30 lines
1.4 KiB
Plaintext
30 lines
1.4 KiB
Plaintext
Enforcing the GNU GPL - Copyright helps Copyleft
|
|
|
|
More and more vendors of various computing devices, especially network-related
|
|
appliances such as Routers, NAT-Gateways and 802.11 Access Points are using
|
|
Linux and other GPL licensed free software in their products.
|
|
|
|
While the Linux community can look at this as a big success, there is a back
|
|
side of that coin: A large number of those vendors have no idea about the GPL
|
|
license terms, and as a result do not fulfill their obligations under the GPL.
|
|
|
|
The netfilter/iptables project has started legal proceedngs against a number of
|
|
companies in violation of the GPL since December 2003. Those legal proceedings
|
|
were quite successful so far, resulting in twelve amicable agreements and one
|
|
granted preliminary injunction. The list of companies includes large
|
|
corporations such as Siemens, Asus and Belkin.
|
|
|
|
The speaker will present an overview about his recent successful enforcement of
|
|
the GNU GPL within German jurisdiction.
|
|
|
|
He will go on speaking about what exactly is neccessarry to fully comply with
|
|
the GPL, including his legal position on corner cases such as cryptographic
|
|
signing.
|
|
|
|
Resulting from his experience in dealing with the german legal system, he will
|
|
give some hints to software authors about what they can do in order to make
|
|
eventual later license enforcement easier.
|
|
|
|
In the end, it seems like the idea of the founding fathers of the GNU GPL
|
|
works: Guaranteeing Copyleft by using Copyright.
|