not GPL compliant we agree on that. I respectfully disagree that it is because of a membership fee. Requiring membership at all is enough to be in conflict with GPL. Assume Zigbee membership is free: If I took a standard GPL product and embedded it in my hardware Device what are my GPL requirements? - Primarily to provide source code for the GPL components. If I take a Zigbee embedded in a linux distro, then put in my device what are my requirements? - To become a member of Zigbee alliance, to follow what ever additional requirements are put on members, and to provide source code for GPL components. The Zigbee terms are not GPL compatible because it discriminates against a class of users, as example commercial hardware vendors, it puts additional restrictions on my ability to use the GPL product, takes away freedoms of use I had, etc. The fact that it also involves $ is a secondary issue, imho, not the main issue. Zigbee could drop their fee to $1 or $0 and it still would be GPL incompatible. >> This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. Discussed where? Even if it was the central point of the discussion, it is not the central point of GPL incompatibility. At least that's my central point. : ) Allan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/attachments/20090623/84ccf93a/attachment-0001.htm From chris at freaklabs.org Tue Jun 23 07:48:06 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:48:06 +0900 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599A67@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: Yeah, there seems to be some kind of recursion in the issue which twists your brain the more you think about it. I've emailed the SFLC (software freedom law center) and am currently getting legal advice on the matter. The main goal is to give the Zigbee-Linux developers some peace of mind so they can start developing again. Once I hear back from them, I'll post it on the mailing list and the blog. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org _____ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 2:29 PM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi, Perhaps. I'd like to understand the differences, the devil is usually in the details. Do you have access to the Bluetooth terms? I went to Bluetooth.com and the latest spec document. (see excerpt below) I'm am not seeing the requirements for membership if I use the linux drivers? I am starting to wonder what exactly my obligations are under either products license. I thought I had read the Zigbee terms to apply to not just the Specification but works derived from the specification. I just went back to their site and re-read: "No part of this specification may be used in development of a product for sale without becoming a member of ZigBee Alliance." Ok, but if you build a driver for linux, offer it for free, it seems fine for you. If I then take your product and use it - does that equate to me "using the specification for development?" If I am a consumer of your free implementation, that doesn't seem to make me a user of the specification. So aim going to go back and challenge my original scenario. If I use your free implementation, I don't seem to have any obligation to Zigbee? I don't need to join zigbee if I just use/consumer of your free implementation. Also Zigbee doesn't seem to force any restrictions on your software license, other then make it free. You can license your software under any license, with or without source code, etc? If I use your software my only obligation is to you, as copyright holder. I appear to have been completely wrong about my having any obligation to ZigBee? Anyway that is the key question for me, if you build it, and if I use it in a commercial hardware device, does that make me a user of the specification? Right now I don't think so, which leads me to ask, what's the problem? : ) Thanks for making me think on this Allan Disclaimer and Copyright Notice The copyright in these specifications is owned by the Promoter Members of Bluetooth SIG, Inc. ("Bluetooth SIG"). Use of these specifications and any related intellectual property (collectively, the "Specification"), is governed by the Promoters Membership Agreement among the Promoter Members and Bluetooth SIG (the "Promoters Agreement"), certain membership agreements between Bluetooth SIG and its Adopter and Associate Members (the "Membership Agreements") and the Bluetooth Specification Early Adopters Agreements ("1.2 Early Adopters Agreements") among Early Adopter members of the unincorporated Bluetooth special interest group and the Promoter Members (the "Early Adopters Agreement"). Certain rights and obligations of the Promoter Members under the Early Adopters Agreements have been assigned to Bluetooth SIG by the Promoter Members. Use of the Specification by anyone who is not a member of Bluetooth SIG or a party to an Early Adopters Agreement (each such person or party, a "Member"), is prohibited. The legal rights and obligations of each Member are governed by their applicable Membership Agreement, Early Adopters Agreement or Promoters Agreement. No license, express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise, to any intellectual property rights are granted herein. From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 10:06 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Allan. According to your argument, then Bluetooth would also be incompatible since it requires that any users of the Bluetooth spec become members of the Bluetooth SIG. The membership is free at the lowest tier. However there is a Bluetooth Linux project and it looks like it has been deemed compatible with the GPL. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org _____ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:53 AM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body >> The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: Zigbee terms are not GPL compliant we agree on that. I respectfully disagree that it is because of a membership fee. Requiring membership at all is enough to be in conflict with GPL. Assume Zigbee membership is free: If I took a standard GPL product and embedded it in my hardware Device what are my GPL requirements? - Primarily to provide source code for the GPL components. If I take a Zigbee embedded in a linux distro, then put in my device what are my requirements? - To become a member of Zigbee alliance, to follow what ever additional requirements are put on members, and to provide source code for GPL components. The Zigbee terms are not GPL compatible because it discriminates against a class of users, as example commercial hardware vendors, it puts additional restrictions on my ability to use the GPL product, takes away freedoms of use I had, etc. The fact that it also involves $ is a secondary issue, imho, not the main issue. Zigbee could drop their fee to $1 or $0 and it still would be GPL incompatible. >> This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. Discussed where? Even if it was the central point of the discussion, it is not the central point of GPL incompatibility. At least that's my central point. : ) Allan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.gpl-violations.org/pipermail/legal/attachments/20090623/8a846910/attachment.htm From twaffle at gmail.com Tue Jun 23 16:32:16 2009 From: twaffle at gmail.com (Thomas Charron) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:32:16 -0400 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: References: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: <30dfe2a80906230732uf6ffe29rfa229c9c72531794@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 9:02 PM, Akiba wrote: > The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of > licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: > ??? * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to > all third parties under the terms of this License. You can license the work, without licensing the IP the work implements. This clause says, if I change your code, the entire work *I* made is released together under the license as well. > I?m a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can?t expect my users to be. So > the membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the > software, since it uses Zigbee?s IP. As far as we can see, this is a > violation of (at least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the > Zigbee protocol to be allowed to use the GPL, we?re still trying to get a > definite answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it?s ambiguous. It really looks like it depends on if your library is certified. One could easily argue that if your stack is certified under Linux, then end developers are actually end users of your library. I've also, as a note, sent them an email. I've recently been working on a proposal for a medical device, which would be running Linux, and Zigbee is on their list of future requirements. It would be absolutely ludicrous if I had to limit my use of licensed products, becaouse I couldn't interact natively with Zigbee from Linux. -- -- Thomas From allan.hardy at lmco.com Tue Jun 23 18:33:22 2009 From: allan.hardy at lmco.com (Hardy, Allan) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:33:22 -0400 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <30dfe2a80906230732uf6ffe29rfa229c9c72531794@mail.gmail.com> References: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C599665@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> <30dfe2a80906230732uf6ffe29rfa229c9c72531794@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C5FD662@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> I've always found the guys at the debian-legal list to have excellent insights into GPL compatible, what complies with debian 'free' etc. if you want to get into a debian release they would be involved anyway. So just suggesting you ask them. debian-legal at lists.debian.org Allan -----Original Message----- From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Charron Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:32 AM To: Akiba Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 9:02 PM, Akiba wrote: > The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of > licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: > ??? * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to > all third parties under the terms of this License. You can license the work, without licensing the IP the work implements. This clause says, if I change your code, the entire work *I* made is released together under the license as well. > I'm a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can't expect my users to be. So > the membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the > software, since it uses Zigbee's IP. As far as we can see, this is a > violation of (at least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the > Zigbee protocol to be allowed to use the GPL, we're still trying to get a > definite answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it's ambiguous. It really looks like it depends on if your library is certified. One could easily argue that if your stack is certified under Linux, then end developers are actually end users of your library. I've also, as a note, sent them an email. I've recently been working on a proposal for a medical device, which would be running Linux, and Zigbee is on their list of future requirements. It would be absolutely ludicrous if I had to limit my use of licensed products, becaouse I couldn't interact natively with Zigbee from Linux. -- -- Thomas From avolkov at varma-el.com Tue Jun 30 15:57:10 2009 From: avolkov at varma-el.com (Andrey Volkov) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:57:10 +0400 Subject: FYI: GPL violation by Scartel/ASUS Message-ID: <4A4A19B6.6060705@varma-el.com> Hello! This mail was sent to you, since you are one of copyright holders of software which used in ASUSTeK Computer WMVN25E2+ WiMAX Subscriber Station. At current (2009-06-30) time ASUSTeK sells the above device through their Russian exclusive partner "Scartel" Ltd. (trade name "Yota") with next GPL violations: 1) They didn't give any access for customers to source codes of GPLed software, see (possibly not full) list below, on the ground of their "intellectual property" defense. 2) They sold their product without mentioning Gnu Public License (and without copy of GPL certainly), nor in printed version of "Quick Start Guide", nor in electronic version of "User Manual", nor in any other form. GPLed software used in WMVN25E2+. 1) Linux kernel - 2.6.8.1 2) busybox - 1.00 3) netfilter - 1.2.11 4) uClibc - unknown version (ld-uClibc is 1.7.0) 7) libstdc++-v3 - 3.4.2 8) dproxy - unknown version Link to device description: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=cyzWWfwPlaYQZX5f&templete=2 Link to latest firmware image: http://www.yota.ru/downloads/Asus_WMVN25E2_firmware_3.106a.zip -- Kindly yours Andrey Volkov From chris at freaklabs.org Tue Jun 23 04:00:19 2009 From: chris at freaklabs.org (Akiba) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:00:19 -0000 Subject: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body In-Reply-To: <369F44838B07C34DA00950C9B075AFE4465C5999F6@HVXMSP1.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: Hi Allan. According to your argument, then Bluetooth would also be incompatible since it requires that any users of the Bluetooth spec become members of the Bluetooth SIG. The membership is free at the lowest tier. However there is a Bluetooth Linux project and it looks like it has been deemed compatible with the GPL. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org _____ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:53 AM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body >> The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: Zigbee terms are not GPL compliant we agree on that. I respectfully disagree that it is because of a membership fee. Requiring membership at all is enough to be in conflict with GPL. Assume Zigbee membership is free: If I took a standard GPL product and embedded it in my hardware Device what are my GPL requirements? - Primarily to provide source code for the GPL components. If I take a Zigbee embedded in a linux distro, then put in my device what are my requirements? - To become a member of Zigbee alliance, to follow what ever additional requirements are put on members, and to provide source code for GPL components. The Zigbee terms are not GPL compatible because it discriminates against a class of users, as example commercial hardware vendors, it puts additional restrictions on my ability to use the GPL product, takes away freedoms of use I had, etc. The fact that it also involves $ is a secondary issue, imho, not the main issue. Zigbee could drop their fee to $1 or $0 and it still would be GPL incompatible. >> This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. Discussed where? Even if it was the central point of the discussion, it is not the central point of GPL incompatibility. At least that's my central point. : ) Allan From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:03 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body The issue is that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: * a) The modified work must itself be a software library. * b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. The Zigbee membership requirement for commercial projects becomes an implied licensing fee because what you're doing is paying the membership fee in order to gain permission to use their IP. If the lowest tier of membership had no charges attached to it, even if other tiers did, then people who wanted to make a commercial product based on GPL'd software would not need to pay the Zigbee Alliance to license their IP. Hence clause 2-c is satisfied. This was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the spec's compatibility with GPL'd software. I'm a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can't expect my users to be. So the membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the software, since it uses Zigbee's IP. As far as we can see, this is a violation of (at least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the Zigbee protocol to be allowed to use the GPL, we're still trying to get a definite answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it's ambiguous. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org _____ From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 5:24 AM To: Akiba; legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body I just wanted to make a comment on a point made in the blog. I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this legal stuff :) just for fun. Where you said: "However after a bit more investigation, it turned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would remove the GPL violation." Why is payment or $ the basis of your analysis? The GPL doesn't stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product. It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for something that your customers can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL doesn't prevent that. I would have thought the right conclusion would have been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs. Is there anything about the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, meaning it deny's me rights or makes me surrender rights. Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most applicable here. I copied them below just for reference. As I understand the GPL I can charge you say $1000 to acquire my GPL based software. If you choose to pay you can then use the software under the GPL. Meaning you can give it away for free. (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice). What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then tell you that you must also charge. I cant override/change the rights the GPL affords you. Same goes with registration. I can offer you my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to get the download. You can then offer the product to others under the GPL. What I cant do is tell you that if you offer the product to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even at some other site, even if its free registration. That would be me adding a superset of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not allow. So back to Zigby You release a linux implementation of the Zigby specification. What Zigby doesn't want is a hardware guy embedding that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn't matter) What license can you release your ziby/kinux stack under? BSD, GPL, ? Doesn't matter, what ever it is it must carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up. Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has spelled them out with the restrictions on commercial use. So, the way I am looking at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved, but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which GPL doesn't allow or support. That restriction could be a free registration or a paid one, doesn't matter, it's a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL product. I think whomever put up the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in the areas of commercial or not. As to why Bluetooth doesn't have the same issue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for trademark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole different ballpark. Allan From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Jun 19 15:25:57 2009 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:25:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. -----Original Message----- From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Klaas. I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't limit its use of the spec to members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the use of the USB logo, trademarks, and certification are for members. This is the major difference between Zigbee. The similar situation exists between Bluetooth where the spec can only be used by members, but the lowest tier of membership is free. I believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in the Linux kernel. I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and have discussed it with people on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a compelling argument that the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the input though. Akiba FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee Project http://www.freaklabs.org -----Original Message----- From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 AM To: Akiba Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body Hi Akiba, To me, this case appears to have similarities to the USB gadget (device) case and the (old) SD case - and the results are quite different. You're not supposed to create/ship USB devices without a USB forum membership (and registering official IDs), but that does not affect the Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true for PCI by the way. The membership is required to keep the standardization effort afloat and pay for the organization - not to keep things secret. The opposite example is the SD card forum. My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software stack for SD back in 2004 and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter from the SD forum (and we were a member of the forum!) because they did not allow a GPL version of the code. Fortunately, that requirement has been lessened about two years ago - and lately everybody happily ships Linux devices with real SD support - not just MMC support. Klaas ------=_NextPart_000_0042_01C9F3F1.C951F7F0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hi Allan. =

According to = your argument, then Bluetooth would also be incompatible since it requires = that any users of the Bluetooth spec become members of the Bluetooth SIG. The = membership is free at the lowest tier. However there is a Bluetooth Linux project = and it looks like it has been deemed compatible with the GPL. =

 =

Akiba

FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee = Project

http://www.freaklabs.org

From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, = 2009 10:53 AM
To: Akiba; = legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question = regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body

 

>> The issue is that the GPL requires that software must = be provided free of licensing fees as mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL = v2:

 <= /p>

Zigbee terms are not GPL = compliant we agree on that.

I respectfully disagree that it = is because of a membership fee.  Requiring membership at all is enough = to be in conflict with GPL.

 <= /p>

Assume Zigbee membership is = free:

 <= /p>

If I took a standard GPL = product and embedded it in my hardware Device what are my GPL requirements?  = – Primarily to provide source code for the GPL = components.

 <= /p>

If I take a Zigbee embedded in = a linux distro, then put in my device what are my requirements? -  To = become a member of Zigbee alliance, to follow what ever additional requirements = are put on members, and to provide source code for GPL = components.

 <= /p>

The Zigbee terms are not GPL = compatible because it discriminates against a class of users, as example commercial hardware vendors, it puts additional restrictions on my ability to use = the GPL product, takes away freedoms of use I had, = etc.

 <= /p>

The fact that it also involves = $ is a secondary issue, imho, not the main issue.    Zigbee = could drop their fee to $1 or $0 and it still would be GPL = incompatible.

 <= /p>

>> This was the central point in the issue that was = discussed regarding the spec’s compatibility with GPL’d software. =

 <= /p>

Discussed where?  Even if = it was the central point of the discussion, it is not the central point of GPL incompatibility.

At least that’s my = central point.  : )

 <= /p>

Allan

 <= /p>

 <= /p>

From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba
Sent: Monday, June 22, = 2009 9:03 PM
To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question = regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards = body

 

The issue is = that the GPL requires that software must be provided free of licensing fees as = mentioned in clause 2-c of the GPL v2:

 =

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any = portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and distribute = such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that = you also meet all of these conditions:

    * a) The modified work must itself be a software = library.
    * b) You must cause the files modified to carry = prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any = change.
    * c) You must cause the whole of the work to be = licensed at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this = License.

 =

The Zigbee = membership requirement for commercial projects becomes an implied licensing fee = because what you’re doing is paying the membership fee in order to gain permission to use their IP. If the lowest tier of membership had no = charges attached to it, even if other tiers did, then people who wanted to make = a commercial product based on GPL’d software would not need to pay = the Zigbee Alliance to license their IP. Hence clause 2-c is satisfied. This = was the central point in the issue that was discussed regarding the = spec’s compatibility with GPL’d software.

 =

I’m a = member of the Zigbee Alliance, but I can’t expect my users to be. So the = membership requirement would constitute a restriction placed on the software, since = it uses Zigbee’s IP. As far as we can see, this is a violation of (at = least) the spirit of the GPL. Regarding software using the Zigbee protocol to = be allowed to use the GPL, we’re still trying to get a definite = answer on this. However, at best, it looks like it’s = ambiguous.

 =

Akiba

FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee = Project

http://www.freaklabs.org

From: Hardy, Allan [mailto:allan.hardy at lmco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, = 2009 5:24 AM
To: Akiba; = legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question = regarding GPL and membership requirements for a standards body

 

I just wanted to make a comment on a point = made in the blog.  I am a bit of a sick guiy in that I like discussing this = legal stuff :) just for fun.

 

Where you said:

 

"However after a bit more investigation, = it turned out that the Bluetooth Adopter membership was free which would = remove the GPL violation."

 

Why is payment or $ the basis of your = analysis?  The GPL doesn’t stop anyone from charging $ for using a GPL product.  It may not be a smart marketing move to charge for = something that your customers can turnaround and offer for free, but the GPL = doesn’t prevent that. 

 

I would have thought the right conclusion = would have been along the lines of 'freedoms' not free costs.  Is there = anything about the act of registering that restricts my freedoms under the GPL, = meaning it deny's me rights or makes me surrender = rights.

 

Paragraphs 4 and 6 of the GPL seem the most = applicable here.  I copied them below just for = reference.

 

As I understand the GPL I can charge you say = $1000 to acquire my GPL based software.  If you choose to pay you can then = use the software under the GPL.  Meaning you can give it away for = free.  (which makes me changing upfront sorta dumb business practice).  =

 

What I can't do is charge you $1000 and then = tell you that you must also charge.  I cant override/change the rights the = GPL affords you.

 

Same goes with registration.  I can = offer you my GPL products and require you to register, for free or not, in order to = get the download.  You can then offer the product to others under the = GPL. 

 

What I cant do is tell you that if you offer = the product to anyone else, you must have then register at my site or even = at some other site, even if its free registration.  That would be me adding = a superset of requirements around the GPL, which the GPL tries hard to not = allow.

 

So back to Zigby

 

You release a linux implementation of the = Zigby specification.  What Zigby doesn’t want is a hardware guy = embedding that linux/zigby stack and charging for the hardware product, without = them being a member of the zigby alliance (again free or pay doesn’t = matter)

 

What license can you release your ziby/kinux = stack under?  BSD, GPL, ?  Doesn’t matter, what ever it is it = must carry the caveat that if you use zigby/linux in a product (software or hardware) you sell you have to sign up.  Basically you must put the zigby/linux product pretty much under the same terms as Zigby has = spelled them out with the restrictions on commercial = use.

 

 

So, the way I am looking = at it - Zigby is an issue not because there is $ involved, but because it adds restrictions/requirements on top of GPL for any downstream users - which = GPL doesn’t allow or support.  That restriction could be a free registration or a paid one, doesn’t matter, it’s a restriction/additional requirement on use of GPL = product.

 

I think whomever put up = the issue a the linux kernel discussion got it confused in the areas of commercial = or not.

 

 

As to why Bluetooth doesn’t have the = same issue, I'd have to see the Bluetooth license/terms to be sure, but if it is for trademark use and not software use, then it would be in a whole = different ballpark.

 

Allan

 

 

From GPL V2

 

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or = distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, = and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, = parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will = not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full = compliance.

 

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or = any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license = from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to = these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not = responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this = License.

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org [mailto:legal-bounces at lists.gpl-violations.org] On Behalf Of Akiba
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 2:02 PM
To: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org
Subject: RE: Question regarding GPL and membership requirements for a = standards body

 

Hi Klaas.

I think one issue is that the USB-IF doesn't = limit its use of the spec to

members. Anyone is able to use it. Only the = use of the USB logo, trademarks,

and certification are for members. This is = the major difference between

Zigbee. The similar situation exists between = Bluetooth where the spec can

only be used by members, but the lowest tier = of membership is free. I

believe that's why Bluetooth was allowed in = the Linux kernel.

I've been mulling over this issue a lot, and = have discussed it with people

on my blog. Unfortunately, I still haven't = found a compelling argument that

the GPL can still be used. I appreciate the = input though.

 

Akiba

FreakLabs Open Source Zigbee = Project

http://www.freaklabs.org

 

-----Original = Message-----

From: Klaas van Gend [mailto:klaas.van.gend at mvista.com]

Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:36 = AM

To: Akiba

Cc: legal at lists.gpl-violations.org

Subject: Re: Question regarding GPL and = membership requirements for a

standards body

 

Hi Akiba,

 

To me, this case appears to have similarities = to the USB gadget (device)

case and the (old) SD case - and the results = are quite different.

 

You're not supposed to create/ship USB = devices without a USB forum

membership (and registering official IDs), = but that does not affect the

Linux drivers - they're GPL. The same is true = for PCI by the way.

The membership is required to keep the = standardization effort afloat and

pay for the organization - not to keep things = secret.

 

The opposite example is the SD card = forum.

My company (MontaVista) wrote a GPL software = stack for SD back in 2004

and immediately got a cease-and-desist letter = from the SD forum (and we

were a member of the forum!) because they did = not allow a GPL version of

the code. Fortunately, that requirement has = been lessened about two

years ago - and lately everybody happily = ships Linux devices with real

SD support - not just MMC = support.

 

 

Klaas

 

 

 

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