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Comment by dunham | Hacker News Reader

> I would recommend reading [1] because it confirms the GPL violation but paints interesting picture of the reason.

I'm not seeing that, but maybe I'm misunderstanding something. [1] includes:

> we are also shared our change without reservation to every enthusiast (buyer).

Which to me says they're freely sharing the source with buyers. And I see in the GPL:

> For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

Which I understand as "you only have to share source code with buyers" (but they can do what they will with it).

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>> BOOK8088: And the foreign trade company words will not even consider these details. A similar thing happens with naming products. For example, we gave it a name, called BOOK8088 . If the name is registered as a trademark, we can only change the name. There are many professional complainers who make money from this. Of course, I knew there was a big problem with violating the GPL at very beginning, and I was preparing for something later. I didn't even expect it to develop so fast.

> Which I understand as "you only have to share source code with buyers" (but they can do what they will with it).

You need a proper attribution. This comment goes at lengths explaining it [0] but removing the copyright and/or authorship (attribution in a general sense) is breaking the license attribution requirements.

[0] https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/4577/does-gpl...

From your citation, I think it'd be valid attribution if the BIOS setup UI had a "licensing" tab, that spelled out the IP that this BIOS was derived from. (This is how e.g. iOS and Android do licensing: you drill down into Settings > About > Licensing and all the IP declarations are spelled out there.)

Provided they had that, then the initial "vanity" copyright notice on boot would be extraneous, and they could freely change or remove it.

Without that kind of thing, the on-boot notice is the "load-bearing" UI attribution, and must be retained.

> Without that kind of thing, the on-boot notice is the "load-bearing" UI attribution, and must be retained.

Yep.

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