% The What and How of GPL Violations

% Tuesday 9 May 2017

# What's a GPL Violation?

+ GPL (both v2 and v3) require:

     + The whole work licensed under GPL.

     + (which means all copyrighted material added must be under

       GPL-compatible licenses.)

     + Complete, Corresponding Source (CCS) of that work provided, under GPL.

+ The licenses terminate upon violation …

     + … thus failure to comply means lost distribution rights.

     + … enforcement uses this rights termination as leverage to

       restore compliance.

# Enforcement is Technical

% Examples of CCS Reports

% Tuesday 9 May 2017

# CCS "Round" Reports

+ Evaluate each CCS candidate.

+ Someone "skilled in the art" attempts to build.

+ Detailed notes are sent, asking for new CCS candidate "round".

+ Some anonyomized real world examples.

# No Build Instructions

<hr/>

    The primary issues we found were a dearth of build instructions as well 

% GPL's Handling of Non-Copyright Systems

% Tuesday 9 May 2017

# Non-Copyright Systems

+ Patents, NDAs, & other agreements often impact software.

+ GPL is essentially a copyright license.

     - so, how does GPL handle these systems?

+ As always, GPL has **conditional** permissions.

     - some such conditions relate to these other legal regimes.

+ Compliance for these is much more legalistic than technical.

# GPLv2§7