Android, GPL violations and Google | Hacker News Reader

Android, GPL violations and Google

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

37 pointscjbprime15 comments

We've gone over this a few times, but let me point out a few things about copyleft compliance for android devices from Google's perspective:

We make it easy for companies to comply with the notice requirements (via build scripts that populate inside the about phone section of the OS) and we often advocate for what we consider to be our high level of compliance wrt code mirroring.

If you review the manufacturers of devices that actually make it into people's pockets, you'll find that they are fairly decent about compliance (notification and providing source on request) and a few are very good and doing more than the licenses actually require (posting mirrored code online at time of shipment, like we do).

Some are not as fast about code provision. In those cases, I suggest joining gpl-violations and starting there. Email me too and I'll pass word along if they are one of the manufacturers that we have a decent relationship with.

For most of the small run manufacturers, we have little or no relationship and gpl-violations might be a better place to start.

We aren't the world's linux cop and I know from experience it's the last thing people want Google to be.

There are some companies that don't care about doing compliance right, and they'll take what is in my opinion a long time to comply with the license, or work certain corners of the license (like sveasoft did many years ago) to wiggle out from under the code provision requirements of the gpl. It's actually quite difficult to see what could productively done about these bad actors.

I take umbrage from people who say crap like 'Google makes money off other peoples violation of the gpl' . It isn't true and It shows a lack of thoughtfulness on the part of MJG on this issue.

Finally; As one of the people who contacts developers and manufacturers using our software outside of the provisions of the apache, bsd, lgpl and gpl licenses, compliance is almost always about education and not about malice.

You say I take umbrage from people who say crap like 'Google makes money off other peoples violation of the gpl'.

Which bit of that isn't true? Does Google turn off advert revenue from devices which violate the GPL?

The statement "Google makes money off other peoples violation of the gpl" means "(Google makes money) [because of / from] (other peoples /violation/ (of the gpl))", not "(Google makes money) [because of / from] (other /people/ (who violate the gpl))", which is a fundamentally different moral question (one that rapidly argues for your local supermarket to stop selling food to people whose morals they disagree with, which honestly is something I find scary).

Vendors can sell devices for less if they violate the GPL. Cheaper devices result in more devices being sold. More devices sold means more adsense impressions. More adsense impressions makes Google more money.

Where am I going wrong here?

> In other words: unscrupulous hardware vendors save money by ignoring their GPL obligations.

I doubt that very much. It doesn't take any significant amount of money to comply with the GPL. Close to none, for a company that is shipping an actual product that uses this kind of code.

> Google makes money off other people's violation of the GPL.

Not really. Those companies could comply, and Google would still make the same amount of money. It doesn't matter to Google if they comply or not comply, monetarily or otherwise.

But Google would make less money (and incur more costs) if they went after companies not in compliance with the GPL.

I do agree Google could come up with a way to twist Android trademark licensees to be compliant. I don't know if I agree that Google is evil if they don't.

> But Google would make less money (and incur more costs) if they went after companies not in compliance with the GPL.

Who is "they" here? Google? Or other copyright holders on the GPL'd code?

Regardless, I don't see how this matters. If anyone went after these companies, after some hassle they would comply with the GPL. And that's it.

I am a long-time open source supporter, and it annoys me when people don't comply with the FOSS licenses to the code they ship. But, let's be honest - in most cases in the current context, the companies have no code that would be useful to the community, so we would gain basically nothing if they did comply, and they do not comply out of either a misunderstanding of the GPL or laziness. So it really doesn't matter.

It could be argued though that out of the principle of the thing, they should be forced to comply, so there isn't a culture of ignoring open source licenses. I'd agree to that, but it doesn't matter if I do, someone with copyrights to the relevant code + time + money needs to agree and actually sue them.

It doesn't take any significant amount of money to comply with the GPL.

Indeed not, but handing over your improvements to your competitors knowing not all of them will do the same seems to me like a bad business decision.

Those companies could comply, and Google would still make the same amount of money. It doesn't matter to Google if they comply or not comply, monetarily or otherwise.

This is not necessarily the choice vendors make. They are choosing between complying, not complying and not using. If complying is not an option, then Google banning the non-compliance option by implementing the OP's suggestion (which it would effectively do, as far as I can tell) would encourage vendors to simply refrain from using Android, the only remaining option.

It would not surprise me if Google intentionally refrained from banning the non-compliance option to help popularize Android. If that is true (which, it very well might not be), then the current situation, in which non-compliance is commonplace, is just a result of Google's early Android strategy.

By now, though, maybe we've reached a stage in which it is more profitable to comply with the GPL than not using Android at all. If so, then Google could implement the OP's suggestion without much harm.

I might have problems understanding your post. Please help me correct my reading comprehension failure here:

1) 'Seems like a bad business decision' sounds like you think that's a decision to make in the first place. Basing your company on operating systems/database systems/tooling that you got from bittorrent might be a 'business decision' in the same way, if I understand you correctly?

2) "They are choosing between complying, not complying and not using."

How are there three choices? It's either complying or not using. Everything else is not a business, it's a shady/illegal way to make money off other people's work. Again: This isn't a (real, legitimate) choice in the first place, so I don't see why this comes up at all.

'Seems like a bad business decision' sounds like you think that's a decision to make in the first place. Basing your company on operating systems/database systems/tooling that you got from bittorrent might be a 'business decision' in the same way, if I understand you correctly?

Not complying with the license of the software you use is not a good business decision. I said otherwise in my previous post and that was incorrect. My bad.

However, if you're operating in an environment in which you know that your compliance with said license will not be reciprocated by your competitors, then I can understand why one would be reluctant.

It's clear these companies have no issue with not complying with the GPL. If they did, they would be in compliance right now.

If your goal is popularizing a new operating system, and you know you're dealing with people who do not care about such trivial matters like licenses or laws, then not taking measures to enforce the license is good for business. That, while shady, and perhaps evil, is not illegal.

I wrote more about this at http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/9387.html . The summary is that yes, there are sufficient economic incentives to ignore the GPL that it has an impact on the market.

Most of the Android (and Google's code) is licensed under Apache License V2 which DOES allow proprietary redistribution.

There are portions GPL'd indeed (Kernel for example), but saying that Google should take action on it is over the top to me. If that happened people would start the "GOOGLE IS EVIL AND IS SUING SMALL INDEPENDENT MANUFACTURERS!" mantra for sure.

Android (name and logo) are trademarked by Google and cannot be used without explicit permission. They can however use "for Android".

Also, the Android robot is under CC-BY license. No harm done here.

While I don't doubt there are violations, and that Google will never prosecute the vendors - is there actually a list of the actual violations?

Thanks

This is getting silly. Google is now evil because they don't sue for GPL violations? Where is the threshold for this argument?

I had GPL code that appeared in another GPL-incompatible project. I didn't sue. Am I evil? Google's profit is not affected by Motorola's release of the kernel source for the DROID RAZR.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com