Possible GPL violation in Avantis Content Cache servers

[Tony Whitmore]

Thank you for your response Harald. It's much appreciated.

Harald Welte wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 09:40:20PM +0000, Tony Whitmore wrote:
>>That's one possible interpretation, certainly, although I understood
>>that the GPL only required linked software to be released under the GPL.
>> (Although I also understand that this is also an area of much debate
>>wrt the GPL.)
>
> Well, those questions are really hard, and at this time not really the
> important part.  Before going into areas with different levels of greay,
> let's look at what's black and white:
> 
> As you have correctly observed, GNU wget, OpenSSL and SetACL are
> distirbuted in violation of the respective license terms.  

I agree, I think that it's pretty clear.

> In your position I would try to inform the respective copyright holders.
> For wget, contact license-violations at gnu.org (and you'll probably get a
> reply from David Turner there.  If you don't, get back to me).

OK, I'll do that. I'll also contact the setacl author and try to find an
appropriate contact in the OpenSSL community.

> Also, notifying the infringing UK company about their license
> violations, and informing them in a friendly way that you have informed
> the respective copyright holders should be good.
> 
> Such notifications are best sent to the legal department of the
> respective company.

OK, I'll look into doing that too. I know from reading the website and
other documentation that a friendly first approach is often the best
first step to amicable resolution.

>>I have legal access to the software as the systems were distributed by
>>the LEA (Local Education Authority) to schools. As explained in the
>>page, the User Agent string put me onto the problem, the rest was done
>>by booting from a Knoppix CD and investigating the contents of the hard
>>disk.
> 
> If The software vendor doesn't respond appropriateyl, it might also be
> worthwhile informing the LEA about the copyright infringements in that
> piece of software that they distribute.  I'm not familiar with UK law,
> but in Germany they would knowingly infringe the license if they
> continue distributing the proxy product after having received such
> notification.

I think there's a similar provision - I'm sure you aren't allowed to
redistribute copyright material without the author's permission (which
in this case is only given under the GPL and therefore the terms of the
distribution aren't being kept to.)

Thanks again for your comments,

Tony
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