Open Source Software Shows Its Muscle

[Guest]

Two recent events should give for-profit companies new reasons to re-evaluate the ways in which they use open source software as well as the extent to which they use it. These events are: (1) the release of a new version of the widely used license that covers such software, i.e., the General Public License version 3, and (2) a round of lawsuits filed by the Software Freedom Law Center against for-profit companies using the software for commercial gain. Four companies to date, the largest of which is Verizon Communications Inc., have been sued for violation of the GPL.

http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202421869652

[Dark Shikari]

a round of lawsuits filed by the Software Freedom Law Center against for-profit companies using the software for commercial gainBecause we all know that using GPL'd software for commercial gain is illegal! :rolleyes:

(Obviously bad reporting by the writer of the above quote.)

[Guest]

Maybe you should read it more carefully.

[Dark Shikari]

Maybe you should read it more carefully.Yes, I know it can be interpreted otherwise, but the fact that it even implies that "using the software for commercial gain" is somehow wrong is at a minimum bad wording and potentially misleading.

Breaking the GPL has nothing to do with using it for commercial gain or not, so the fact that it is being used commercially is entirely tangential to the point of the lawsuit.

[Guest]

I read that as a qualifier about the companies, and not as the reason for the lawsuit. But I grant that it is unclear.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

AFAIK it's perfectly legitimate to use GPL'd software for commercial gain, as long as they comply with all GPL restrictions.
So all code changes/improvements have to be made available to the OpenSource community again. But that's it...

Isn't that what Avail Media does with x264 for example? :confused:

If some company steals code from GPL'd software and doesn't make their own code/changes public, that would be a violation, of course! :mad:

[Dark Shikari]

AFAIK it's perfectly legitimate to use GPL'd software for commercial gain, as long as they comply with all GPL restrictions.
So all code changes/improvements have to be made available to the OpenSource community again. But that's it...

Isn't that what Avail Media does with x264 for example? :confused:

If some company steals code from GPL'd software and doesn't make their own code/changes public, that would be a violation, of course! :mad:You don't even have to make changes public; you only have to distribute them with the program. This doesn't inherently make them public; they're only public if the recipient chooses to distribute them further.