Is Diebold infringing on WINE's copyright and violating it's GPL?

[Kelvin Mace]

Pardon the length of this post, but it is unavoidable.

A very interesting comment in the Dieblod code brought to our attention by a DUer concerns Dieblod's use of code from an open source program called WINE.

WINE is an open source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and UNIX. Use of this software is governed by a GPL (general public license).

The comments in the Diebold code are as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Remove mmio.c from repoditory since the code has been moved to the DLL.
@
text
@/* mmio.c

Reimplemented MMIO functions, as MS is too effing lazy to provide them under CE. Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Nowhere in the comments or docs do we see any refernce to this program or the GPL.

The GPL requires:

1) You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

2) You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice...

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code....

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years...

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code...

(I have edited here for space, you may read the entire GPL at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html)

The Diebold code meets NONE of these requirements. Thus using it this way violates the license.

If you violate the GPL and use the code, this could constitute "willfull infringement" which is a criminal, not civil offense.

These are my opinions, I am NOT a lawyer.

I invite DUers to comment on this point.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[starroute]

1. This should be referred to someone who can deal with it

The link you give has an item for "What to do if you see a possible GPL violation." Did you follow that up and submit it there?

You could reference the current Slashdot discussion if necessary for context.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. We are contacting the copyright holder

about this. I have also asked Hemos at /. to run the question by appropriate parties.

My intent is to distribute the question far and wide for comment.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[BevHarris]

2. So basically, Diebold grabbed someone else's software and hid it

"Most of this is cribbed from the Wine Project."

"the code has been moved to the DLL"

I got a PM from a DUer who caught this, and the open source community will NOT be happy. The Wine Project requires that certain procedures be followed when licensing its software.

Unfortunately, until the new DU software recovers the PM files, we cannot thank the contributor of this observation by name. Oh, uh, it was private. If you want to acknowledge yourself, please step forward. Nice catch!

Bev

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Two programmers I spoke to...

said moving it to a DLL was "trying to hide it".

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[toska]

5. Lucky catch

I basically poked around the files that were modified near the November 2002 election. I'm not a lawyer but I believe the Wine source is LGPL which is not as strict. It might be a near miss, but there is no recognition of the copyright in Diebold's code.

Edit: And nice article today Bev. It should be getting alot more attention here in the States. It's sad when one has to read a New Zealand paper to hear news that really affects us.

[w4rma]

7. LGPL: "...provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish..."

150 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Library's
151 complete source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that
152 you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an
153 appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact
154 all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any
155 warranty; and distribute a copy of this License along with the
156 Library.
157
158 You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy,
159 and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a
160 fee.
161 
162 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion
163 of it, thus forming a work based on the Library, and copy and
164 distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1
165 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
166
167 a) The modified work must itself be a software library.
168
169 b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices
170 stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
171
172 c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no
173 charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
174
175 d) If a facility in the modified Library refers to a function or a
176 table of data to be supplied by an application program that uses
177 the facility, other than as an argument passed when the facility
178 is invoked, then you must make a good faith effort to ensure that,
179 in the event an application does not supply such function or
180 table, the facility still operates, and performs whatever part of
181 its purpose remains meaningful.
182
183 (For example, a function in a library to compute square roots has
184 a purpose that is entirely well-defined independent of the
185 application. Therefore, Subsection 2d requires that any
186 application-supplied function or table used by this function must
187 be optional: if the application does not supply it, the square
188 root function must still compute square roots.)
189
http://source.winehq.org/source/COPYING.LIB#L150
http://www.winehq.com/

[Kelvin Mace]

13. The various sources I looked at

list WINE as GPL.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[Nazgul35]

6. I don't know what you just said...

but it made me horney!!!!

Say some more techy stuff....do it!!!!!!!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

:spank:

[not systems]

8. wine was X11 licensed

For most of it existance.

I think it is LGPL now but if it was "cribbed" from
the older X11 version or the existing X11 fork
rewind is a non issue.

Sorry.

See: http://rewind.sourceforge.net/

For a short explanation.

[BevHarris]

9. Thanks for the link. So, how does one know?

.

[not systems]

12. I would suggest

Getting the rewind source for the function
in question and doing a textual comparision.

The MIT type and GPL notification clause are
specific to software distribution it has been
the general rule that embeded systems like Tivo
or a mall information kiosk where the device itself
is the object sold that these software licences
are not effective.

So if someone sold a device to me I could not
demand the software even if it was GPL unless
that software was sold seperatly from the hardware.

Strange, I know but I believe that is the common
understanding of the effect of the GPL.

If the voting machine was sold as a device and
the software was not distributed separately it
may not mater even if GPL code is involved.

Wine proper is LGPL which is much less strict than
the GPL. So make sure which you are looking at
they are very different.

[w4rma]

11. The MIT License: "...and this permission notice shall be included...."

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

[Pale_Rider]

10. Somewhat what happened to Orin Hatch's website ...

... isn't it. The Orin Hatch website was found out to had engaged in a form of piracy by also removing copyright notices. As I remember that they hurried the copyright notice back in as soon as it broke that Hatch had recommended blowing up people's computers.

Ah the irony ...