On Oct 31, 4:42 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> German Court convicted Skype of violating the GPL
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | German district court Munich has convicted Skype of violating the GPL. One of
> | the VoIP telephones sold by Skype run Linux, but the GPL text was not handed
> | out together with the phone, although the GPL requires that.
> `----
I did a little digging on this one and I'm not sure I agree with the
judge on this one. In this case, the plaintiff claimed that Skype
violated the license by not including the actual source code with the
packaging.
Skype's response was that they provide a URL in the handset's
documentation showing the location of the source code to the site.
This is a common practice among most Linux appliance manufacturers and
satisfies the requirements of the standard GPL licenses (all 3
versions). The publisher is required to make the source code
available. This can be either providing the source on media, or
providing a location from which the source can be freely downloaded.
Skype didn't even try to challenge the requirement that the source
code be published, they just didn't want to have to deal with the
extra cost of putting a CD or DVD in with each of their little
handsets. Remember, these packages are manufactured on an assembly
line and they would have to set up a whole line of robots to produce
the disks, package them, and insert them with the other packaging. It
could increase the cost by as much as $10 per item.
Supporting documentation provided by the Free Software Foundation
points out that providing the location where the source code can be
freely downloaded is a perfectly legitimate form of distribution.
> http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/german-court-convicted-skype...
Let's hope that Skype wins the appeal, because otherwise it could have
a chilling effect on the popularity of the GPL in Europe.
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