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The GPL-Violations.org Project (2016)

123 points| generalizations | 5 years ago |gpl-violations.org

33 comments

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[+] phildenhoff|5 years ago|reply
If you manage a website like this, I implore you to spend an hour and think about someones first-time experience when they land on your site.

- The logo goes to the homepage

- the "gpl-violations.org" link goes to the homepage

- the page title goes to the homepage

- About describes the goal of the project and who's behind it, but not how to access the project... or if that's even a thing.

- The GPL page lists the GPL itself

- FAQ has a drop down... for four pages that I don't have the context to pick from? Who is this site for? The categories also aren't the same. Some are people (Vendors) others are topics (Legal).

Beyond reading those pages, as an individual landing on the page I'm exhausted at trying to find out what gpl-violations.org does.

> The gpl-violations.org project tries to raise public awareness about past and present infringing use(r)s of GPL licensed software.

Yes, but _what do you do_? Email people? Run marketing campaigns?

> The project wants to act as information and communication platform between all parties involved with licensing of free software

Where is this platform? How do I access it? Is your selling point acting as a liaison? If so, why would you not put a big "contact us" button front and center?

Look, I get that you might not want to design your site to look like a brand-new Bay Area SaaS. I don't want you to do what you don't want! I just want you to think about how to best provide info to the people who visit your website (and who might want to join your cause). And, so far, this ain't it!

[+] ISL|5 years ago|reply
My expectation from the URL would have been better served by a perpetually-maintained static html page enumerating GPL violators.
[+] remram|5 years ago|reply
Agreed, this is empty of information.

There's a wikipedia page for the organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl-violations.org Among other things, it mentions that the website was offline for most of 2015, and while they recovered it, I am not sure if they have been in activity since (whatever their activity is).

[+] john_moscow|5 years ago|reply
Last entry in the news section is from 2016. Looks dead in the water to me.
[+] MaxBarraclough|5 years ago|reply
One more minor point: http should redirect to https.
[+] LaF0rge|5 years ago|reply
If you have so many comments, why raise it here and not mail the contact stated at the website? Do you think it is more productive in effecting a change to only post this here, rather than to whoever is responsible?
[+] tehjoker|5 years ago|reply
I think this summarizes what they do:

"Does gpl-violations actually have any ability to do this ?

In the situations where violations have been found and action taken enforcement has been successful. This includes out of court settlements with several large vendors and a legal injunction against Sitecom. We strive to resolve issues amicably. When this fails we resolve them through legal actions."

"Why do you send warning letters to GPL violators without contacting them first?

When we started enforcing the GPL, we tried it by sending e-mails, faxes and letters ourselves, rather than going through lawyers. However, those letters were simply ignored in almost all cases.

Therefore, it is our experience that trying informal means of communication is not worth the effort, especially since it reduces the amount of time we have for applying to a preliminary injunction (in Germany), and therefore puts us into a worse position.

Formal warning notices sent through our lawyers always tend to draw attention at the appropriate management level, and therefore tend to be addressed with the required seriousness for a major copyright violation. "

[+] tlhunter|5 years ago|reply
I'm confused... Where's the list of violations?
[+] Bellamy|5 years ago|reply
The list of cases was the only interesting thing why I opened the site. Got disappointed
[+] randoramax|5 years ago|reply
That site came out and was popular when D-Link and Cisco were brought to court for violating Welte's copyright, IIRC.
[+] boomboomsubban|5 years ago|reply
Publicly shaming violators is not the goal of the project.
[+] that_guy_iain|5 years ago|reply
So the website states it's not very well maintained. Last news post was 2016, it's actually not maintained instead of poorly maintained. The mailing list where I thought there would be action between the people behind the project was shut down because of a lack of resources.

Honestly, there doesn't seem much point in this website at all. It seems like a dead project.

[+] m463|5 years ago|reply
What I'd like to know is - do they talk to the authors first?
[+] lmm|5 years ago|reply
Yes, they're only able to send notifications if they have an author's copyright to enforce (for a long time it was only Busybox that actually enforced their copyright this way).