As someone who uses Linux every day this hurts and makes me wonder what the future will be as hardware gets locked away from us with the very tools we made to use it.
Edit: It's remarkable to see a raft of uninformed comments here. What's up with that? Once most people in HN knew the story of Linux, Gnu and so forth.
I am Austrian and I am a bit confused...
A related thing is: look through places where the crowd skews young/newb like r/programmerhumor. You'll see arguments, discussions, etc about things that might make you think "I thought that was settled ages ago" but in reality were just things you got experienced perspective on, and/or grew out of.
People grow and change - usually in a slow and steady way that's hard to see in the mirror. I suspect you've picked up a lot of knowledge and some new perspectives - a few years is a long time!
As of yet there is no case to win or lose.
I want to make a product, I don't even mind giving away the code. I'm just worried since its an embedded system, its hard to update or whatever. As many times as I read the legal stuff, its over my head. I can't understand how you can let someone update part of the code on something compiled. Its not like I'm going to have a screen on my device to let users read the code either.
If someone wants to fight a legal battle, its really due to my incompetence, not malice.
For GPLv3, it's that simple most of the time. You talk about embedded which suggests you may be thinking primarily of the "tivoization" clauses designed to prevent user lockout. Again, if you're a fully open source project this will be hard to fail because the user should be able to just copy whatever you do in development. It's when you try to prevent user updates while allowing your own that this applies.
You could read 6(b) to mean that you have to offer consumers the choice between physical-delivery-at-cost and for-free-download of the source... but I don't think that's the right reading.
OTOH, the internet is a "medium customarily used for software interchange" so maybe that would be fine, but the internet wouldn't "accompany" the device. Also, in GPLv2 you are allowed to just send a note "you can get source from us delivered on a storage device for $X", so if you do the purchase thing, plus write a note with every device about how to get the code on the internet or on disk, you should be fine.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.htm...
You can provide your closed source part as a precompiled library or object file together with the source code for the LGPL part and build scripts that let the recipient relink it with a (possibly modified version of) the LGPL code to generate a new final binary.
A pain yes but not impossible. Having a screen or not is irrelevant, nothing says the recipient has to access the source on the same device as the binaries run.
This is also my understanding of why the AGPL was created to try to close the loophole of running GPL code on the backend; since running code on a server doesn't entail distributing the server binary to people who access the service, the GPL didn't enforce any requirements on sharing any modifications to code that was modified and used as part of the backend for the service. Some felt that this went against the spirit of the GPL, so a new license that made this also explicitly disallowed was created.
As for the LGPL, my recollection is that it differs from the GPL in creating an exception for dynamically linking to the compiled binary; the phrasing of the (non-L) GPL requires that any "derivative works" of the GPL-licensed product (I can't remember if that's the exact term, but it's a something similarly general) must abide by the GPL, which could be interpreted as applying to something that dynamically links to a library licensed under the GPL. Licensing something under the LGPL gives permission for users to dynamically link to your product without requiring them to share the code linking to it.
I found a page talking about how they won’t enforce their trademark against people who use it, but this is not the same as not enforcing copyright.
Thanks in advance!
SFC wants to use the law as a stick, while trying to get people to comply with out legal action. Many core members prefer to not even engage with the threat of legal action at all, they believe that simply asking nicely will get companies like VmWare to comply. of course this is rarely true but.....
[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/drive...
[2] http://kroah.com/log/blog/2017/10/16/linux-kernel-community-...
[3] http://kroah.com/log/blog/2017/10/16/linux-kernel-community-...
After looking into this and reading your three links, I couldn’t find a conclusive answer to my follow up question, so maybe you know: did the Linux Foundation ever serve a legal purpose of pursuing copyright violations and take point in defending the copyright holders that contributed to the Linux Kernel?
Near as I can tell, it appears to be largely up to individual copyright holders.
Even that agreement seems to be an article of trust from individuals saying they’ll abide by the extra paragraphs and not doggedly pursue copyright violations so long as violators act in good faith about taking corrective action in a timely manner.
i am not aware of any legal action the Linux foundation, or anyone in the leadership of said has participated in, in a few instances, like the one that lead to the Enforcement Statement they have actively tried to kill the legal action.
The Enforcement Statement is vague purposefully as to what "good faith", and purposefully never spells out when it is OK to move to the courts... because in their view that answer is never
I managed to filter through all the SCO and most of the non-Linux lawsuit stuff gumming up Google and near as I can tell, the only lawsuits involving copyright violations are or Linux specifically are pursued by individuals or agencies like SFC.
So given all that I would read this enforcement statement as a PR move more than a definite article, less “this list of people is effectively giving up their copyright” and more “so you know that one jackass? Well this lot undersigned here won’t be like him. Please don’t stop supporting and using Linux.”
Just as an aside, what constitutes “good faith” is something that can and usually is regardless of whatever contract or license is in effect litigated in court.