A company
based in San Francisco called Bluefish, has
taken Plucker source code
in full, and
used it to create a product they sell (quite expensively).
This isn't bad, but "their" application states clearly in
the About
box, that it is "Free Software" and covered under the
GPL (as does the About
box found in Plucker).
They have removed all
attributions and references to the original authors of the
source code they are using, and replaced them with their
own, which is very misleading. They have also
taken custom artwork without permission, and used it on
their application. Here's a quick screenshot comparison
Bluefish versus Plucker:
[main
screen] from Bluefish's application (note the graphics
on the toolbar)
[main
screen] from Plucker, note the graphcs again [preferences
screen] from Bluefish's application
[preferences
screen] from Plucker
[About
screen] from Bluefish's application
[About
screen] from Plucker
I called the
CEO, James Fisher at
the San
Francisco office and politely
made a verbal request for the source code to the application
they provide in binary-only
format on the Mercury
News website.
He politely told me no.
I then said
asked if he was aware that the application that they based
their product on was covered under the GPL,
and by not providing sources which created that
binary that was already made available for download, he was
in violation of the GPL, as detailed in Section
6, 7, and 10 (along with others) of the GNU General
Public License, a license which Plucker is clearly covered
under.
The GPL FAQ also has two related questions on it:
"I
want to distribute an extended version of a GPL-covered
program in binary form. Is it
enough to distribute the source for the original
version?"
"I
want to distribute binaries, but distributing complete
source is inconvenient.
How about if I give users the diffs from the current FSF
version along with the binaries, and suggest they get the
base source from the FSF?"
He then said that he was not in violation, and suggested
that I should "..go re-read the GPL, because we are not
violating it..".
I asked for his email address, so I
could quote him the relevant sections of the GPL he was
violating. I also mentioned that I was going to put a call
into the FSF to
get their clarification on the issue.
Then he begins to
tell me that he "might" release the sources, but that they
were busy "debugging" them right now, and might release them
when they was done. (The key word used
there was "might", not "will")
Sorry, no. If you release
a binary which was based on GPL sources, you
are required to release the full sourcecode, scripts, and
other tools which created that binary (which were
covered under the GPL), at the same time, not
months or years later. Section 3 of the GPL is very
clear on this.
His assertion that they were "debugging"
the application is invalid, as "debugged" sources will
produce a different binary (whose source must also be made
available upon request).
If you can put the
binary up for download, you can put the source code up for
download as well (though this is not required, it can be
mailed or linked elsewhere). The stipulation
though is that you can not impose more restrictions
on the code, obtaining it, or its use, than you received
when you agreed to the license by using it
(Section 6. of the GPL).
I
have written a draft
letter (currently un-sent at the time of this diary
entry) which I will be sending to James Fisher as
well as copying in the relevant FSF parties. I have taken
pains to make sure that this letter appears
non-threatening, and that the proper "legal" language was
used throughout. I welcome any comments on it before I send
it (and after sending it, it might disappear
from that URL)
Update: Someone
recently brought up that they also have a name and logo
which is suspisciously similar to the Bluefish HTML
Editor. I took a quick comparison
screenshot to show the similarities. Flip one fish
horizontally and they are nearly identical. Who has the
trademark first on this one?
I'm
only concerned about the clear violation of the GPL stated
above though, but this graphical logo similarity is
interesting.
Is it just me, or is this happening
more and more lately. Companies seem to treat Open Source
and Free Software as some sort of "bake sale" of free code
thew can just take and use however they wish,
without abiding by the license, giving proper credit and
attribution, or adhering to the terms of the code they've
been using.
"Oh this code we
downloaded to make our commercial product had some sort of
GPL thing at the top of every file. We don't use that GPL
thing, so we just removed that stuff and the
names of those guys who wrote it. It's our code
now."
So much to do...