Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/05/19/proffitt.html
I’m grateful
to Brian
Proffitt for clarifying some of these confusions about Android
licensing. In particular, I’m glad I’m not the only one who has
cleared
up the confusions that Edward J. Naughton keeps spreading regarding
the GPL.
I noted
that Naughton
even commented on Proffitt’s article; the comment spreads even more confusion
about the GPL. In particular, Naughton claims that most BusyBox GPL
violations are on unmodified versions of BusyBox. That’s just
absolutely false, if for no other reason that a binary is a modified
version of the source code in the first place, and nearly all BusyBox
GPL violations involve a binary-only version distributed without any
source (nor an offer therefor).
Mixed in with Naughton’s constant confusions about what the GPL and
LGPL actually requires, he does have a possible valid point lurking:
there are a few components in Android/Linux that are under copyleft
licenses, namely Linux (GPL) and Webkit (LGPL). Yet, in all of
Naughton’s screeching about this issue, I haven’t seen any clear GPL or
LGPL violation reports — all I see is speculation about what may
or may not be a violation without any actual facts presented.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent more time reading and assessing the
veracity of GPL violation reports than anyone on the planet. I don’t
talk about this part of it much: but there are, in fact, a lot of false
alarms. I get emails every week from users who are confused about what
the GPL and LGPL actually require, and I typically must send them back
to collect more details before I can say with any certainty a GPL or
LGPL violation has occurred.
Of course, as a software freedom advocate, I’m deeply dismayed that
Google, Motorola and others haven’t seen fit to share a lot of the
Android code in a meaningful way with the community; failure to share
software is an affront to what the software freedom movement seeks to
accomplish. However, every reliable report that I’ve seen
indicates that there are no GPL nor LGPL violations present. Of course,
if someone has evidence to the contrary, they should send it to those of
us who do GPL enforcement. Meanwhile, despite Naughton’s public claims
that there are GPL and LGPL violations occurring, I’ve received no
contact from him. Don’t you think if he was really worried about
getting a GPL or LGPL violation resolved, he’d contact the guy in the
world most known for doing GPL enforcement and see if I could help?
Of course, Naughton hasn’t contacted me because he isn’t really
interested in software freedom. He’s interested in getting press for
himself, and writing vague reports about Android copyrights and
licensing is a way to get lots of press. I put out now a public call to
anyone who believes they haven’t received source code that they were
required to get under GPL or LGPL to get in touch with me and I’ll try
to help, or at the very least put you in touch with a copyright holder
who can help do some enforcement with you. I don’t, however, expect to
see a message in my inbox from Naughton any time soon, nor do I expect
him to actually write about the wide-spread
GPL violations
related to Android/Linux that Matthew Garrett has been finding.
Garrett’s findings are the real story about Android/Linux
compliance, but it’s presumably not headline-getting enough for Naughton
to even care.
Finally, Naughton is a lawyer. He has the skills at hand to actually
help resolve GPL violations. If he really cared about GPL
violations, he’d offer his pro bono help to copyright holders to assist
in the overwhelming onslaught of GPL violations. I’ve written and
spoken frequently about how I and others who enforce the GPL are really
lacking in talented person-power to do more enforcement. Yet, again, I
haven’t received an offer from Naughton or these other lawyers who are
opining about GPL non-compliance to help me get some actual GPL
compliance done. I await their offers, but I’m certainly not expecting
they’ll be forthcoming.
(BTW, you’ll notice that I don’t link to Naughton’s actual article
myself; I don’t want to give him any more linkage than he’s already
gotten. I’m pretty aghast at the Huffington Post for
giving a far-reaching soapbox to such shoddy commentary, but I suppose that I
shouldn’t expect better from a company owned by AOL.)
