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Also Remember that the GPL does not copyright the output of the program.

That's not entirely true. We're currently involved in persuing a GPL investigation/case against what was originally one company, but now has turned into three companies (the latter two being customers of the first). When/if the GPL is removed from the equation, the licensing becomes more restrictive, and all rights fall back on the copyright holder. The copyright holder owns the copyright to anything he creates. This includes a custom application which has a custom output data format, which was created using code that was covered under the GPL (such as a document format or a file format). The file is not covered under the GPL, but the process which created the data it contains, is. Subtle difference, but still enforcable.

Here's an example (which models our current investigation very closely): Company X downloads a GPL piece of software, removes the developers names and license files, replaces them with their own, updates the code a bit and produces a derivitave binary which they then sell to two of their customers. At this point, they are directly in violation of the GPL for:

  1. Not providing source to these customers or to third-party persons who independantly request it (GPL::3a), and
  2. Not providing a 'written offer' to those customers (GPL::3b)
  3. Illegally re-licensing the application without consent of the copyright holders.

Now, since this is a clear violation of the GPL in both license and spirit, their rights to continue to use that code are immediately revoked (GPL::4) and every copy they continue to sell or redistribute from that point forward is now an illegal copyright violation, which also allows the copyright holder to persue them under:

  1. US Copyright violations
  2. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
  3. Lanham Act violations ("mis-representation of origin")

Once the GPL is violated, the amount of restrictions and "laws broken" increases. This is important to get across to people who wish to license their code under the GPL. People consider this a viral license, not because it "infects" code it touches, but because once you violate it, it brings with it a whole truckload of other infractions to be considered.

Our "parser" is GPL'd, our "viewer" is GPL'd, and our "output file format" is also GPL'd. Changes to any of the above require that they be released back to the community under that license. Failure to do so removes your right to continue using them, and now makes it harder to do so.

I'm glad our FSF-appointed attorney in our particular case is well-versed in these issues. I would never have known about this if it wasn't for her skill and perserverence.


In reply to Re: OT: A Modest Proposal for a GNU infrastructure license RGPL by hacker
in thread OT: A Modest Proposal for a GNU infrastructure license RGPL by mdupont

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