Android and the GPLv2 death penalty | Hacker News Reader

Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

lwn.net

33 pointssciurus25 comments

This paragraph from the bottom of the article presents a vector of attack (albeit a small one) on the kernel that I hadn't considered before, but it seems like one we may quickly encounter in the future.

"One would guess that a copyright troll with a small ownership [of kernel code] would succeed mostly in getting his or her code removed from the kernel in record time. Big holders could pose a bigger threat. Imagine a company like IBM, for example; IBM owns the copyright on a great deal of kernel code. IBM also has the look of one of those short-lived companies that doesn't hang around for long. As this flash-in-the-pan fades, its copyright portfolio could be picked up by a troll which would then proceed to attack prior infringers. Writing IBM's code out of the kernel would not be an easy task, so some other sort of solution would have to be found. It is not a pretty scenario."

"IBM also has the look of one of those short-lived companies that doesn't hang around for long."

this is probably the funniest sentence I have ever read.

It's conceivable that Motorola Mobile might have had GPL-licensed linux code. That story might be playing out differently had Microsoft bought them instead of Google.

In the end, the code gets removed and rewritten. Most of Linux is drivers for hardware that you don't have anyway, so the chances of this affecting the average person are minimal.

Honestly, nothing but good could come from being forced to remove key parts of Linux. A lot of it needs a good rethinking, but breaking compat would not be tolerated. If it's legally required, then people don't have a choice.

"In the end, the code gets removed and rewritten."

Undoubtedly true, but what about deployed/sold devices? I wasn't real impressed at the pace of the update getting to my Epic, which I believe was caused in part by different motivations between Samsung and Sprint. What about devices that are no longer supported by updates? They're "out there."

I guess they get an emergency patch or Samsung pays damages. Just like they already do for the eight billion patents various trolls claim their phones infringe on.

The link it goes to explains why it is extremely sarcastic ;-)

The gist of it seems to be that yes, once you violate GPLv2 you need explicit permission to get your license restored (which would be hard to do in the case of the Linux kernel), but hey, don't worry about it. The copyright owners are nice people who just want the source distributed, so go ahead and ignore the license as long as you intend to eventually comply--there won't be any serious consequences.

This is a subscriber-only article. By linking to a subscriber link we are not helping LWN.

Quoting LWN: "Reader subscriptions are a necessary way to fund the continued existence of LWN and the quality of its content."

I'm having no trouble reading it. I'm not a subscriber.

LWN subscribers can create sharable links to articles that are not yet generally available to non-subscribers. People coming in via those links are allowed to see the article. That's what is happening here.

Don't worry, I'm sure they wouldn't actually want to enforce the restrictions in their policies, and any suggestion that they would is clearly the work of Microsoft employed FUD-monsters.

More seriously, LWN articles get posted here quite often, and the exposure probably encourages more people to subscribe. I always assumed that was the point of allowing people to create these links to subscriber articles.

But LWN has a feature specifically for sharing subscriber-only articles on social news sites, and that's why everyone can see this article. Presumably if this is killing them, they'd just turn that feature off.

Fair enough I guess. I don't work for LWN. I just felt slightly guilty by accessing a subscriber link that was probably intended more for "friends of a subscriber" than the whole internet community.

Aren't we all friends here? :)

Honestly, though, if LWN was worried about this, they could put some sore of limit on the number of times a subscriber link could be used (per time unit?) or something. I don't think they are, and rightly so: the exposure to their content (which is very good value for the small amount of money they ask subscribers), as well as their liberal policy on these 'friend links' probably lead to more subscribers. Personally, I want to read the LWN articles when they appear there (on their RSS feed, to be precise), and not when someone gets around to posting a link on Hacker News.

Full text of the notice at the top of the article:

"The following subscription-only content has been made available to you by an LWN subscriber. Thousands of subscribers depend on LWN for the best news from the Linux and free software communities. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to LWN. Thank you for visiting LWN.net!"

At first glance it seems that they don't actually object to the article being shared.

Indeed- Jonathan Corbet, the editor in chief, has shared subscriber only links here before.

I feel that it would be more polite to let him, the owner, be the one to do the gracious sharing at this scale.

I normally don't submit content from LWN until it's a week old and available by default to non-subscribers. However, if they've written the best article on a topic that's gaining traction on HN I'll consider it. In this case I'd noticed two stories about GPL license revocation and Android make the front page recently, but they each seemed to focus on only a portion of the topic and to put their own spin on the topic.

To quote from LWN's FAQ: "Where is it appropriate to post a subscriber link? Almost anywhere. Private mail, messages to project mailing lists, and blog entries are all appropriate. As long as people do not use subscriber links as a way to defeat our attempts to gain subscribers, we are happy to see them shared."

So if you like this article, subscribe to LWN. I did!

I paid for a subscription once after reading a subscriber link shared on Reddit, in other to read some of LWN's other content; if not for the link I probably wouldn't have bothered. I'd be surprised if I was alone.

What I did not understand in the original article: For what is the license void? For BusyBox or for BusyBox 1.0.3. Is it valid again - new distribution - with BusyBox 1.0.4? Or is it the "same" software?

[edit] Just saw this is also discussed in the linked article.

PS: In philosophy this problem is known as Ship of Theseus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Software doesn't violate licenses, people do. Anyone who violates the license of a work loses their license to the work. A more pointed question then is about who violates/loses the license: an individual coder? A corporation/foundation?

I think the gist was: if you lose your license to distribute Busybox X, does that impact your rights with respect to Busybox Y?

My take on this (but IANAL) is that you do not really lose the rights to distribute a specific version, but the rights to distribute specific code (or compiled versions of it), and that would carry through to all code in version Y that was already in version X, but not any newer code that is unique to version Y. That won't be very useful, though.

[Edit] Just read the part of the article that deals with this question. Personally, I hold to my take on this matter -- that the scope is not a particular version of the distribution containing the code, but to all the bits of code of which the license was violated -- even if you also have access to the code in another way. My reasoning for this is that this could otherwise open up a pretty simple loop-hole: you'd only have to get someone else, whose license is not yet revoked, to fork the project, and release a new 'version' of the program, to get your rights to the code back. That can not have been the intention of that clause in the GPL.

I think the position that it's about specific code is not defendable. What if I delete the file and retype it as a coder (see Theseus)? Is this the same file that was in a former release? If I automatically code format it, so no character is at the same position as it was before? Is it the same file? The only thing that makes sense is considering releases as the particular thing that is licensed (with each source file being a considered a part of the release, not a part in the history of the file).

Ah I thought you were naming BusyBox as an infringing work, not an infringed. Anyway, it does seem, as mentioned in the article, that if the copyright holder rereleases a similar work under a similar license, a past infringer gets a fresh shot, unless the author specifically publishes their revision history as a single work.

The point of the GPL really is about sharing, as the article suggests, not about punitive damages or post-violation injuctions. GPL-using authors do not want to prohibit infringers from future sharing, they want derived works published freely.

Much of the point of GPL and Free Software is about freedom for users, not making war against others. A past infringer gaining access to to code is not a loophole, it is part of the goal of the Free Software movement, which is unrestricted access for anyone to exploit software privately or to share it publicly (but not to allow public exploitation of non-shared code).

Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems that under Section 6 of GPL, a former violator could get a new license by simply receiving another copy of the software from anyone who still has a valid license:

> 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions.

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