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Comment by jwildeboer | Hacker News Reader

History has proven over and over again that this kind of public shame and blame approach doesn't help in any way, quite the opposite.

Hand this over to the Free Software Conservancy or the SFLC. And that should have been the first step.

Now that the bridges are burning, BMW will be far less open to civil discussion and cooperative solutions. Well done. #sarcasm

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History has proven over and over again that naming and shaming works miracles. Companies that turned a blind eye and were completely unreachable suddenly turned active and kind just to save their reputation. Going to or even just threatening to go to the media, I know from experience, is indeed productive.

I am really curious where you got the idea that it's counter productive. Asking the conservancy to clean up this dirty work is expensive and takes forever.

Sometimes shaming works, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes the mob is misinformed and crucifies an innocent.

The customer service rep might be spreading misinformation, true, but without attention or legal actions, odds are high we'd never know. Better put some pressure on them to actually give a true answer than assume they violate the license and quietly let them continue.

The problem is when random people from the internet start unwarranted attacks over GPL violations when the problem can be dealt with constructively.

The example that pops into my head is the time when some kid start working on a mod to the Quake 3D engine that was possibly in violation of a free software license. Instead of just reporting it to the copyright holder (id Software), they engaged in a campaign of harassment until John Carmack himself came out and told them to stop. It was some seriously shameful shit.

Public shaming should be one of the last steps to take. Maybe before starting a lawsuit, or maybe after, that's up for debate, but certainly after other avenues have been exhausted.

I see your point but would say there is a difference between a kid and a multinational. The same law rules both but an individual doing this by accident vs. a company doing it due to ignorance (in the best case) is different. The multinational has enough money to defend itself in court, any individual is bound to have less, especially a kid (in your example).

What does this person realistically expect to gain by contacting Tier 1 customer service about an issue with -the source code and licensing of an in car entertainment computer-?

Now in theory, CS should be "empowered" or able to escalate, but this is juvenile, to me, the very briefest of exchanges and then off to HN and elsewhere with "time for a lawsuit!".

Yeah, it's pretty clear the suit has no idea what they're talking about. I don't know if SFC operates in Australia, but probably they could get some attention from the US division of BMW.

Speaking of which, the SFC is currently running a fundraiser. If GPL enforcement is important to you, please consider signing up for a recurring donation. http://sfconservancy.org/

Are there any organizations that pursue GPL violations that would stick to clear-cut cases of GPL violations where there is strong concensus among OSS developers that violations have occurred like the BMW case?

For full disclosure, I am one of the ZoL developers. I believe that ZoL can prevent certain types of storage related failures that other production solutions do not, including those on systems intended to keep people alive. My desire to see that has required that I make an effort to understand what the GPL permits and what it restricts. So far, my talks with lawyers have suggested that my (and others') work in ZoL is legally alright under copyright law.

The SFC considers easy access to ZoL binaries to complicate their arguments in certain GPL enforcement cases and rather than accept that reality to the benefit of the wider community, the SFC has opted to claim that ZoL binaries as distributed by Canonical are themselves a GPL violation. While I want to see the BMW case litigated, wanting to see GPL violations litigated and contributing to an organization that calls any use of OSS a GPL violation whenever it perceives the possibility of a court agreeing that claim to make litigation of certain cases of actual violations slightly easier are two different things.

I haven't followed the ZFS stuff much at all, but SFC's news post about it the other day did make me wonder why they were doing it. I think it's important to enforce the GPL and other copy-left licenses when they are being blatantly violated, even if the original authors no longer care about the project. But if it's an unintentional license incompatibility, where the spirit of the licenses are roughly aligned, who really cares? Who is benefiting by bothering Canonical or the ZFS-on-Linux developers with these license concerns?

In my case, SFC is pro-bono council for the Wine project, from which I derive my income. So even if I don't always completely understand what they do, I feel I should pitch in because they contribute to my livelihood. I'm not a legal guy, I don't pay super close attention to this stuff, I trust them to do something not far from "the right thing."

It might help if you wrote to them telling them how you feel. I will not think badly of you whatever you decide to do going forward. I realize that this is an awkward situation and if I were you, I would probably have made the same decisions.

The unfortunate situation aside, thank you for your work on Wine. Wine has been helpful to me on multiple occasions. :)

I disagree. The fact is that large companies like this are never open to "civil discourse and cooperative solutions" when it comes to copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property matters. BMW will see no reason to comply with the GPL. The only thing a big company responds to on such issues, other than bona fide legal action, is negative press. I think it'll be difficult to manufacture some over the technicalities of copyright compliance, but can't blame OP for trying and not wasting his time trying to navigate the corporate copyright labyrinth.

Source: I have a C&D from a Fortune 500 alleging that I violated some intangible rights. Their argument is weak, but I don't have the millions of dollars every lawyer I've talked to has said I'll need to see the case through (tens of thousands to even get started). I've spent 6 months trying to navigate their corporate structure and get in front of someone who matters. Everyone just tells me to sod off, with varying degrees of politeness. I have not yet been able to locate someone in the company who actually seems willing to have any discussion, and their law firm is obviously not open to this since their instructions were to shut me down. I'm considering the alternatives I have, and wondering if it's time to try to work the media and attempt to get some movement from them that way (though I don't really think this will work, it's becoming the only option).

Post your story online and use something like thunderclap to get more awareness through your network.

I think that argument may have used to make sense in the 90ies when open source was new and was trying to establish itself, mostly with a dream of "Linux on every desktop".

Now it has found its market and the ecosystem as a whole really couldn't give a damn if BMW is kind enough to use OSS or not.

Respectfully, I don't think this is about 'kindness.' This is about BMW, a commercial entity, respecting the legal rights of the property creators as owners. The license agreement is clear, and certain actions must take place if BMW chooses to benefit from use of the software. BMW is free to NOT use the software if they feel these restrictions are too severe.

Or am I missing something?

I think they were trying to say that the OSS community at this point in time doesn't need BMW to be "kind" and use OSS to help OSS gain popularity. Especially not if they can't be bothered to comply with licenses.

the way I read its is that no, BMW is NOT legally required to release it as it is in a proprietary piece of HW, and releasing the code could thus cause harm to their business. and while they ARE using it for 'gain', no one can prove that they were HARMED or had a loss of income or even IP (outside of copyright) by their (BMW's) use of such as it is essentially 'free' in that no money or barter items were exchanged. They MAY have a copyright claim at best, but again, I am not a lawyer. That's just how I see it.

Is there a precedent to enforce GNU licensing outside of copyright infringement?

That's not how the GPL works. If it would be inconvenient for BMW to incorporate GPL software and properly comply with the license by providing source, then their only alternative is not to incorporate the GPL software. Full stop. Harm or proprietary hardware has no bearing on the rights granted by the GPL.

That is true in the real world if and only if there is someone willing to sue BMW and see it through to the end. Absent someone doing that I don't see how the GPL is actually enforceable. In some ways it is similar to what we have with surveillance and the NSA in US. While they are probably breaking the law the courts have been unwilling to force them to stop.

1. They're not "breaking the law" because copyright infringement is primarily a civil matter (recent changes nonwithstanding).

2. Your statement is essentially tautological because nothing in civil law is ever enforced without someone taking the initiative.

> 1. They're not "breaking the law" because copyright infringement is primarily a civil matter (recent changes notwithstanding).

They aren't committing a crime, they are breaking a law (copyright law). Civil laws are called "laws" for a reason.

》 That is true in the real world if and only if there is someone willing to sue BMW and see it through to the end. Absent someone doing that I don't see how the GPL is actually enforceable.

So... just like every other contract, ever? You can't have an enforceable agreement between civilians without courts. Anyone willfully making a derivative of GPL software explicitly agrees to that contract and as usual, courts are the arbiters. Yes someone needs to go to court.

Your reading is incorrect. BMW is distributing hardware and software, and is possibly in violation of the license agreement that allows them to use that software.

Their only possible defense is to assert that they are not using GPL'd software.

You are completely incorrect, this does involve copying something copyrighted and thus opens the possibility of infringement.

Violating GPL and refusing to make good (they always ask for just the code release first) can go very badly indeed for the violator, e.g. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/08/court-...

If you are talking in practice - can someone sue BMW and force them to release the modified versions - I think you're right, but one can still get an injunction preventing them from distributing any more copies of the work. Which means no more cars with that firmware; not a happy prospect for BMW!

Only the original copyright holders can sue for violation of their copyright though -- an end user (BMW customer) has no recourse fafaik.

"the way I read its is that no, BMW is NOT legally required to release it as it is in a proprietary piece of HW, and releasing the code could thus cause harm to their business."

When in the hell did the "Release sources, unless it would do harm to your business" clause get added to the GPL?

"no one can prove that they were HARMED or had a loss of income or even IP"

Sure they can. It's their IP, and if BMW wanted to use it, they had to follow the license, or negotiate for a private license. They did neither, which very much would constitute harm.

"is essentially 'free' in that no money or barter items were exchanged."

The barter is that you would "pay it forward". BMW has not upheld their side of the bargain.

"They MAY have a copyright claim at best"

They're the ones who wrote the software; they're the ones who decide how it gets licensed. If that license is broken, then their copyright was violated.

"Is there a precedent to enforce GNU licensing outside of copyright infringement?"

Why would there need to be?

I don't really look at GPL too closely, since I do not code for a living, or make commercial products, but I have to say my superficial understanding of opensource and GPL was piqued by the statement from @jackhat above with the 'legal rights of the property creators as owners.' If I take this statement to mean that GPL is the mirror-image of proprietary license agreements in that it is not free to use, since the stipulation is that you must publish your source code as the cost, would my understanding be correct? I just tend towards MIT or BSD licensed software to avoid any potential issues or problems with my future endeavors.

Using GPL'd source as the basis of your work (this is, creating a derivate of a work licensed under the GPL), and then distributing that modified work, saddles the author with the responsibility of handing over the code upon user request. The GPL also prevents changing the license if you're not the original author.

You can never change the license of a work, you can only distribute your own changes under a difference license.

If you own all of the copyright over a work, or if the license explicitly allows sublicensing (BSD and MIT), you can change the license of a work (or a fork of the work).

The GPL is essentially pay-it-forward; any rights you receive must be passed along to anyone who gets a copy of the work (or of a derivative).

That means it's perfectly fine to take a GPL work and modify it without giving the source to anyone, as long as you also don't give binaries to anyone. And if you're distributing binaries privately with just a few people/companies, you also don't need to publish the source publicly, only to those few who got the binaries.

EDIT: Of course, you can't prevent those few from redistributing it publicly themselves.

(IANAL)

This brings up an interesting point; which BMW might try to make if this ever goes to court.

There have been times when device manufacturers (and car manufacturers) attempt to prevent device owners from modifying the code on their own devices. I think once folks tried to drag the DMCA into it. There's a lot of muddling up of the ownership waters there.

This may mean that the ownership of the binaries can be similarly challenged. Somehow. A point can be made that a binary living inside a phone (or car) I have bought has not been "given" to me (and thus the source code need not be given to me either).

Granted, it's rather convoluted logic, but then again, this isn't the first time stuff like this has happened.

Would be interesting to see how such an argument actually pans out.

If I take this statement to mean that GPL is the mirror-image of proprietary license agreements in that it is not free to use, since the stipulation is that you must publish your source code as the cost, would my understanding be correct?

No. Your latter assertion is correct: GPL code is not free as in beer. How you contort that into a "mirror-image of proprietary license" is your own interpretation, and requires a lot more elaboration on your part.

To put it in the most simplest terms: the GPL is mainly concerned with the freedom of the source code, not the freedom of the developer.

> To put it in the most simplest terms: the GPL is mainly concerned with the freedom of the source code, not the freedom of the developer.

Freedom of the users. Source code is not a person, it cannot have "freedom".

> History has proven over and over again that this kind of public shame and blame approach doesn't help in any way, quite the opposite.

Is this true?

> History has proven over and over again that this kind of public shame and blame approach doesn't help in any way, quite the opposite.

Can you please provide some evidence for this statement?

> Now that the bridges are burning, BMW will be far less open to civil discussion and cooperative solutions. Well done. #sarcasm

Depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to obtain the source code in this specific instance, and if you don't care about the efforts of open source contributors, then I guess it would make sense to privately "discuss" and "cooperate" with BMW.

On the other hand, if you want to scare companies into not stealing other people's work in the future, then I think naming and shaming is a reasonable strategy.

This is a clear case of rationalization about rules not applying to the powerful. Surely you would not expect BMW to care about "burning bridges" and value "cooperation" and "discussion" with you had they caught you stealing their IP.

I don't see any shame and blame yet. The only thing these emails show is the claim by BMW that no software not developed or fully owned by BMW is running on their cars infotainment system.

A shame and blame game would start when one analyzes the software updates, is able to prove that the above statement is a lie, and make a big fuzz about it. This would BMW fear loosing their face and be counter productive, I fully agree.

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