On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Bruce Perens <[email protected]> wrote:
> If you are able to follow the GPL terms, your distribution of binaries of > GPL software is non-infringing. But as soon as you can't follow all of your > obligations under the GPL terms, you are back to "All Rights Reserved" and > none of the GPL terms apply to you any longer. At that moment, you are > infringing. > > If you do not have the complete and corresponding source code on hand for > the three years during which you are obligated to fulfill a request, and > have to recover them in some way that takes a significant amount of time, > that is what the court would see as a failure of due diligence and you are > infringing at that time. If there is any "reasonable time", it is only the > time necessary to respond with a file that you already have on hand because > you have pursued your due diligence in maintaining it. > I never said it was smart, I never even said it was legally a great idea. But let's say it takes a month to get it to you. Is that too long? How about 2 weeks? Where is the number? Since it is not specified, it would be left to the court to decide, based on what would be considered 'reasonable'. I'd say a month is reasonable, personally. But then again, that's just me. I also know that a company such as Motorola Mobility in many cases would wait until a request was made for a given kernel, until preparing and sanitizing it for public release, but would not generally do so prior to the request. And they where, in these cases, compliant. Now, common sense would say what Bruce is saying. If you don't HAVE it, how do you even KNOW you can produce it? And there you have the risk an entity takes when they decide to NOT have what Bruce assumes should be the norm. They might not be able to comply, and open themselves up for the liability which would result in non compliance. > Due diligence is something you are expected to take care of before being > sued. To the extent that you take care of it after being sued, that is a > remedy. You can still have damages for the period of infringement before > your remedy. > The fact of the matter is, most entities who do not end up complying, or wait for the initial request to produce something that ends up not even being identical to what they shipped, run the same risk as being hit by lightning. It happens, yes, but the likelihood? Not very. > So, if you fail to provide source code within just a few days, a lawsuit > is filed, and you then manage to come up with a bit-perfect binary match > (and good luck with _that_), you potentially have some infringing time for > which damages can be assessed by the court. > Your now talking about a hypothetical that has never, to my knowledge, happened. Fail to produce the code in a few days? By all means quote a single example of this being considered a reasonable time. > In practice you have that nice Bradley Kuhn who is more lenient than any > court (I am speaking from experience). But he doesn't have to be. > We're having academic arguments, which in my opinion do turn into hit by lightning comparisons. We're all honest here. How many instances of GPL infringements exist in the work in the 20+ years of the GPL? How many cases have led to the liabilities your talking about? Bruce, you're right there, and I *KNOW* we agree that knowingly violating the terms of the GPL should lead to much bigger and harsher judgements then have been passed down. You yourself had your own work infringed on, much more then I could even dream anything of mine being used and abused. But taking the stance that 1 millisecond after the request has been made your not in compliance really isn't fair to anyone. Thomas
