Need help with possible GPL violation

[Georg C. F. Greve]

Hi Tim,

 || On Tue, 1 Apr 2003 22:54:01 +0200
 || "Tim Kosse" <tim.kosse at gmx.de> wrote: 

 tk> Please help me with this issue, does this company violate the GPL
 tk> or is this allowed? Is it valid to sell trialware GPL software?

This is a tricky situation that would need to be investigated more
deeply to come up with a qualified final ruling.

From reading your mail I got the impression that it is likely they are
violating the GPL. Not because they are selling GPL software -- that
is perfectly legal -- but because they deliberately seem to hide
information about the freedoms associated with the application.

So it seems likely they are violating the clauses of paragraphs 1 and
3 of the GPL; do they distribute it with source code? If not, where is
their written offer to do so? Is a copy of the GPL in the distribution
in a reasonably visible location?

Also it might be possible to argue in terms of customer protection,
because what they are doing is suggesting to customers that they have
relicensed this program in a proprietary way. 

Although it seems they avoided that technically, sometimes courts will
base their decisions upon appearance to the customers.


As for general treatment of such matters, experience shows that making
such cases public decreases the chances of finding a solution because
it makes the other party much less willing to listen/compromise for
feeling accused publicly.

So posting this on discussion, a public mailing list, might not have
been the best idea for your specific case, although the discussion
might certainly be generally useful to others.


On http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html you'll find some
good information about how to deal with GPL license violations.

Likewise, the GPL FAQ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html can
never be recommended enough.

For general license questions, you can always mail licensing at gnu.org.

If you seek assistance by the FSF to deal with potential license
violations, you can always contact us directly. 

As you seem to live in Germany, germany at fsfeurope.org might be the
best choice for you.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network                        (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World	                           (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
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