%      Tutorial Text for the Detailed Study and Analysis of GPL and LGPL course

%

% Copyright (C) 2003, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

% License: CC-By-SA-4.0

% The copyright holders hereby grant the freedom to copy, modify, convey,

% Adapt, and/or redistribute this work under the terms of the Creative

% Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International License.

% This text is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

% WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

% MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

% You should have received a copy of the license with this document in

% a file called 'CC-By-SA-4.0.txt'.  If not, please visit

% https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode to receive

% the license text.

\part{Case Studies in GPL Enforcement}

{\parindent 0in

This part is: \\

\begin{tabbing}

Copyright \= \copyright{} 2003, 2004 \= \hspace{.2in} Free Software Foundation, Inc. \\

\end{tabbing}

\vspace{1in}

\begin{center}

Authors of this part are: \\

Bradley M. Kuhn \\

John Sullivan

\vspace{3in}

The copyright holders hereby grant the freedom to copy, modify, convey,

Adapt, and/or redistribute this work under the terms of the Creative Commons

Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International License.  A copy of that license is

available at \verb=https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode=.

\end{center}

}

% =====================================================================

% START OF SECOND DAY SEMINAR SECTION

% =====================================================================

\chapter*{Preface}

This one-day course presents the details of five different GPL

compliance cases handled by FSF's GPL Compliance Laboratory. Each case

offers unique insights into problems that can arise when the terms of

the GPL are not properly followed, and how diplomatic negotiation between

the violator and the copyright holder can yield positive results for

both parties.

Attendees should have successfully completely the course, a ``Detailed

Study and Analysis of the GPL and LGPL,'' as the material from that

course forms the building blocks for this material.

This course is of most interest to lawyers who have clients or

employers that deal with Free Software on a regular basis. However,

technical managers and executives whose businesses use or distribute

Free Software will also find the course very helpful.

\bigskip

These course materials are merely a summary of the highlights of the

course presented. Please be aware that during the actual GPL course, class

discussion supplements this printed curriculum. Simply reading it is

not equivalent to attending the course.

\chapter{Overview of Community Enforcement}

The GPL is a Free Software license with legal teeth. Unlike licenses like

the X11-style or various BSD licenses, the GPL (and by extension, the LGPL) is

designed to defend as well as grant freedom. We saw in the last course

that the GPL uses copyright law as a mechanism to grant all the key freedoms

essential in Free Software, but also to ensure that those freedoms

propagate throughout the distribution chain of the software.

\section{Termination Begins Enforcement}

As we have learned, the assurance that Free Software under the GPL remains

Free Software is accomplished through various terms of the GPL: \S 3 ensures

that binaries are always accompanied with source; \S 2 ensures that the

sources are adequate, complete and usable; \S 6 and \S 7 ensure that the

license of the software is always the GPL for everyone, and that no other

legal agreements or licenses trump the GPL. It is \S 4, however, that ensures

that the GPL can be enforced.

Thus, \S 4 is where we begin our discussion of GPL enforcement. This

clause is where the legal teeth of the license are rooted. As a copyright

license, the GPL governs only the activities governed by copyright law ---

copying, modifying and redistributing computer software. Unlike most

copyright licenses, the GPL gives wide grants of permission for engaging with

these activities. Such permissions continue, and all parties may exercise

them until such time as one party violates the terms of the GPL\@. At the

moment of such a violation (i.e., the engaging of copying, modifying or

redistributing in ways not permitted by the GPL) \S 4 is invoked. While other

parties may continue to operate under the GPL, the violating party loses their

rights.

Specifically, \S 4 terminates the violators' rights to continue

engaging in the permissions that are otherwise granted by the GPL\@.

Effectively, their rights revert to the copyright defaults ---

no permission is granted to copy, modify, nor redistribute the work.

Meanwhile, \S 5 points out that if the violator has no rights under

the GPL, they are prohibited by copyright law from engaging in the

activities of copying, modifying and distributing. They have lost

these rights because they have violated the GPL, and no other license

gives them permission to engage in these activities governed by copyright law.

\section{Ongoing Violations}

In conjunction with \S 4's termination of violators' rights, there is

one final industry fact added to the mix: rarely, does one engage in a

single, solitary act of copying, distributing or modifying software.

Almost always, a violator will have legitimately acquired a copy of a

GPL'd program, either making modifications or not, and then begun

distributing that work. For example, the violator may have put the

software in boxes and sold them at stores. Or perhaps the software

was put up for download on the Internet. Regardless of the delivery

mechanism, violators almost always are engaged in {\em ongoing\/}

violation of the GPL\@.

In fact, when we discover a GPL violation that occurred only once --- for

example, a user group who distributed copies of a GNU/Linux system without

source at one meeting --- we rarely pursue it with a high degree of

tenacity. In our minds, such a violation is an educational problem, and

unless the user group becomes a repeat offender (as it turns out, they

never do), we simply forward along a FAQ entry that best explains how user

groups can most easily comply with the GPL, and send them on their merry way.

It is only the cases of {\em ongoing\/} GPL violation that warrant our

active attention. We vehemently pursue those cases where dozens, hundreds

or thousands of customers are receiving software that is out of

compliance, and where the company continually offers for sale (or

distributes gratis as a demo) software distributions that include GPL'd

components out of compliance. Our goal is to maximize the impact of

enforcement and educate industries who are making such a mistake on a

large scale.

In addition, such ongoing violation shows that a particular company is

committed to a GPL'd product line. We are thrilled to learn that someone

is benefiting from Free Software, and we understand that sometimes they

become confused about the rules of the road. Rather than merely

giving us a postmortem to perform on a past mistake, an ongoing violation

gives us an active opportunity to educate a new contributor to the GPL'd

commons about proper procedures to contribute to the community.

Our central goal is not, in fact, to merely clear up a particular violation.

In fact, over time, we hope that our compliance lab will be out of

business. We seek to educate the businesses that engage in commerce

related to GPL'd software to obey the rules of the road and allow them to

operate freely under them. Just as a traffic officer would not revel in

reminding people which side of the road to drive on, so we do not revel in

violations. By contrast, we revel in the successes of educating an

ongoing violator about the GPL so that GPL compliance becomes a second-nature

matter, allowing that company to join the GPL ecosystem as a contributor.

\section{How are Violations Discovered?}

Our enforcement of the GPL is not a fund-raising effort; in fact, FSF's GPL

Compliance Lab runs at a loss (in other words, it is subsided by our

donors). Our violation reports come from volunteers, who have encountered,

in their business or personal life, a device or software product that