Court Case To Test GNU GPL 371
ciaran_o_riordan writes "Tomorrow, a German court will hear the case of AVM, a distributor of Linux-based routers, which seeks to block Cybits from distributing software that modifies the routers' software to add content-filtering functionality. Free Software Foundation Europe explains: 'AVM justified its position using three arguments. First, they stated that their whole product software must be regarded as an entity under AVM copyright, and that this entity must not be modified. The position Mr. Welte [founder of gpl-violations.org and copyright holder of several parts of the Linux kernel] took was that the whole product software would in that case be a derivative work according to the GPL, and thus the whole product software should be licensed under the GNU GPL. AVM then switched to a second argument: that the software embedded on its DSL terminals consisted of several parts. According to Mr. Welte, AVM could then not prohibit anyone from modifying or distributing the GPL licensed software parts. The final argument by AVM was that the software on their DSL terminals is a composition of several different programs, which, due to the creative process, would be a protected compilation and thus under the copyright of AVM and not affected by the copyleft of the GPL.'"
I don't think so (Score:5, Informative)
1. This violates the GPL over the GPL-licensed parts of the whole, and therefore the GPL-licensed parts have to be excluded when the whole is distributed. The same reasoning applies if the restriction is due to a compilation copyright over the whole or a license regarding use that prohibits modification.
2. Irrelevant: the GPL parts continue to be licensed under the GPL or they can not be redistributed. The GPL permission for compilations does not weaken the GPL license for GPL components so compiled.
3. All a compilation copyright means is that no one else can redistribute the compilation. However, it can not restrict redistribution of the GPL licensed parts.
About the only case that can be made is that modified routers can't be sold, but routers could be sold along with the means to modify them. Or a router could be sold, and someone hired to modify it.
Of course, I am not a lawyer, and would welcome one correcting any error I made above.
Re:In addition, the compilation is under the GPL (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, a compilation is a derived work
Not legally, no. To create a compilation, you do need rights to publish each part, but you do not need permission to modify or prepare derivative works. And even if that weren't the case, the GPL explicitly has an exception.
From v3: "Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate."
From v2: "In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."