Do they know the meaning of GPL?
Posted 14 Oct 2001 at 05:50 UTC by perlamer
There are too much company in China, Korea (but not japan) who just
don't know about the real identity of GPL. And they frequently claims
software complies to GPL but when you ask for source code,
they say "no, you are not going to have it." so what is the meaning of
GPL for them?
after all, i've seen a software with the following statement:
All rights reserved, with compliance to GPL license, this software may
not be modified, changed in ....
(originally in Chinese..)
Slightly related, there are an enormeous number of open proxies and
open mail relays in China (and other parts of Asia). Part of the
problem is that most of us are not good at Chinese, and for many of the
administrators that's the only language they can read. At perl.org I've
blocked mail from most netblocks in the educational networks in China.
Before I did so I would in some periods get hundreds of spam mails from
there per day. :-I
At ORDB we try to translate as much as
the site to as many languages as possibly to help people around the
world to understand the issues. If you are able, maybe it would be
helpful to work on translating www.opensource.org to languages
with many native speakers who do not speak English?
- ask
Not an excuse, posted 14 Oct 2001 at 15:39 UTC by AlanShutko »
(Journeyer)
Not reading English is not an excuse. While it is understandable that
not every system administrator reads English, it is absurd to believe
that a company remarketing a third-party app is unable to find legal
counsel that can understand the license. In the US, that sort of thing
would be gross negligence.
I think it's more likely that these companies just don't care, and
don't feel it's likely that there will be a successful suit against
them. Given the other attempts at IP enforcement against Chinese
individuals and organizations, by far bigger pockets (hello MPAA),
they're probably right.
they also have open Apache, open wu-ftpd (2.4.x!) and open routers,
which allows everybody to announce routes to them. i think somehow we
should arrange some sort of attack on the beijing router, maybe..
amybe... (joke)
however, i do think that education is the most suitable method in doing
this... :-)
Not again, posted 15 Oct 2001 at 16:38 UTC by jbuck »
(Master)
Please don't waste advogato's time with this. If you think you've
found a GPL violation, there's a very specific way to handle it.
Instead of putting a vague complaint on advogato, go to
this page
and follow the instructions.
I don't think the original poster was making a narrow legal point about
one
company; there's a much more general issue about how the culture behind
the
gpl (or other licenses) can spread into places with very different
histories
and above all languages. But given the language barrier is so great, is
there
much any non-Chinese (or Korean etc) writing person can do about this?
rms has been on trips to China to try to explain; unfortunately, most
people
can't do that... On the other hand, as perlamer wrote, this is not a
problem
in Japan, in spite of the language barriers. Nor is it a problem of
democracies
versus dictatorships: Taiwan seems as bad as China. Free software seems
to
be treated as if it were old DOS freeware...
Maybe some Chinese-writing person can tell me I'm wrong, and free
software
actually is understood in China? I hope so!
It may be a small thing, but I did find the text of the GPL in Chinese
on a .gov.cn web site:
http://freesoft.cei.gov.cn/gpl-gb.txt
Perhaps it would help to point errant (mainland) Chinese there ...
Yes, I'm aware that there are cultural factors involved, but this
is exactly the reason for flaming people on advogato, rather than
taking the approach outlined in the FSF FAQ, is counterproductive. In
many
cultures, "face" and shame are big issues. Even in the US,
corporations never want to admit to having done wrong. But
the traditional attitude toward casual copying prevalent in East
Asia is actually closer to the free software view of the world
than the current US approach of draconian copyright restrictions
(DMCA etc).
For this reason, it's better to work quietly behind the scenes to
educate people about their rights and obligations so that the problem
is corrected. It may also be better to find people who speak the
language to help resolve the issues.
legal problems can be easily resolved by taking legal action, and this
is not one that we can easily solve.
as some of the recent repliers
said, it's important to educate, and not taking legal action, nor to
tolerate them.heh
contact FSF?, posted 22 Oct 2001 at 20:32 UTC by mako »
(Master)
If people need clarification, there are plenty of free software
developers and advocates fluent in Chinese that would love to help.
Or even just contact FSF! I know there are people at FSF (although
probably not the same people that usually deal with sort of thing) that
are fluent in Chinese.
I am a native chinese and is fluent in both english and cantonese.
I think i can help to contact FSF and those companies in concern.
Also,both the HKLUG and hklpg.com can offer help too.
Perlamer,you can help too.
I am a native chinese and is fluent in both english and cantonese.
I think i can help to contact FSF and those companies in concern.
Also,both the HKLUG and hklpg.com can offer help too.
Perlamer,you can help too.