% case-study-ethics.tex -*- LaTeX -*- % Tutorial Text for GPL Compliance Case Studies % and Legal Ethics in Free Software Licensing % % Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. % Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire document is permitted in % any medium, provided this notice is preserved. \documentclass[12pt]{report} % FILTER_PS: \input{generate-ps-file} % FILTER_PDF: \input{generate-pdf-file} % FILTER_HTML: \input{generate-html-file} \input{one-inch-margins} %\setlength\parskip{0.7em} %\setlength\parindent{0pt} \newcommand{\defn}[1]{\emph{#1}} %\pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \begin{titlepage} \begin{center} \vspace{.5in} {\Large {\sc GPL Compliance Case Studies and Legal Ethics in Free Software Licensing } \\ \vspace{.7in} Sponsored by the Free Software Foundation \\ \vspace{.3in} Columbia Law School, New York, NY, USA \\ \vspace{.1in} Wednesday 21 January 2003 } \vspace{.7in} {\large Bradley M. Kuhn Executive Director Free Software Foundation } \vspace{.3in} {\large Daniel Ravicher Senior Counsel Free Software Foundation } \end{center} \vfill {\parindent 0in Copyright \copyright{} 2004 \hspace{.2in} Free Software Foundation, Inc. \vspace{.3in} Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire document is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. } \end{titlepage} \pagestyle{plain} \pagenumbering{roman} \begin{abstract} This one-day course presents the details of five different GPL compliance cases handled by FSF's GPL Compliance Laboratory. Each case offers unique insights into problems that can arise when the terms of GPL are not properly followed, and how diplomatic negotiation between the violator and the copyright holder can yield positive results for both parties. This course also includes a unit on the ethical considerations for attorneys who want to represent clients that make use of or sell Free Software products. Attendees should have successfully completely the course, a ``Detailed Study and Analysis of GPL and LGPL'', as the material from that course forms the building blocks for this material. The course is of most interest to lawyers who have clients or employers that deal with Free Software on a regular basis. However, technical managers and executives whose businesses use or distribute Free Software will also find the course very helpful. \end{abstract} \tableofcontents \pagebreak \pagenumbering{arabic} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \chapter{Overview of FSF's GPL Compliance Lab} The GPL is a Free Software license with legal teeth. Unlike licenses like the X11-style or various BSD licenses, GPL (and by extention, the LGPL) is designed to defend as well as grant freedom. We saw in the last course that GPL uses copyright law as a mechanism to grant all the key freedoms essential in Free Software, but also to ensure that those freedoms propogate throughout the distribution chain of the software. \section{Termination Begins Enforcement} As we have learned, the assurance that Free Software under GPL remains Free Software is accomplished through various terms of GPL: \S 3 ensures that binaries are always accompanied with source; \S 2 ensures that the sources are adequate, complete and usable; \S 6 and \S 7 ensures that the license of the software is always GPL for everyone, and that no other legal agreements or licenses trump GPL; \S 4 ensures that the GPL can be enforced. In fact, \S 4 is where we begin our discussion of GPL enforcement. This clause is where the legal teeth of the license are rooted. As a copyright license, GPL governs only the activities governed by copyright law --- copying, modifying and redistributing computer software. Unlike most copyright licenses, GPL gives wide grants of permission for engaging with these activities. Such permissions continue and all parties may exercise until such time as one party violates the terms of GPL\@. At the moment of such a violation --- the engaging of copying, modifying or redistributing in ways not permitted by GPL --- \S 4 is invoked. Specifically, \S 4 terminates the violators rights to continue engaging in the permissions that otherwise granted by GPL\@. Effectively, their permission go back to the copyright defaults --- no permission to copy, modify, or redistribute the work. Meanwhile, \S 5 points out that if if the violator has no rights under GPL --- as they will not once they have violated it --- then they otherwise have no right and are prohibited by copyright law from engaging in the activities of copying, modifying and distributing. \section{Ongoing Violations} In conjuction with \S 4's termination of violators' rights, there is one final industry fact is added to the mix: rarely, does on engage in a single, solitary act of copying, distributing or modifying software. Almost always, a violator will have legitimately acquired a copy a GPL'd program --- either made modifications or not --- and then begun a ongoing activity of distributing that work. For example, the violator may have put the software in boxes and sold them at stores. Or perhaps the software was put up for download on the Internet. Regardless of the delivery mechanism, violators almost always are engaged in {\em ongoing\/} violation of GPL\@. In fact, when we discover a GPL violation that occured only once --- for example, a user group who distributed copies of a GNU/Linux system without source at a meeting once --- we rarely pursue it with a high degree of dilligence. In our minds, that is an educational problem, and unless the user group becomes a repeat offender (as it turns out, the never do) we simply send an FAQ entry that best explains how user groups can most easily comply with GPL, and send them on there merry way. It is only the cases of {\em ongoing\/} GPL violation that warrant our active attention. We vehemently pursue those cases where dozens, hundreds or thousands of customers are receiving software that is out of compliance, and the company continually puts for sale (or distributes gratis as a demo) software distributions that include GPL'd components out of compliance. Our goal is to maximize the impact of enforcement and educate industries who are making a mistake on a large scale. In addition, such ongoing violation shows that a particular company is committed to a GPL'd product line. We are thrilled to learn that someone is benefitting from Free Software, and we understand that sometimes they have become confused about the rules of the road. Rather than merely giving us a post mortem to perform on a past mistake, an ongoing violation gives us an active opportunity to educate a new contributor the GPL'd commons about proper procedures to contribute to the community. Our central goal is not, in fact, to merely clear up particular violation. Over time, we hope that our compliance lab will be out of business. We seek to educate the businesses that engage in commerce related to GPL'd software to obey the rules of the road and allow them to operate freely under them. Just as a traffic officer would not revel in reminding people which side of the road to drive in, so we do not revel in violations. By contrast, we revel in the successes of educating an ongoing violator about GPL so that GPL compliance becomes a second-nature matter, and they join the GPL ecosystem as contributors. \section{First Contact} The Free Software community is built on a structure of voluntary cooperation and mutual help. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \chapter{Case Study A} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \chapter{Case Study B} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \chapter{Case Study C} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \chapter{Case Study D} Reminder about how organizations themselves work. We don't have to educate the organization, just call their attention to something. Working on DVD cases -- interested in the question on how one plays DVD on one ligitimate owns, if one uses GNU/Linux give the licensing structure of DVD content scrambling system. An article from the IBM guy who had arranged to have DVD player application by a vendor for includsion with IBM distributed based T20s. They shimed the kernel, it was a GPL problem. Couple of weeks, we've looked into it, and we're going back to the contractor and having them redo the thing to comply with GPL. contaminate a video output port with MacroVision. kernel mods %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \chapter{Good Practices for Compliance} %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \chapter{Ethical Considerations for the Attorney Practicing Free Software} \end{document} % LocalWords: proprietarize redistributors sublicense yyyy Gnomovision EULAs % LocalWords: Yoyodyne FrontPage improvers Berne copyrightable Stallman's GPLs % LocalWords: Lessig Lessig's UCITA pre PDAs CDs reshifts GPL's Gentoo glibc % LocalWords: TrollTech administrivia LGPL's MontaVista OpenTV