What one could possibly do about this? We submitted reports everywhere but even the GNU guys said they could do nothing about it — are licenses even worth anything or it's just a fancy marketing thing today?
Which means, you have to lawyer up and spend vast sums of money to go after people violating your license (GPL here).
Which is why you routinely hear about people violating the GPL - the interested parties have no means to enforce their license, and the counter party likely has deep pockets; deep enough to out last, out spend, and bury the licenser.
There are no provisions of any contract or agreement that matter if you are not prepared to enforce them, no matter the cost.
So, while you can insert a clause like you have described above, but you are still in the same position - drain your bank account paying lawyers to maybe recover some damages after probably many months or years of posturing and litigation.
The calculus on that effort often means it's not financially sound, or worth trying to enforce the contract. Just to see the inside of a court room, you will already be in the hole for at least six figures. If the other side manages to drag things out for years, the costs increase dramatically. So it becomes - pay $xxx,xxx to litigate and take a chance that maybe if you win, you might recover some of that money... maybe.
This is why, again, so many GPL violations exist today. The FOSS projects lack the means to enforce the license.
This is also why organizations like the FSF exist - to help FOSS projects (and others) negotiate and litigate these costly-and-usually-not-profitable conflicts.
- Yes:
- Xiaomi sells products outside of China, both through their own website and through Amazon and Walmart. Sue retailers who carry Xiaomi products and sell them in the US and Europe.
- In theory, this is what the US International Trade Commission can do - block imports of products that violate US laws. EU probably has similar
- You can't do anything about Xiaomi with China's kangaroo courts within China's borders, but Xiaomi wants US dollars and Euros too so eventually they'll play ball if you're willing to take this far enough
- No:
- There is exactly nothing you can do so you should learn to take it and like it.In other cases, the GPL has been shown to be decently effective.
Yes.
Copyright/patent law only "works" if everyone is compelled to adhere to it. Otherwise, you're just willingly putting yourself at a technological disadvantage.
But they know this and are not interested in a partnership. So they took the other, more totalitarian route: make it illegal for their citizens to do that. They're not stupid though, they know that for a totalitarian govt to work they have to keep their citizens happy. So if their citizens are unhappy that they can't purchase a US product, they'll just spawn a Chinese company out of thin air to produce the same thing under a Chinese brand. If they can get away with it, they'll sell it outside China too. All of this is only possible because the west has already been manufacturing all its products over there for decades.
The west made itself incredibly vulnerable by moving all manufacturing to China, and now China is taking advantage of that in every way it can.
IMO the only way out of this mess is moving the vast majority of our manufacturing back out of China, but it would have to be heavily subsidized because people won't be able to afford it at first.
And the Free Software Foundation (FSF) - https://www.fsf.org/
I doubt it's going to happen, but if the author(s) of stolen open source code file a lawsuit, they may force the matter through the courts.
A copyright holder publishing code under the GPLv3 has the ability to revoke permissions to violators. If, say Linus Torvalds or another (big) author of Linux kernel code forces the issue, Xiaomi would perform IP violations every time they try to sell a device running Linux.
If this happen, Xiaomi be given a chance to correct the situation at the very least, before revoking becomes possible. If they still don't comply, kernel contributors may use such court cases to get governments to take action. IP theft has led to phones being barred from sale before, and that was because of vague things like "rounded corners".
It'll take years of legal fees, but it's possible to hit them where it hurts: denying them access to the lucrative western markets.
All you need to do is hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit.
The obvious problem being that open source developers may lack the revenue/income/funds to make this a practical reality.
Defending a license takes money.
The ability to earn money is limited by open source licensing.
Open source licensing is largely self defeating --- as proven by the case in point.
So, "reality sucks, deal with it" (Linus Torvalds).
You can ask your government to take action for this IP violation by taxing those brands more, or banning them until they stop violating licenses. I'm sure they'll start caring more after that.
So, me and many others are very angry about this and this is our first and last time getting a Xiaomi device
i.e. only the telegram update channels have 25k-65k subscribers per a single xiaomi device, let alone the whole XDA community
Her comment[0] at the time directed at other Tech YouTubers was:
> YouTubers- you CAN make a difference by making GPL compliance
> a condition of your product reviews. I'm happy to mediate in
> Chinese if there is any miscommunication. GPL compliance means better,
> more functional, more innovative phones for everyone.
[0] https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/143734308046669414...
And this wasn't the first time she was involved in the resolution of such situations:
* "Creality GPL Update - Naomi Wu Released CR-10S Marlin Source Code" Joel Telling (a.k.a 3D Printing Nerd) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pODH6FR4nU8>
Content Advisory: Joel chooses not to wear a suit & tie to present his videos.
China has a ton of copyright infringing knockoffs of anything remotely popular outside its borders. For a long time, companies like Microsoft took it as granted that the vast majority of their software running in SE Asia was likely pirated.