On 09/22/2010 09:05 PM, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it. Some people who really dont know much about opensource are actually buying from that seller, check his feedback.

Wrong. Selling most open source software is perfectly legal, according to the licenses

GPLv2:

*** You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. * You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

[paraphrased] provide source code with object code or an offer to send it for no more than cost of distribution

BSD license is even less restrictive than that - to paraphrase, "do whatever you want, just attribute this piece to the original author (1 copyright line + 10 lines of text)"

If they're having any luck selling the software, all the power to them.. though they better respect the license to the letter :P

On 09/23/10 06:53, Konstantin Svist wrote:

On 09/22/2010 09:05 PM, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it. Some people who really dont know much about opensource are actually buying from that seller, check his feedback.

Wrong. Selling most open source software is perfectly legal, according to the licenses

@ Konstantin
WRONG: selling the software is not allowed as you would see from the licence snip that you posted. A fee to cover the cost of distribution is permitted. Not the same thing.

If this seller was showing a reasonable price for distribution of his CD that would seem ligit but it is hard to see how you can AUCTION a distribution fee.

@ Abir:
If you want "someone to do something" maybe you could dig up the FSF page that explains the licence and gives advice on how best to comply. Contact the seller to make him aware of the clear terms of the GPL and any other licence you believe he is not respecting.

You could also ask him where he provides the source code for all this software. There's pretty good chance he is not complying at all with that.

However, until you see him getting bids that are clearly in excess of a reasonable fee I would not worry too much.

regards.

GPLv2:

*** You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. * You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

[paraphrased] provide source code with object code or an offer to send it for no more than cost of distribution

BSD license is even less restrictive than that - to paraphrase, "do whatever you want, just attribute this piece to the original author (1 copyright line + 10 lines of text)"

If they're having any luck selling the software, all the power to them.. though they better respect the license to the letter :P

On 23.09.10 09:56, gg@catking.net wrote:

On 09/23/10 06:53, Konstantin Svist wrote:

Wrong. Selling most open source software is perfectly legal, according to the licenses

@ Konstantin
WRONG: selling the software is not allowed as you would see from the licence snip that you posted. A fee to cover the cost of distribution is permitted. Not the same thing.

If this seller was showing a reasonable price for distribution of his CD that would seem ligit but it is hard to see how you can AUCTION a distribution fee.

Here's the GNU project's view on selling free software:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Of course, if it's not the project itself selling the software but a non-associated third party auctioning off discs on ebay said project is probably not gonna see a single cent of the earnings... :/

On 9/23/10, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it.

In my experience there is nothing you can do about that, educating that kind of repackagers is just wasting your time. We in Audacity project tried dealing with this, got nowhere and simply ignore this.

It would also be nice if you STOPPED USING ALL CAPS :)

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

On 09/23/10 11:27, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On 9/23/10, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it.

In my experience there is nothing you can do about that, educating that kind of repackagers is just wasting your time. We in Audacity project tried dealing with this, got nowhere and simply ignore this.

It would also be nice if you STOPPED USING ALL CAPS :)

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

Hi all,

Just for info here is a more successful response to this problem by commercial outfit that release a GPL version of their software. There was also a successful prosecution in the states recently . So it not necessarily the case that all you can do is say "pretty please".

Here's what appeared on YAFFS mailing list earlier this week.

Dear Readers,

Aleph One Limited discovered a Far-Eastern company selling data-management hardware through a distributor in Europe that used YAFFS in the software, under GPL. We asked the distributor for sight of the Source Code and they were unable to provide it.

With the assistance of the law firms Moorcrofts in Marlow, England, and JBB Rechtsanwalte in Berlin, we pursued the matter with the distributor and negotiated a financial settlement, including an element for damages, to our satisfaction.

We are always ready to discuss suitable terms of a Licence to use YAFFS.

LvS

On Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:56:45 +0200, gg@catking.net wrote:

On 09/23/10 06:53, Konstantin Svist wrote:

On 09/22/2010 09:05 PM, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it. Some people who really dont know much about opensource are actually buying from that seller, check his feedback.

Wrong. Selling most open source software is perfectly legal, according to the licenses

@ Konstantin
WRONG: selling the software is not allowed as you would see from the licence snip that you posted. A fee to cover the cost of distribution is permitted. Not the same thing.

If this seller was showing a reasonable price for distribution of his CD that would seem ligit but it is hard to see how you can AUCTION a distribution fee.

It has always been perfectly OK to sell a copy of GPL software (as long as the license is otherwise met). Otherwise, how could Linux distributors sell boxed sets for profit? And remember that the GNU project was selling tapes of Emacs for $150 in the 1980's. The GPL says nothing about the price for selling a physical copy:

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

as opposed to providing the source, where it is restricted to the actual cost:

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

Opinion:

Don't waste your time and energy on the actions of dishonest internet people.

There is a point to educating/warning/suing corporations (after all, some level of accountability/legal responsibility is part of their "charter").

Not internet ghosts.

Nicolas Robidoux

As long as it seems clear that none of the actually affected parties (i.e. the people who hold the copyright to parts of GIMP and other (L)GPL-licensed bits bundled by the "scammers") care about the alleged problem or would consider doing anything, this discussion is mostly pointless.

--tml

On 09/22/2010 09:05 PM, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it. Some people who really dont know much about opensource are actually buying from that seller, check his feedback.

People like this pop up on the net and/or ebay now and then. What bothers me more about people like this is when they try and rebrand a program, or try and hide the original name/source of the program (sometimes to almost claim it as their own creation). Not much you can do about them other than try and get them on violation of the GPL.

The image on the listings says they can provide a copy of the "GNU GLP License" on request. They couldn't get the name of the license correct in their listings. The license should be included as part of the installation of the software. If they think the license is what must be made available on request, they may not realize its the source code they must make available. Ask them if the source code is included or if they provide a pointer to it for the package being sold (along with all the other dozen or so packagse included on the CD).

On 09/23/10 15:16, Tor Lillqvist wrote:

As long as it seems clear that none of the actually affected parties (i.e. the people who hold the copyright to parts of GIMP and other (L)GPL-licensed bits bundled by the "scammers") care about the alleged problem or would consider doing anything, this discussion is mostly pointless.

--tml

On 23.09.2010 06:05, Abir Sadik wrote:

Heyy..

I was looking for something on ebay and this is what i stumbled upon: some seller or sellers are selling GIMP and many other open source applications (vlc, pidgin) pretending as a "distributor" of the softwares. check this seller http://myworld.ebay.com/bourleche He is selling GIMP and vlc, oo, pidgin etc. with it as "bonus" softwares.

If there is such a market for selling GIMP why not the project itself is selling the software on ebay. In my country (germany) some people do not have access to broadband internet and like to buy a CD of the software.

Best regards Bernhard

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 01:27:41PM +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

On 9/23/10, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it.

In my experience there is nothing you can do about that, educating that kind of repackagers is just wasting your time. We in Audacity project tried dealing with this, got nowhere and simply ignore this.

[...]

Just sell Gimp for lower price including all sources, and the one will go away ;)

Or isn't it posible to give a comment there on the seller? Just add Gimp-url there and people will avoid to buy it...

Ciao, Oliver

eBay has been notified of both the possible license infringement and also of what they call "fee avoidance"--charging almost nothing for the product, a percentage of which goes to eBay, and making their money on their exorbitant shipping charges, on which eBay makes nothing. Between these two violations of eBay policy, the auctions are likely to be ended and the selling warned not to do it again.

(My wife is a high-level eBay seller and knows about this sort of thing...)

On 09/23/10 10:37, Kevin Cozens wrote:

On 09/22/2010 09:05 PM, Abir Sadik wrote:

This is some really serious violation going on, and i hope someone will do something about it. Some people who really dont know much about opensource are actually buying from that seller, check his feedback.

People like this pop up on the net and/or ebay now and then. What bothers me more about people like this is when they try and rebrand a program, or try and hide the original name/source of the program (sometimes to almost claim it as their own creation). Not much you can do about them other than try and get them on violation of the GPL.

The image on the listings says they can provide a copy of the "GNU GLP License" on request. They couldn't get the name of the license correct in their listings. The license should be included as part of the installation of the software. If they think the license is what must be made available on request, they may not realize its the source code they must make available. Ask them if the source code is included or if they provide a pointer to it for the package being sold (along with all the other dozen or so packagse included on the CD).

On 9/23/10, Bernhard Guillon wrote:

I was looking for something on ebay and this is what i stumbled upon: some seller or sellers are selling GIMP and many other open source applications (vlc, pidgin) pretending as a "distributor" of the softwares. check this seller http://myworld.ebay.com/bourleche He is selling GIMP and vlc, oo, pidgin etc. with it as "bonus" softwares.

If there is such a market for selling GIMP why not the project itself is selling the software on ebay.

That basically boils down to "Why is there no GIMP Foundation"? In my sick and screwed imagination the answer would be "Because there is nobody willing to do all the bloody boring daily work required to ensure prosperity of such an organization".

Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

On 09/23/2010 02:00 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

That basically boils down to "Why is there no GIMP Foundation"? In my sick and screwed imagination the answer would be "Because there is nobody willing to do all the bloody boring daily work required to ensure prosperity of such an organization".

It is amazing how *NOT* "bloody boring" things are when one is well compensated for it. If it were a paid position, supervised by a volunteer board of directors, there would be no end of applicants.

I suspect that a paid Foundation position might annoy some developers who have been busting their tails for years, for free.

Oh well.

Jay

On 09/23/10 18:57, Chris Moller wrote:

eBay has been notified of both the possible license infringement and also of what they call "fee avoidance"--charging almost nothing for the product, a percentage of which goes to eBay, and making their money on their exorbitant shipping charges, on which eBay makes nothing. Between these two violations of eBay policy, the auctions are likely to be ended and the selling warned not to do it again.

(My wife is a high-level eBay seller and knows about this sort of thing...)

Nice move , shop the guy to the Ebay police without even pointing out the source code requirements and asking him to comply with the licence.

Who gives a shit if he claws back a bit of ebay commission. They're far bigger crooks.

Ebay are quite happy for people to do false bidding and have even made their system so anonymous that it's damn near impossible to tell anything about the bidding history of the phantoms you are bidding against. I long since stopped buying on ebay for that very reason. It a mugs game.

False bidding suits them down to the ground because they get more comm. The fact that it is illegal in most countries where they operate does not seem to worry them unduly.

Interesting to note that there is means on the site of reporting people fiddling the postage and it's thier number one offence. However you have to jump though hoops to report false bidding.

I guess your wife must know a thing or two about that side of ebay as well.

Shame no-one found fit to contact the seller and ask him to do whatever it is that Gimp licence requires rather than using some underhand bullshit about ebay rules, that does not concern gimp in the slightest,. to stab him in the back.

With that mentality, if your neighbour parks in front of your house I suppose rather than ask him to move it, you'd call the police and report him for not having enough tread on his tires

Snidey and pathetic.

Hardly the spirit of free software.

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 09:15:52PM +0200, gg@catking.net wrote:

On 09/23/10 18:57, Chris Moller wrote:

eBay has been notified of both the possible license infringement and also of what they call "fee avoidance"--charging almost nothing for the product, a percentage of which goes to eBay, and making their money on their exorbitant shipping charges, on which eBay makes nothing. Between these two violations of eBay policy, the auctions are likely to be ended and the selling warned not to do it again.

(My wife is a high-level eBay seller and knows about this sort of thing...)

Nice move , shop the guy to the Ebay police without even pointing out the source code requirements and asking him to comply with the licence.

Who gives a shit if he claws back a bit of ebay commission. They're far bigger crooks.

I have looked at thzat page, and only found something like "40 programs bundle", for 0,99 $.

Nothing where I can see that it is GPLed stuff.

Maybe I missed that in the thread.... did someone bought that stuff and found Gimp, Blender, openOffice and so on on that bought CD/DVD?

Or is it just rumor?

if it's proven, that it's against GPL license, then contacting the FSF would be good.... they will have lawyers and some institutional power to go on with that and it might become soon a problem to those people and ebay.

Ciao,
Oliver

On 09/23/2010 02:00 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

That basically boils down to "Why is there no GIMP Foundation"? In my sick and screwed imagination the answer would be "Because there is nobody willing to do all the bloody boring daily work required to ensure prosperity of such an organization".

A foundation can hire someone to be the bureaucrat, but someone on the inside needs to do the inital filing&organizing. We are sadly either pixel pushers or bit pushers, not paper pushers.

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Jay Smith wrote:

I suspect that a paid Foundation position might annoy some developers who have been busting their tails for years, for free.

Not really. We do it for fun and all have jobs that cover our asses. One of the things that has been discussed is that GIMP could really use a paid developer for example. Someone who is paid to work full time to just work on GIMP. There wasn't any opposition to the idea, just nobody had time or will to push it into reality. I guess one of the blockers is the question of what entity should do the hiring. Witch brings us right back at the lack of a dedicated paper pusher.

The only way I can imagine "Rise of the Mighty Gimp Foundation" happening is one of our lead developers and our cat herder(aka the Tie Wearing Office Manager) quiting their day jobs and becoming starting members of the foundation and its first full time employees. It comes with the price of not being able to sneak off on the excuse of work ;) . If this is something that can actually happen... I don't know. May be its not even practical and there are other options. But if the people in question would show an interest to risk the leap, I'd support it.

-- Alexia

selling the software on ebay. In my country (germany) some people do not have access to broadband internet and like to buy a CD of the software.

GIMP has been relatively often distributed on CDs that come with relevant magazines, also in Germany. Very recently even, I know because some of these publishers tend to ask for permission (even if they don't have to) and have asked for my postal address and sent me copies... And like ten years ago I received some Japanese computer graphics magazine (which was not very useful) for maybe a year after "giving permission" to distribute a Windows build I had done back then...

--tml

On 09/23/10 22:07, Tor Lillqvist wrote:

selling the software on ebay. In my country (germany) some people do not have access to broadband internet and like to buy a CD of the software.

GIMP has been relatively often distributed on CDs that come with relevant magazines, also in Germany. Very recently even, I know because some of these publishers tend to ask for permission (even if they don't have to)

Well since they probably weren't putting the source code on the CD they probably do need written permission. Whether you have/had the authority to grant that permission is another question.

Maybe someone would like to grass them to the tax office. I'm sure they've done something wrong if they did hard enough.

/gg

and have asked for my postal address and sent me copies... And like ten years ago I received some Japanese computer graphics magazine (which was not very useful) for maybe a year after "giving permission" to distribute a Windows build I had done back then...

--tml

Whether you have/had the authority to grant that permission is another question.

I should note that nowadays such requests coming to me are for PSPI, not GIMP itself, as I haven't built and distributed any GIMP binaries in a long time. When they used to ask for "permission" to redistribute GIMP, I did always try to reply "I can't give the permission even if I wanted, but you don't need it anyway" or something to that effect.

(Also for PSPI, I always reply "you don't need to ask for permission", but some insist. Not often nowadays though.)

--tml

On 23.09.2010 21:55, Alexia Death wrote: > The only way I can imagine "Rise of the Mighty Gimp Foundation"

happening is one of our lead developers and our cat herder(aka the Tie Wearing Office Manager) quiting their day jobs and becoming starting members of the foundation and its first full time employees. It comes with the price of not being able to sneak off on the excuse of work ;) . If this is something that can actually happen... I don't know. May be its not even practical and there are other options.

It has been done before. With great success: http://www.perlfoundation.org/completed_grants

Several developer-years have been granted, mostly dating back to the early 2000s (surprise :-)

regards, yahvuu

On 23 September 2010 21:55, Alexia Death wrote:

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Jay Smith wrote:

I suspect that a paid Foundation position might annoy some developers who have been busting their tails for years, for free.

Not really. We do it for fun and all have jobs that cover our asses. One of the things that has been discussed is that GIMP could really use a paid developer for example. Someone who is paid to work full time to just work on GIMP. There wasn't any opposition to the idea, just nobody had time or will to push it into reality. I guess one of the blockers is the question of what entity should do the hiring. Witch brings us right back at the lack of a dedicated paper pusher.

You could probably use the GNOME foundation as the hiring entity and for the other formal stuff. But yes, someone needs to do the initial work, and follow up. Paper-pushing and cat herding indeed. Why do we have so few people interested in that in FOSS? The goals are noble enough.

On 23.09.2010 18:28, Bernhard Guillon wrote:

On 23.09.2010 06:05, Abir Sadik wrote:

Heyy..

I was looking for something on ebay and this is what i stumbled upon: some seller or sellers are selling GIMP and many other open source applications (vlc, pidgin) pretending as a "distributor" of the softwares. check this seller http://myworld.ebay.com/bourleche He is selling GIMP and vlc, oo, pidgin etc. with it as "bonus" softwares.

If there is such a market for selling GIMP why not the project itself is selling the software on ebay. In my country (germany) some people do not have access to broadband internet and like to buy a CD of the software.

why the heck has this to done by the big, mystical "project"?!?

To all those that are really pissed off by such monetizing practices: please turn your anger into something useful and just sell similar CDs yourself at fair prices! That's the simplest solution.

Leaving the ebay specifics aside, what is happening here is that someone is harvesting badly informed customers. These best and easiest way to inform these customers/prey is on the marketplace itself!

The successful keywords/style of advertising can be learned on ebay itself, and if you provide the download links right in the advertisement, your DVD burner probably won't wear off...

have fun, yahvuu

Amid all the shouting has anyone taken to effort to determine whether he has _in any way_ infringed the licence?

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

from V3:

section 4: You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.

So, contrary to what I thought earlier he is fully entitile to auction sell or whatever and get what he can for this disk. Postage included!

section 6: d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.

So it would seem that providing a link to an official gimp download (a third party in his context) would fulfill the source requirements.

Since most of the "free" world seems to believe in the presumption of innocence , has anyone bought or seen what he is distributing to accuse him of not complying with this or any other requirement of GPL?

I don't like the fact he is hiding the program names in his presentation but I don't see anything in GPL that that is infringing.

He is distributing free software which would not seem to be contrary to the wishes and intentions of the Gimp project. His customers seem pretty happy with the deal except for the occasional idiot who does like some have done here and start blasting him with neg. feedbacks without even contacting him with a complaint.

So has ANYONE proof of infringement ?

/gg/

On 24.09.2010 18:30, Marc Lehmann wrote:

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 10:52:12PM +0200, yahvuu wrote:

with the price of not being able to sneak off on the excuse of work ;) . If this is something that can actually happen... I don't know. May be its not even practical and there are other options.

It has been done before. With great success: http://www.perlfoundation.org/completed_grants

Most of the perl6-related ones have resulted in only hot air, or the guy running away from the project early. Thats most of the early grants - be prepared for a few years of disappointments.

If you want to express your general disappointment that christmas hasn't happenend yet -- well, yes, from my limited perspective, it's not that long that perl6 can be distinguished from hot air.

Btw, i enjoyed your talk on continuations at the very same perl workshop that Damian Conway -- sponsored by TPF -- performed his evil show. Hot air? I'd call it a breathtaking experience with immense inspirational repercussion.

So if you have a word of warning regarding GIMP development, i think you have to be more specific. Seriously, i fail to see any reason why having a credited developer working full-time should not result in a huge boost for the project.

regards, yahvuu

Hi,

this thread has spawned several sub-threads about different topics, yet not a single one of them has got a meaningful subject.

So, the next time someone decides to talk about something completely different, please consider to change the subject of the message as well.

In order to facilitate threading in mail apps that don't use the References: and/or In-Reply-To: headers, keep the original subject once, as shown in this message - if you reply, please remove the (was: ...) part.

Regards, Michael, TWOM and cat herder

On Thu, 2010-09-23 at 18:28 +0200, Bernhard Guillon wrote:

On 23.09.2010 06:05, Abir Sadik wrote:

Heyy..

I was looking for something on ebay and this is what i stumbled upon: some seller or sellers are selling GIMP and many other open source applications (vlc, pidgin) pretending as a "distributor" of the softwares. check this seller http://myworld.ebay.com/bourleche He is selling GIMP and vlc, oo, pidgin etc. with it as "bonus" softwares.

If there is such a market for selling GIMP why not the project itself is selling the software on ebay. In my country (germany) some people do not have access to broadband internet and like to buy a CD of the software.

You can get a copy of GIMP on a CD/DVD in the newspaper shop nearby pretty much every week. Just check out the computer magazines. Currently there's the c't special on sale that comes with lots of interesting software for photo editing:
https://www.heise.de/kiosk/special/ct/10/06/programme.shtml

Sven