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According to Wang An, CEO of DCloud, there are errors in the description of DCloud and APICloud litigation in this article. Wang An said:
1. There is a special "Beijing Intellectual Property Court" in Beijing, whose research on GPL is professional.
2. As far as I know, there is no precedent in China for overseas entities to sue domestic companies for GPL agreement breach.
3. APICloud lost the lawsuit because they cracked the software of DCloud and infringed the intellectual property rights of DCloud, which has nothing to do with GPL in essence.
4. GPL has many exceptions, for example, it can be closed source if released as a polymer. The e-book company can definitely go around and open source the part that does not involve internal trade secrets and close the part that involves trade secrets. Similar to Google GMS, it is also possible not to open source.
5. I think this is not a matter of law, but a matter of attitude. To enjoy the achievements of GPL, we should give feedback to the community.
Onyx, a domestic e-book manufacturer, is alleged to have refused to release its e-book device source code, violating the GPL v2 open source agreement.
Onyx's e-book device is a revision of the Linux kernel, which is based on the GPL v2 license. The license is obviously "infectious" and requires that the secondary distribution project must also be open source (in essence, it must also be based on GPL v2. For more information about GPL v2, see: GPL 2.0 protocol ）。
As shown in the figure above, a user posted a screenshot of the conversation on Reddit, and someone pointed out to Onyx that Violations The official response of Onyx was "the technical team said that the source code cannot be opened at present", and hoped that others would understand. It seems to admit that he has violated the rules, but there is no way to correct it.
It is wrong to violate the agreement, and Onyx's attitude has aroused many people's dissatisfaction, and even raised the criticism of Onyx to the national level.
Some critics believe that the Onyx incident exposed the lack of respect for open source agreements by Chinese manufacturers and the inability of laws to effectively protect open source agreements. The most convenient solution is to limit the use of software. "For most Chinese companies, licenses such as GPL are just a piece of paper in the trash... The only way to protect yourself is not to share code with them."
This is a scene we don't want to see.
In fact, the events of developing software in violation of the open source agreement occur from time to time around the world. No matter where it is, it is difficult for national forces to prevent the occurrence of violations of laws and regulations. More importantly, countries all over the world do the same thing through legal accountability and rectification of violations. It was also in 2008 that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit first asserted the copyright validity of open source agreements in actual cases.
However, some people questioned the legal effect of the open source agreement in China, believing that such litigation could not be realized in China, which led to the virtual existence of the open source agreement system in China.
In fact, China has acquiesced in the legal effect of the open source agreement in actual litigation cases, and severely punished infringement.
In December 2019, the Beijing High People's Court made a final judgment on the dispute between the defendant Youzi (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., Youzi (Beijing) Mobile Technology Co., Ltd., and the plaintiff Digital Paradise (Beijing) Network Technology Co., Ltd. over the infringement of computer software copyright.
The plaintiff's digital paradise company HBuilder software has three plug-ins using GPL, and the two defendants' APICloud software copied and modified three plug-ins in HBuilder software, but APICloud did not open source all according to the provisions of GPL. Finally, the court ordered the defendant to stop the infringement and compensate 710000 yuan.
This case proves that Chinese laws can guarantee the effectiveness of the open source agreement and protect the rights and interests of copyright owners.
China's open source ecosystem is gradually being established and improved. Including Open Source China, there are open source communities in China, such as Open Source News Agency, to voice the open source concept; The second version of the domestic Mulan license has also been approved by the Open Source Promotion Association and is internationally used; The contribution rate of giants such as Huawei and BAT to the open source community is increasing year by year. Many open source preachers and developers also devote their time and energy to open source construction, and strive to maintain the spirit of freedom and sharing
The development of global technology is being impacted by various political and social factors. Open source should be a weapon to maintain "technology neutrality", rather than a form of blockade based on individual cases.
