Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell May Be Violating the GNU GPL

GNU meditatesCompliance guide leaves room for doubt

Yesterday in the links, we included a couple about the SFLC's new guide to GPL compliance. Soon after the dispatch of a comprehensive document and accompanying announcement, press coverage came as well. Some articles about it include this one from Heise.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has published A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance. The guide provides a basic legal overview of the GNU General Public Licence and related licences and gives practical advice to businesses on how they can comply with the licence.


Here is a personal perspective.

For years people have suggested that open-source adoption would go even faster if only open-source licenses like the GNU General Public License (GPL) were easier to understand. My personal belief is that "It's so hard to understand!" tends to be an euphemism for "I really want to pilfer this open-source software but its terms don't let me!" After all, the terms of the GPL have been explained repeatedly, including by the Free Software Foundation itself, which authored the GPL.


More coverage came from:



What's most interesting and reverent to us, however, was this. Someone in the IRC channel brought it up.

IANAL, but the GPL Compliance Guide I cited from is prepared for the Software Freedom Law Center by Bradley M. Kuhn, Aaron Williamson, and Karen M. Sandler, the last two of them being lawyers. I suppose they know what they mean.

Unless I am unable to understand the intricacies of the American legal system, SFLC's GPL Compliance Guide just proves Novell guilty for not making available ALL the sources to ANYONE who might own the corresponding binaries.

You can't build a "community enterprise Linux" out of SLED/SLED the same way you can build it out of RHEL's sources, because you can't have security updates. This being said, SLED/SLED is open-source... only on paper. As an acknowledgment of this hypocritical behavior of Novell, Microsoft has now agreed to buy $100m more worth of SLES coupons. Do you still wonder why?


This seems like a deja vu because Novell lives on the very edge or beyond it [1, 2, 3]. The new picture your can find here says a lot about Novell's attitude towards the GNU GPL. If only it was funny...

Bad Novell

Recent Techrights' Posts

Deja vu: Hitler's Birthday, Andreas Tille elected Debian Project Leader again
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Microsoft's 'Lawsuit Diplomacy' (SLAPPs Riding UK Libel Law and Piggybacking UK GDPR, Inapplicable!) Will Only Give a Worse Image to Microsofters (and Microsoft), Give Exposure to Even More Suppressed Facts and Scandals
Microsoft came to dominate some sectors because of (or owing to) crimes; Microsoft won't just go away without some more crimes.
 
Twisting Microsoft's Failure (Transmitting Malware) as "SSH Backdoors" and a Linux Problem
Somehow we almost always find that those FUD pieces about "Linux" are based on obvious falsehoods
Vista 11 Has Burned OEMs and Some Move to GNU/Linux
When people can finally avoid Windows (there's no reason to attach it to new PCs) there will be a lot more GNU/Linux users out there
Remember That Microsoft Mass Layoffs Are Imminent Because Its 'Empire' is Falling Apart
European politicians take a long, hard look a Free software
Richard Stallman in the UK This Week, Scheduled to Give Two Public Talks (London and Oxford)
Those talks do not cover the same topics
Gemini Links 21/04/2025: April, Autism, and ASN
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 20, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 20, 2025
Links 20/04/2025: Partly Assorted Scientific and Political Leftovers
Links for the day
Links 20/04/2025: Many Data Breaches and Growing Censorship Wave
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/04/2025: Canadian Elections and "Use the Best Tools You Have for the Current Environment"
Links for the day
Links 20/04/2025: Bleeding Constitution and ChatGPT Infuriates Users Some More
Links for the day
Chinese OEMs (and World's Largest) Pave a Path Out of Microsoft Windows
So Microsoft now values (or prices) Vista 11 at just $140?
Gemini Links 20/04/2025: Contradictions of Mark Carney and Blog Questions Challenge
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 19, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 19, 2025
Five (or Three) Years Without Social Control Media
Glyn Moody quit X (Twitter)
Electronics in People's Bedrooms
Modern technology not only blurred the gap between "functions" of rooms
Why GNU/Linux is Growing
There's growing interest in GNU/Linux right now because people do not fancy buying a new PC just to 'upgrade' (more spying) Windows
Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Contingencies, GTD, and Old Computers
Links for the day
Links 19/04/2025: Economic Races, Charm Offensives, and USB-C Rants
Links for the day
Links 19/04/2025: "Infantilization at Big Tech" and LLM Slop Abused in Defiance of Workplace Rules/Policies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Palm Addiction and Real Experts
Links for the day
Egypt is Controlled by Google, Not Microsoft
Moving from Microsoft to Google is not the answer
Microsofters Say They Cannot Find a Job (That They Want) Because of Techrights, But Techrights Merely Reported on Their Behaviour
Quit pointing the finger at people who are recipients of abuse or merely mention the abuse
Free Software and Standards - Not Marketing Blitz - Needed Amid Growing Severity of Dependency on Hostile Suppliers (or Another Country's Sovereignty)
ZenDiS can be described as the "Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration"
When It Comes to the Web, Google is Evil and It Destroys the Web's Integrity With LLM Slop
Even academia, which is meant to keep standards high, is being lured into LLM slop
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 18, 2025