GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 171184
Possible Gimp copyright violation by third party company
Last modified: 2006-01-26 15:45:20 UTC
Hi I'm the general coordinator of the JVCL, a library of components for Delphi released under the MPL licence. Recently, one of our user reported that a company called Luxuriosity was proposing our work for sale, infringing our copyright on the documentation that they put online without our consent ( http://www.luxuriousity.com/delphi.htm ). This page has now been removed, however by navigating a bit further on their website, I found this page: http://www.luxuriousity.com/photo.htm By reading it carefully, it appears clear to me that this is The Gimp and that they don't even mention your group in here. On top of this, the screen capture even try to hide the name of the application, but thorough inspection can reveal it definitely is The Gimp. While I have contacted those persons with regard to the JVCL copyright violation, I didn't take the liberty to contact them with regard to The Gimp, letting you decide what course of action to take. I hope this helps. Cheers Olivier Sannier JVCL Coordinator obones@altern.org
http://www.gimp.org/about/selling.html
I know that one can sell The Gimp and I accept that. What I find annoying is that this company sells "The Gimp" under another name, not crediting any of the authors and claiming it's their own software and they support it.
What do you suggest that we do about this?
Well, maybe you could ask them not to claim they wrote the software, and ask them to clearly say this is The Gimp and add a link to your website. After all, that would only be fair: They continue to sell because they are entitled to do so, but they stop misleading users by having them buy a product under a false name. In the end, I'm not the one to decide, I just find this situation disturbing.
If they are selling, whithout compliance with the GPL - that is, offering the source code to whoever purchase it from them - and it seens they don't - they'd have to hear a word from "the GIMP foundation legal department". Since the GIMP developers had choosen to work together with Gnome foundation instead of having a GIMP foundation, them it should be Gnome,org that should formally contact them on this issue. And actually, I think it really should be done.
Joao, did you purchase a copy from them. The GPL gives you several options of offering the source code, and only requires you to offer it to your direct customers. We may not like what some do to make money with The GIMP, but unless there is proof of any iilegal activities, any action can only damage the reputation of The GIMP community. I suggest that you buy a copy from them and tell us what is in there. You could ask if you can be compensated by money from donations that were collected in the past. But please don't try to start a lynch mob.
I'm going to set this to NEEDINFO until we know if there is a license violation or not.
If we wanted to do something about this, someone will have to purchase a copy and check what exactly is provided. I am pretty sure that one could find a reason to sue these people and I would be happy to see this happening. But as long as we are only guessing, there's not much we can do. If someone wants to take care of this, I think we could consider to use some money available to the GIMP project to come up for the expenses. This should be discussed on the gimp-developer mailing-list though. I am closing this bug-report now because it doesn't make much sense to deal with this in our bug-tracker.
I'll contact the sales person and see what he/she says.
Response from Luxuriousity: We are distributing strictly according to the terms of the GPL license. You can find the text of this agreement on the following page: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt I'm not sure why you would want the source code? It seems you would already have access to all of it since you appear to be affiliated with the gimp.org website where this code is published under the GPL license. But, nevertheless: The source code for gimp can be found on this page: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ The source code downloads for the windows port we used can be found on this page: http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html Source code for the installers can be found on this page: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/source.html Source for GTK can be found on this page: http://www.gtk.org/download/ Source for libiconv can be found on this page: http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/ Source for PNG and MNG/JMG can be found on this page: http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/ Source for TIFF can be found on this page: http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/ Source for JPG can be found on this page: http://www.ijg.org/files/ Source for gettext can be found on this page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/gettext.html If you have further questions, we refer you to this page: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html Follow-up response, when asked if they had made any changes to the official sources: Yes, we use all the GPL original sources and yes, of course we make the source available strictly according to the terms of the GPL. (from the looks of the screenshots, they don't even rebrand the program - the toolbox still says "The GIMP") I have asked that gimp.org get some credit on their site, and that they consider donating part of the cost of the program to the GIMP. Beyond that, there is IMHO nothing else that we can do. Dave.
Yep, it would only be fair if they at least mention it's not "Luxuriousity photo" that they sell, but the Gimp with a nice link to gimp.org
If the don't offer the source themselves, but rely on gimp.org links, that's not good enough to satisfy the GPL. Also, a lot of GIMP repackagers peddle on eBay, it would be nice if someone could get eBay to clarify whether their misrepresentation policies cover rebranding freely available software without adding any real value.
The GPL FAQ has a section about giving links to another server: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-faq.html#SourceAndBinaryOnDifferentSites So they have to offer the sources themselves or make a specific arrangement with us (which they did not do so far).
FWIW, I have tried to clarify why linking to the GIMP mirrors is not sufficient in our "selling the GIMP" page: http://www.gimp.org/about/selling.html
Reply to comment #10 from Dave: if Luxuriousity is only providing links to the GIMP ftp mirrors and not providing their own copy of the source code, then they are violating the requirements of section 2 of the GPL (unless they can ensure that we will not stop distributing the source code for old versions, which they cannot do without contacting us). So I think that this bug should be reopened until that issue can be clarified.
Dave, why didn't you simply order a copy of Luxuriousity (or have a friend order it, they might have recognized a "known" name of the GIMP community)? Or one of their customers about it - they are selling it on Ebay, so it shoul be evident if anything got sold...
Is anyone still pursuing this? If not, we should close this bug.
Re comment #16: Because I don't want to spend my money on the GIMP. In response to whether it's being followed up, I recontacted the site and got this answer: Yes, we fully comply with section 3[...] To be specific, we provide: 1) the actual source code on the CD 2) links to the most recent versions of the source code 3) a written offer to mail the most recent version of the source code on CD.