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<title>FSFE compliance workshop discovers GPL violation by FANTEC, Welte wins in court</title>
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<h1>FSFE compliance workshop discovers GPL violation by FANTEC, Welte wins in court</h1>
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<p newsteaser="yes">The <a
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href="http://www.ifross.org/sites/default/files/130618%20Urteil%20Fantec.pdf">Regional
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Court of Hamburg [Landgericht Hamburg] found FANTEC GmbH guilty of
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violating the GNU General Public License</a> in their media player FANTEC
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3DFHDL. In the case between Harald Welte versus FANTEC GmbH the court
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decided that FANTEC has to pay a penalty fee plus additional costs for the
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lawyers, and has to give out the exact information about their chain of
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distribution of the FANTEC 3DFHDL Media Player.</p>
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<p>FANTEC was using the netfilter/iptables software (firewalling software
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for GNU/Linux) in one of the FANTEC 3DFHDL firmwares offered online. They
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distributed the firmware without complete corresponding source code as
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required by the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2) that governs
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the netfilter/iptables software. Attempts to resolve this issue failed,
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after which Harald Welte, one of the copyright holders of iptables, decided
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to go to court. The court decided that FANTEC acted negligently: they would
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have had to ensure to distribute the software under the conditions of the
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GPLv2. The court made explicit that it is insufficient for FANTEC to rely
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on the assurance of license compliance of their suppliers. FANTEC itself is
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required to ascertain that no rights of third parties are violated.</p>
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<blockquote><p>"It is great to see that the court acknowledges the fact
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that vendors themselves are responsible for checking their products for
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GNU GPL compliance. Especially FANTEC, who already had earlier issues
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with GNU GPL compliance, should have known better. This was just
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laziness," says Harald Welte, founder of <a
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href="http://gpl-violations.org">gpl-violations.org</a> and plaintiff
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in the case.</p></blockquote>
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<p>The GNU GPL violation was found at a "Hacking for Compliance workshop"
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of the Free Software Foundation Europe in May 2012 in Berlin. Several
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volunteers helped checking different devices for GNU GPL compliance.
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Afterwards the results where forwarded to gpl-violations.org and their
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lawyers, who followed up on it.</p>
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<p>Although FANTEC denied at first, compliance engineers of FSFE and
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gpl-violations.org were able to prove that the software iptables version
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1.3.7 was on the device, even though FANTEC did not include the sources for
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this program in the provided source code. Besides they showed that the
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software was compiled on another date than the offered source code, proving
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that the source code offered by FANTEC was outdated.</p>
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<blockquote><p>"Together with our volunteers we will continue to ensure that users
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receive the freedom to use, study, share, and improve the software on their
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products. These are the basic principles of the Free Software community,
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and every company distributing the software has to comply with the
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respective licenses. Companies obviously see the benefit in building upon
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Free Software, and they should stick to these basic and simple rules." says
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Matthias Kirschner, FSFE's German coordinator and one of the organisers of
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the compliance workshop.</p></blockquote>
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<p>FSFE provides some <a href="/activities/ftf/useful-tips-for-vendors.html">
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easy steps</a> to follow to make your product GNU GPL compliant.</p>
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<p>The court decision (DE) is available on the <a
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href="http://www.ifross.org/sites/default/files/130618%20Urteil%20Fantec.pdf">IFROSS
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site (PDF)</a>.</p>
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<p>Other news related to GNU GPL violation cases: </p>
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<ul>
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<li>2011-11-10: "<a
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href="https://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20111110-01.en.html">Court
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rejects AVM´s claims opposing third party modifications of GPL
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software"</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</body>
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<tags>
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<tag>front-page</tag>
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<tag>Compliance</tag>
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<tag>Legal</tag><tag content="GNU GPL">GnuGpl</tag><tag>Ruling</tag>
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<tag>Licensing</tag>
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</tags>
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<timestamp></timestamp>
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