Selling a ShowEQ guide violates the GPL?

[Wonky]

I have seen "howto" guides on how to set up ShowEQ for sale on the web.

How do the developers feel about this?

And doesn't this violate the GPL license SEQ is protected under?

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

[Cryonic]

How does selling a manual violate the GPL? The software may be protected under the GPL, but not the steps needed to get it to work.

[Wonky]

I think it has to do with distribution, he is telling you where to download SEQ for a fee.

[Cryonic]

Magazines charge a fee to buy them and they have been carrying GPL programs on their CDs or talking about them and telling you where to get them. The guides aren't selling the source code, just the information on how to get it.

[BlueAdept]

Originally posted by Cryonic
Magazines charge a fee to buy them and they have been carrying GPL programs on their CDs or talking about them and telling you where to get them. The guides aren't selling the source code, just the information on how to get it.

I dont think it violates the GPL, but I think the people who do it are sleazy and shouldnt be encouraged.

The only thing you might be able to get them on is plagiarism if they copied something from the boards to make their guide. Also if it is hosted on a "free" site, you could probably get rid of the site by emailing the hoste saying they are using it as a business.

I have seen 2 of the "guides" and the ones I saw didnt include much information and basically just gave you the links to the web sites that have the information you need (including a link to my web site which I emailed them and requested that they remove the link, but they never did). One did come with a script to download and install SEQ. Big whoop...

About the only thing you can do is to hope that most people are smart enough to NOT spend the cash to buy these pieces of trash.

[XannDM]

What about people selling actuall SEQ boxes?

[datadog]

They can legally sell the hardware, and their time in setting them up.

Kinda like buying redhat CD's at CompUSA. You arent buying the software. You are paying for their time and expenses in packaging and distributing the CD's.

[casey]

the GPL allows people to charge for software for convienence.

ie, you can download redhat's multiple cd's which takes time and bandwidth, but is free, or for the convienence of getting it in a box, already burned, and with paper documentation, you pay for it.

Redistribution under the GPL is perfectly legal, as long as the license remains, and the source is distributed. If they package it and decide to charge for it, thats thier peroggative.

If you wanted to go out, but 100 CD-R's, burn showeq source onto it and sell them at $10/cd, that is within the rights granted to you by the GPL. If you wanted to charge for access to an FTP for distribution, that is ok too, so long as the source is available.

[BlueAdept]

Ok...so SEQ is legal to distribute...how about libEQ.a? Has anyone copyrighted it? That might throw a wrench into some of the peoples plans. Make it distributed only with the permission of the copyright holder.

If they include it on the prefab SEQ boxes, it would be a violation of the copyright.

[Cryonic]

since libEQ.a is not covered by the GPL and is automatically copyrighted upon being created (at least this is true for other forms of the written word), then the creators of these boxes could possibly be in violation of the copyright protection. Unfortunately when you get libEQ.a from the ftp sites there is no license agreement covering what can and can't be done with it.

Unfortunately IANAL, so if you really want to know what your rights are, the creators of the libEQ.a library might want to talk to one that deals with IP.

[BlueAdept]

Originally posted by Cryonic
since libEQ.a is not covered by the GPL and is automatically copyrighted upon being created (at least this is true for other forms of the written word), then the creators of these boxes could possibly be in violation of the copyright protection. Unfortunately when you get libEQ.a from the ftp sites there is no license agreement covering what can and can't be done with it.

Unfortunately IANAL, so if you really want to know what your rights are, the creators of the libEQ.a library might want to talk to one that deals with IP.

I think that ftps/websites that carry the libEQ.a should then include a shrinkwrap agreement that could be included in a tarball with libEQ.a. Have something saying that this file is intended for NON commercial use only and that it may not be distributed on any pc that is sold.

Then you could go after the people who sell the boxes on Players Auction if they include it with the machine.

[Cryonic]

That might be a way to fight them, if the copyright holders of libEQ.a are willing to spend money/time with lawyers doing it.

[casey]

Then you could go after the people who sell the boxes on Players Auction if they include it with the machine.

what exactly is the motivation to stop those people? i, personally dont see a point in it.

[Circles]

mostly there isnt, until someoen starts making several million a year on your labor. SEQ is free for anyone that puts in the time, now if dell started selling SEQ enabled systems at $500 a pop and didnt give you a dime, then that is a problem, thats why you include a non-comercial use clause in the distribution.

they make the money because YOU made a good software package. the same is true of linux itself and windows. thats why Msoft is so hard about getting its 10 silver a copy, and thats why linux is such a threat. Its basicly a derivitive work, and by the nature of copyrights, you own it.

why is it derivitive? because it would not exsist without your labor to build upon. nevermind that it doesnt actually do anything to the software itself. Copyrights exsist to protect the profit potental of something.

[Elmo]

While I applaud the idea that you want only technically knowledgeable people running SEQ, and the overall idea of wanting to keep the user base small, I think most efforts to stop these people would be fighting a losing battle.

In the case of libeq.a, it is only one small and simple step of the SEQ installation process. Even if you were able to legally prevent pre-configured boxes from coming with libeq.a (which would probably take a significant chunk of time and $$ to accomplish), I don't know that you could prevent them from including a script that downloads the file using ftp, and even having it run that script automatically when the user boots up their PC the first time.

This group is clearly full of highly technical and creative people and I'm sure you could come up with all sorts of ways to try to thwart the people selling this stuff, but I think really it comes down to the tradeoff of convenience vs. security.

If you change something to make selling SEQ boxes harder, the sellers can match you change for change, and even if you changed things frequently, they could simply provide their customers with a place to download a script that follows the installation steps, and probably even make the PC download updates to the script automatically.

I think as a general rule, the only real way to make it harder for them is to make it harder for everyone.

[Ratt]

Most of the people buying a pre-built box are too stupid to handle any changes in the way things work.

It would be fairly easy to make it REALLY difficult for auto-scripts to work, and make the support side of the house a living nightmare.

But you're right, of course the sellers could always match anything we do... but that's not the hard part... the hard part is fixing all the boxes out there that were sold BEFORE the changes happened.

[Elmo]

I guess my thought was that if you can do it manually in Linux, someone can script it. Even if you "break" SEQ periodically, there will be a discrete set of steps to fix it.

If someone is mass producing SEQ boxes and actually offering support for them, they could probably just keep one script maintained to fix it, and probably devise a way for his/her customers to automatically (or at least very simply) download and execute the latest script.

Even if you kept "breaking" it in new and exciting ways all the time so that the changes would depend on what version you started from, a script could just be written to completely deinstall and reinstall SEQ, using whatever the latest installation steps are.

I suppose you'd be requiring these guys to actually **offer** support, which they might not currently be doing, in order to keep their customers going, but as long as the fixes can be boiled down to a set of automated shell scripts, fixing 1000 PCs would seem to me to be no harder than fixing just a few.

With the advent of the keysniffers, it would seem to me that some sort of regular updates/mainenance/support is required on that end, if only to keep the decodes working, but I suppose even that could be mostly automated if the seller wanted to do it.

[orenwolf]

from http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

---

Anyone can sell ShowEQ. Anyone. For any amount. the GPL only protects the code. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. In fact, all they have to do really is include the source on the system, or even a link in the LICENSE file to here. As long as the source is available, they can do anything they want with the binary, even charge $1,000,000 for it.

[BlueAdept]

Originally posted by orenwolf
from http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

Anyone can sell ShowEQ. Anyone. For any amount. the GPL only protects the code. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. In fact, all they have to do really is include the source on the system, or even a link in the LICENSE file to here. As long as the source is available, they can do anything they want with the binary, even charge $1,000,000 for it.

No one here ever said you couldnt sell an SEQ box. What was said was that selling SEQ with libEQ.a could be considered software piracy depending on who owns the copywrite on it.

What was said was that anyone who does is very sleasy and should be bombarded with spam email and then should be tared and feathered.

[orenwolf]

... now *that* I can support! :)

I actually posted my comments just to offset the suggestion that, like some freeware licenses, one could only charge "reasonable fees" for Showeq distribution.