this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
276 points (99.3% liked)
Linux
48328 readers
659 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah but I'm not gonna sue or risk getting sued over it.
Unless you are one of the original developers who wrote the GPL code included in Winamp, you have no standing to sue them anyway.
Wouldn't an end user of something that should be GPLed be able to request the source?
Not really because their rights have not been violated, nothing was stolen from them. They were presented with a software product that had a limited license, and they accepted that. As far as they are concerned, the developer has fulfilled their contractual obligation to them; they were never offered a GPL license so they got exactly what they were offered.
The author of the GPL'd code however is another story. They wrote software distributed as GPL, Winamp took that code and included it without following the GPL. Thus that author can sue Winamp for a license violation.
Now if that author is the only one who wrote the software, the answer is simple- Llama Group pays them some amount of money for a commercial license of the software and a contract that this settles any past claims.
However if it's a public open source project, it may have dozens or hundreds of contributors, each of which is an original author, each of which licensed their contribution to the project under GPL terms. That means the project maintainer has no authority to negotiate or take payments on their behalf; each of them would have to agree to that commercial license (or their contributions would have to be removed from the commercial version of the software that remains in Winamp going forward). They would also each have standing to sue Llama Group for the past unlicensed use of the software.