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Allwinner Continues Jerking Around The Open-Source Community

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  • Allwinner Continues Jerking Around The Open-Source Community

    Phoronix: Allwinner Continues Jerking Around The Open-Source Community

    While Allwinner has been caught violating the (L)GPL and resulted in obfuscating their code and playing around with their advertised licenses, now this ARM vendor is taking things a step further...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    What exactly are they making worse, if no action is taken against it.
    Absolutely nothing, because they can do whatever they want in that case.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by user82 View Post
      What exactly are they making worse, if no action is taken against it.
      Absolutely nothing, because they can do whatever they want in that case.
      They're proving that not only are they aware of the infringement, they are actively taking steps to hide the evidence. If it ever does go to court, that's grounds for increased punitive damages. Not that it's likely to go to court...

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      • #4
        Originally posted by gigaplex View Post
        They're proving that not only are they aware of the infringement, they are actively taking steps to hide the evidence. If it ever does go to court, that's grounds for increased punitive damages. Not that it's likely to go to court...
        Doesn't the FSF go after GPL violators?

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Kraut View Post
          Doesn't the FSF go after GPL violators?
          They do only if they own the copyright, which is not the case of all GPL'd software. Some of it even has multiple copyright holders, making it very complicated to enforce it.

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          • #6
            Those allwinner folks are rather fresh. I will make sure to avoid them and their products. I already told a bunch of people not to support this nasty behaviour.

            I mean, really, what more can you ask? You get the stuff for free with all sorts of freedoms. The only thing you are requested to do is share the stuff that was free again free as in freedom. It is not that hard. If they can't at least do that they do not deserve any money on this planet.
            Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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            • #7
              And what is the opinion from ffmpeg?

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              • #8
                Well if we don't like it no problem, we can always ask the Chinese folks to do something about these companies. If the Chinese don't take any drastic measures we can just ban imports from China, right ... errr ... we can, right ?

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                • #9
                  I firmly believe that Allwinner's (alltaker's?) consistent abuse of the GPL should earn them lawsuits, at least in the US and EU.

                  In the EU it might even be possible that the protection of the GPL could be considered an issue of common good and some kind of a formal EU response could be mustered. There are various projects across the European Union contributing open-sourced code.

                  Strengthening GPL's legal standing would be in everyone's interest, excepting a small number of moral-free corporations and China's ruling elite who profit from their freewheeling exporters.

                  In fact China's communist rulers might even sort out Allwinner internally if continued bad media publicity exceeds their calculated tolerance.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Calinou View Post
                    They do only if they own the copyright, which is not the case of all GPL'd software. Some of it even has multiple copyright holders, making it very complicated to enforce it.
                    The FSF will back copyright enforcement suits for projects outside of the FSF as well. Busybox being the most notable, but Scummvm is a clearer-cut case of a project that the FSF wouldn't have their own claim in.

                    I’m near-infinitely curious about open source technology and how that impacts us not at just a microscopic leve but also a macroscopic as well – how it’s changing not just how I see software and product development but how it’s changing the landscape of publishing as a whole. That’s why I spend time looking into and understanding licensing and the licensing issues (especially around the GPL) and find interesting comparisons between WordPress and other CMSs and their challenges (like Joomla’s Civil War). With Joomla’s and WordPress’ issues with licensing it can be hard, at times, to understand what exactly the […]


                    I am sure you saw the news post item about certain GPL violation. Let me present here some more details about the case. Disclaimer Fingolfin...


                    It's still necessary for an actual copyright holder in the project to participate in the suit, but the FSF will sometimes provide logistical support and even legal counsel.

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