Linux Kernel Gets An "Enforcement Statement" To Deal With Copyright Trolls

[sdack]

sdack it was because you used reply. ...

I am still not the person who brought EULAs into this discussion. Rather am I trying to keep them out of it. Yet do you keep bringing them up. Why? Because you keep seeing messages?!? Then I suggest you learn not to respond to every message you get. It's really not that hard. Find yourself a girl friend, get laid, do whatever. Just suppress the urge to discuss what you don't want to discuss, because when you want people to stop talking about something then don't argue with them, but instead find something you can agree with or just shut up about it.

[chithanh]

And abiding the terms means you accept the license. And, yes, in a way is the GPL an EULA for programmers who wish to use the code (opposed to end-users who want to use the final product).

A EULA is a type of license which comes into effect only if you agree with it. And then it can contain punitive things for failure to comply, or stipulations like giving the right to the company to install updates automatically or non-compete clauses preventing you from developing replacement for it (Adobe Flash EULA is notorious for this).

GPL is not a EULA. It grants you rights without requiring that you agree to it, simply by abiding to its terms (even by accident). But GPL cannot punish you for non-compliance beyond taking away these rights again - any further punishment will come from copyright law.

[sdack]

A EULA is a type of license which comes into effect only if you agree with it. And then it can contain punitive things for failure to comply, or stipulations like giving the right to the company to install updates automatically or non-compete clauses preventing you from developing replacement for it (Adobe Flash EULA is notorious for this).

GPL is not a EULA. It grants you rights without requiring that you agree to it, simply by abiding to its terms (even by accident). But GPL cannot punish you for non-compliance beyond taking away these rights again - any further punishment will come from copyright law.

We already know the GPL isn't an EULA. And no, both require two parties where one agrees to the terms of another for it to come into effect. That's the fundamental nature of all documents. Only the person who lives entirely alone on an island with nobody else around doesn't have a use for them or someone to agree with or to or just to read it. Of course you could write something entirely for yourself or in hope that one day somebody will come and find it, but I'm sure you know what I'm getting at... Well, no I'm not sure, but let's just say I hope that you do and that you're not completely stupid.

Now the only reason you can have at this point to go on about it is because you still don't understand this. Why you keep replying to me about it only God knows. I can only repeat that I am not the one who brought EULAs into this discussion. When are you going to accept this? I've been saying this now several times and it's getting bizarre how often people think I had brought them up.

Also, when you cannot understand what people are saying to you on a forum then I suggest you don't even start talking about legal documents, because these are well above your head.

[oiaohm]

A EULA is a type of license which comes into effect only if you agree with it. And then it can contain punitive things for failure to comply, or stipulations like giving the right to the company to install updates automatically or non-compete clauses preventing you from developing replacement for it (Adobe Flash EULA is notorious for this).

GPL is not a EULA. It grants you rights without requiring that you agree to it, simply by abiding to its terms (even by accident). But GPL cannot punish you for non-compliance beyond taking away these rights again - any further punishment will come from copyright law.

Sorry the recent USA case did not sue copyright law to punish breach of GPL. First thing judge declared GPL standard contract under USA law. Means you can be prosecuted for breach of contract for not following GPL terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_contract that is Civil action out side the restrictions of Copyright Law. So that case changes a lot of thing. So GPL can be used to punish you for non-compliance without using copyright law in USA courts at the moment due to the ruling its a standard contract. The case that declares GPL a contract the judge used this to simplify the case. Declaring GPL contract meant all the copyright law, consumer law and so on arguments went straight out the window and it came a basic breach of contract case. So GPL enforced as just breach of contract nothing else. It was also a lot simpler for the judge to prosecute because the arguement comes did you obey the terms of GPL yes/no. If no you are guilty how are you going to rectify and how are you going to be punished for breaking the contract.

USA Judge got sick of long list of legally complex arguement and worked out one stroke of the pen would see them all out the way because GPL by define is not inside copyright law, consumer law and most other of the laws that allow complex arguments over if a software license applies or not. So GPL enforcement case can be reduced to simple contract law with yes/no answers. This saw weeks of arguments discarded and everything settled in a day this was kind of a shock to the firm defending the company that broke GPL and the firm attempt to enforce GPL. The neither party could find any flaw in the judges ruling that GPL was standard implied contract so under standard contract law.

We already know the GPL isn't an EULA. And no, both require two parties where one agrees to the terms of another for it to come into effect.

If you are in the USA the answer is absolutely no. GPL in the USA comes into effect as soon as you use the GPL protected product. That came out of the court case in the USA ruling GPL contract. The judge action ruled on 14 major points by defence on what GPL is and when GPL comes into effect by basically throwing the arguments out by declaring those arguments did not apply. You run a GPL program without seen the license at all GPL is still in effect. EULA due to being limit by the type of contract it is and restriction to consumer law you have to agree to the terms and see the terms.

Claiming you did not know that the product used GPL does not in fact allow you to avoid obeying GPL terms due to it being standard implied contract. With EULA that arguement can in fact hold that third party broke the EULA so you are not responsible for the prior costs as long as you pay from now on this is because you have consumer protection law in effect. You acquired the EULA effected product without know it the consumer law protects you. Lot of things have disappeared with the change in declared type of GPL.

Of course outside the USA these rulings have not been tested. Those inside the USA need to be careful because GPL is totally different for them to a EULA. With a lot simpler prosecution process that will be yes/no question on the terms of GPL. Basically did you obey term 1 .... and a single no is breach of contract that will have to rectified from time of when you were not in compliance.

The only reason why GPL using products have to ship with a GPL license notice in the USA is that is in the contract.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

Is that the contract of GPL in fact demands it. EULA being openly published is demand by consumer protection law because you need to agree to it.

The fact GPL by contract has to ship with product displayed and EULA by consumer law has to be ship with product displayed this lead to some confusion that they are the same. GPL displayed you have already agree to it and you agreed to it before it was displayed in the USA. At the point EULA is displayed you can back out.

Its all due to where GPL and EULA sits in the world of contracts relative to other laws. GPL sits in an area with very different rules to EULA.

By the way wanting to declare extra terms with GPLv2 and the Linux kernel is to reduce the teeth GPLv2 in USA courts because currently it threatens to force product recalls and the like that have been done under standard breach of contract before.

[sdack]

If you are in the USA the answer is absolutely no. GPL in the USA comes into effect as soon as you use the GPL protected product. ...

Absolutely right and an EULA comes into effect as soon as you use the product it protects. There is no difference here. In both cases are you not forced to use the product in anyway. It's always a choice you get to make and you are free to agree or to decline to the terms.

You sure have a hard time with this.

[oiaohm]

Absolutely right and an EULA comes into effect as soon as you use the product it protects. There is no difference here. In both cases are you not forced to use the product in anyway. It's always a choice you get to make and you are free to agree or to decline to the terms.

In USA in law. EULA does not come into effect as soon as you use the product. This has been proven by a few cases were people broke the terms of the EULA and have used the defence that they never saw it and were able to prove it was not displayed. These are ruling in USA courts. Reason for this is consumer protection laws.

https://qz.com/981029/a-federal-court-has-ruled-that-an-open-source-license-is-an-enforceable-contract/

Corley denied the motion, and in doing so, set the precedent that licenses like the GNU GPL can be treated like legal contracts, and developers can legitimately sue when those contracts are breached. This case the distributor of the closed source product attempt to say it was a outsource development that used GPL license Ghostscript so they never saw the GPL license to limit damages. This works in USA courts with EULAs. does not work with GPL. It could turn out source code licenses are all like this.

Yes notice in this quote never saw License that is EULA defence is mentioned this case clearly rules that its not the case for GPL in the USA. EULA comes into force as soon as you see it or are informed of it existence and if you prove that neither of the conditions were true you can limit the damages to when the case was brought against you.

GPL comes into force as soon as you use the product if you know it there or not by this recent ruling. This brings a new level of scary to using closed source in a commercial product that might contain something like GPL.

sdack basically read that careful. GPL if you are in breach is a simple breach of contract arguement in the USA. The judge can throw out any attempt to use anything other than contract law to defend yourself. All the precedents methods getting around software licenses like EULA does not apply to GPL. Most likely all cost free source code licenses could be in this same camp.

Please note this case they also attempt to use copyright law fair usage and consumer protection usage as what has been used in prior EULA cases successfully once the judge declared contract these legal defences was off the table in this GPL case.

So this recent cases means for USA at least GPL and EULA need to be consider very different things. GPL is way more enforceable particularly if the judge you get decides to rule as per contract law taking the other legal defence options that you can use against EULA straight off the table.

Also in this case also covers distributor who only saw the binary not the source code and states that GPL fully apply anyhow even if you only have a binary no source. Its your responsibility to make sure what you are using is legal.

So this recent case as really put the cat among the pidgins.

[yoshi314]

Ha!

They're taking things from GPL-3. Intelligent but still not perfect until they'll realize the best solution is going full on GPL-3.

I wonder what Linus thinks about it?

if the kernel ever goes gpl3 it will go more or less obsolete. gpl3's adoption by gcc is why llvm is becoming so popular (among other reasons). gpl3 enforces that modified code can be rebuilt and resulting binary can be installed on target platform, without any obstructions - this goes against the design of all kinds of secured devices we have now.


linus said before - he does not care if the kernel powers a tivo-ized device or a locked down console, as long as the source code contribution makes it back upstream.

[sdack]

In USA in law. EULA does not come into effect as soon as you use the product. This has been proven by a few cases were people broke the terms of the EULA and have used the defence that they never saw it and were able to prove it was not displayed. These are ruling in USA courts. Reason for this is consumer protection laws. ...

If a license is printed too small or somehow becomes inaccessible then sure, counts for all legal agreements. Has little to do with what I've said. You're still not having a point. You do create a lot of smoke screen arguments though.

[oiaohm]

If a license is printed too small or somehow becomes inaccessible then sure, counts for all legal agreements. Has little to do with what I've said. You're still not having a point. You do create a lot of smoke screen arguments though.

The case I am referring is why "Enforcement Statement" is being done. Understanding that GPL nothing like EULA. Yes license statement not see GPL still applies by recent ruling. GPL printed too small or inaccessible issues of EULA not for GPL. This is only the start of many differences. How GPL can be enforced going back to your first usage not back to when you first find out you are using a GPL protected item is also very different to EULA. This means to make GPL behave something like EULA you need the enforcement statement.

So GPLv2 is not like EULA the enforcement statement is teeth reduction. One of the nasty gaps is due to GPL being contract not under copyright or consumer law restrictions is you technically don't have X number of days to resolve issues unless it stated somewhere.

That GPL is contract that does bring questions on how legal tivo-ized device is.

[sdack]

The case I am referring is ...

Who cares what you're referring to?