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Comment by brendangregg | Hacker News Reader

I was in shock, and a bit furious at being ripped off, but didn't feel there was a lot I could do about it. I edited this bit out (I was trimming the post):

"You might wonder why I didn't talk about this first case publicly at the time. I'd already informed them of the problem privately and how to fix it, so there wasn't more to say. Also, Sun was the number one employer in town, and to be publicly critical could be career ending."

I don't know what happened to the US developer. But I didn't think it made sense to burn bridges with Sun about it. I was more worried about giving people a bad experience with DTrace by running older versions of my software.

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Are there no legal recourse options for breaking the license so blatantly?

As he said, he did not want to burn his bridges.

That’s a pretty interesting thought experiment. How likely is it to burn bridges with a multibillion dollar corp by taking them to court to protect your IP? They might even respect you for it. Most likely the people working there will move on eventually and especially if they are responsible for IP theft that results in a heavy legal bill. Companies sue each other over ip all the time and then still do business with each other. I’m also assuming OP’s bridges with the persons directly responsible are already burnt. So which bridges exactly are being protected?

I don't know much about law, but I wonder what the ballpark out-of-pocket legal costs might look like for an individual going after a large corporation with an IP suit... i.e. how likely is it the corporation could win simply by dragging out proceedings and exhausting your resources / burying you with legal fees?

You’re right but it kind of renders copyright law to be another elitist construct. I wonder if there are lawyers or organisations who take up these types of cases to negate the behaviour you have outlined. Would EFF for example find it in conflict with their mission?

You don't need to get into legal proceedings, if the facts are clear.

If you can prove it's your invention, and they're distributing it without your permission, they won't want to waste money defending a suit.

You may be a little guy, without enough dosh to launch a suit; but you could sell your interest to $COPYRIGHT_TROLL, then they'd be in trouble. So just ask them nicely to propose a settlement.

It's not like war, or anything; tech-company legal departments are there for just this kind of thing. Unless there are arseholes involved, it can all be friendly and business-like.

Was there a license violation if the software wasn't distributed?

Yes. Making copies internally is also copyright infringement... Performing it to Brendan might also have been (but not sure on that one).

> Yes. Making copies internally is also copyright infringement...

No, GPL FAQ specifically addresses internal distribution: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistributi...

> Is making and using multiple copies within one organization or company “distribution”?

> No, in that case the organization is just making the copies for itself. As a consequence, a company or other organization can develop a modified version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders.

> However, when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution.

Please consult sources before making a strong statement.

> No, GPL FAQ specifically addresses internal distribution

Which couldn't be more irrelevant, because

a) This software doesn't appear to be licensed under the GPL.

b) The question here is not whether or not it's distribution, it's if it's copyright infringement. Making copies of copyrighted material is illegal (up to fair use and licenses) regardless of whether or not you distribute them.

c) The GPL also requires you maintain the license header when you are making copies (GPLv2 term 1, "You may copy [...] the Program's source code as you receive it [...] provided that you [...] keep intact all the notices that refer to this License [...]" (other terms and conditions do apply, hence the ...'s).

d) The license (and the law, and court rulings) is the source material, not GNU's not legally binding faq.

TFA does say the code was under GPLv2 and CDDL. I would say it’s entirely within your right to distribute it in accordance with what the GPL FAQ considers okay, which includes internal distribution however you want. License header is required when distributing externally.

Oh weird, read over that line. Removes one of my bullet points but doesn't change the result. I agree you can distribute it internally, i.e. you can pass around the hard drive with the single unmodified copy. You can't make copies of it without the header, regardless of whether you keep it internal.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePo...

> Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?

> The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.

Yes, I'm not arguing otherwise.

You're not free to make copies without the license. You are free to make copies with the license, because that's what the license granted you permission to do. You aren't free to do so without preserving the license, because you don't have a license to do that and that's copyright infringement.

You aren't required to publicly release derivative works or their source, simply because the license grants you the ability to produce derivative works (provided you keep the copyright information intact) without publicly releasing them. You are required to keep the copyright information intact, because the license does not grant you permission to produce derivative works if you do not.

The requirement to keep the copyright information attached is simply not connected to your choice to distribute it or not. It's a requirement any time you make a copy or make a derivative work, even if you're only making that copy or derivative work for yourself.

That was my understanding. If removing the license is a breach of terms, therefore the GPL now fails to apply, then it falls back to default copyright laws. And no one would argue copying MS Windows 'internally' is fine.

IANAL, but in what sense is a copy that isn't distributed a copy at all?

In the sense that previously one computer was running the software at a time, and now 1000 computers are running it because I copied it onto all of their disks/memory banks/CPUs.

I still control all 1000 computers, but I'm doing something I fundamentally cannot do with a single copy.

The question is a bit murky, not because it's unclear I'm making copies, but because some copying is fair use. For example to execute a program I need to copy it from the hard drive to ram, and (pieces of it) from the ram to the CPU. That's generally considered to be legal, despite being copying, approximately because it's necessary to use the program. The exact line here is not well defined.

(Also not a lawyer, just a nerd)

Wouldn’t you have made significant bank if you had sued? To the extent that you never had to work for a paycheck ever? Just curious if a lawyer consult might have been useful.

Brendan has "made more bank" since then than he could have made in that one suit or since that suit if he'd filed it. Brendan's a pretty big shot nowadays and is almost certainly very well compensated, but when you demonstrate that you're too happy to sue you tend to get discriminated against, so if he had sued... it might have ended his career.

Sun was the number one employer in town in Australia? What?!

Sorry, should have said "tech" employer, and this is referring to Sun and its ecosystem. A few years earlier I gave a talk to a local University about the job market and asked the comp sci students to have a showing of hands as to whether they thought they'd work on Windows or Solaris when they graduated. Most hands went for Windows. Then I showed the local job statistics: Sun Solaris was number one.

I come from Melbourne and know that there are several rather large multimational engineering centers in Melbourne around this time period. Ericsson, NEC and Robert Bosch comes to my mine..

Perhaps largest in Sydney...Great article btw!

How fantastically different to my experience. I graduated 2010 in Australia, and we were just entering into the pre-cloud age. A lot of us expected to either move to SV or just work at local consultancies for banks or insurance companies (which I did). 10 years earlier, I would have gone to work at Sun!

A few years earlier?

I thought Solaris is being completely eclipsed by Linux.

Even windows are surprising because hardly anything except gaming and limited local clients are windows. Granted some people choose to develop on Windows.

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