> From: "Curtis Olson" > > But here they are not selling anything. Can we call what they are selling a > distribution? The rights to download something that is already available for > free download? > > So my questions: > > 1. Am I right to be concerned about this? > > 2. Is there any outright GPL violation going on here? > > 3. If there is a GPL violation, how should we go about addressing it (and > legitimate, legal methods only please.) >
Hi Curt, Andy's suggestion that this is ok because of the publicity value doesn't detract from the fraud aspect. Has anyone asked for a copy of the license the seller is offering "on request"? Copyright violations always come down to a matter of judicial opinion. Rarely is it cut and dry. In other words you can make a request to the seller to cease his operation, or you can notify ebay of a violation without having to prove violation. I am reasonably sure that Ebay will respect the wishes of anyone who can prove simply that they hold the copyright, regardless of the content or wording of the license. They do not expect you to be a lawyer, and they will delist almost anything that is contested. There is a slight possibility that Ebay has a special policy for GPL license claims, but I would doubt that. The only question is then, do you want this seller's auction removed? If you want to opinion of project members on this, the my vote would be yes, remove it. Best, Jim P.S. Maybe if there was just something really obvious on flightgear.org that this software was free to download, these ebayers would be out of business one way or another. I'm not sure there is anywhere on flightgear.org that the word "Free" appears, so it might be a while even before a ebay buyer realizes they got stiffed. -- Jim Wilson Kelco Industries PO Box 160 Milbridge, ME 04658 207-546-7989 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
