40 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
40 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
about the GPL
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- usual stuff
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about gpl-violations.org
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- 100+ cases so far
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- most of them settled out of court
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- four preliminary injunctions halting sales (Sitecom, Siemens, Fortinet, ...)
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- one appeals case against preliminary injunction won (Sitecom)
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- one regular civil court case (against D-Link, just one month ago)
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- not a single case was lost at any time
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what happens if you violate the GPL
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- copyright infringement is a crime, criminal charges could be brought
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- copyright infringement causes civil liabilities
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- sale of your products can be immediately halted by preliminary injunction
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- legal proceedings can be filed against you and your downstream sales chain
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- you can be sued for damages
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- you will have to reimburse all legal fees (your/their lawyers, court fees)
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- you will have to alter all products that are already produced and in stock
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(include a copy of the license text, source code or written offer thereof)
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- is it really worth all those risks?
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- if you are selling branded OEM/ODM devices or software and don't have the
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technical resources for compliance checks in-house: for a couple of hundred
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euros (could be more, depending on complexity) you can have somebody check
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the product for GPL license compliance before it enters the market.
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how to avoid GPL licensing problems
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- think about licensing during product development
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- if you sell any OEM device provided by an upstream vendor, check it!
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- make sure you provide the source code always at the same time as object code
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- make sure GPL compliance happens for physical prodcut and website
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- release full corresponding source for each and every firmware update
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- do consider emails/letters about license compliance _SERIOUS_
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- set up a contact address that people can write to in case there think there
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are license compliance issues
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- if you get caught
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