Is this legal? (GPL Software / Licensing Issues)

Question

I work for a software / design firm and I recently found out that our "in house" CMS is actually MODx that has been re-skinned by one of our designers. MODx is licensed under the GPL Ver 2.. I would like to know if it is ethical / legal to be selling this to clients.

We also offer another package that is actually ZenCart, is this legal as well?

I thought that software for commercial applications needed to be LGPL, are these applications being used "commercially"? We are certainly selling them to clients, while acting like they were developed in house...

I'd love to hear your thought / clarifications on this topic, I for one find it at least unethical. What do you think?

Answer 1

Its perfectly legal to use and sell any GPL program. Thats part of what makes the GPL so great. The only thing about the GPL is if they make changes to the source they have to release the source as GPL also.

Answer 2

For in-house use, you'd be fine.

For selling to clients, you'd have to give the source code to them if they ask for it, and make sure that they know that they are entitled to the source code.

As Harper Shelby suggests, you should talk to your management chain first, then your company's lawyers. If they don't sort things out on their own, then you should consider contacting the Free Software Foundation (FSF) or the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), and maybe the authors of the packages too.

There was a recent post on Groklaw entitled "FSFE and GPL-Violations.org Release Guide to Handling License Violations". FSFE is the Free Software Foundation Europe, and GPL-Violations.org has the goal:

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

The ultimate goal is to make vendors of GPL licensed software understand that GPL is not public domain, and that there are license conditions that are to be fulfilled.

For another illustration of GPL issues, see "Stallman Calls Out Cisco - GPL Violations Alleged" at Dr Dobbs CodeTalk. More on Cisco's problems with GPL.

Answer 3

It's perfectly legal to sell a modified version of GPL (at least v2, I'm not as familiar with v3) software. However, you must still comply with the terms of the license - you must offer the source code, including your modifications, if the modifications fall under the definition of a 'derivative work', which it seems likely they do from your brief description.

Jonathan Leffler's links and recommendations are good, though I'd recommend mentioning the issues to your internal people first - at least give them the chance to do the right thing before you release the hounds.

Answer 4

Don't act on any legal advice you read on a forum like StackOverflow -- including mine. :-)

Here's a passage about GPL from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

The terms and conditions of the GPL are available to anybody receiving a copy of the work that has a GPL applied to it ("the licensee"). Any licensee who adheres to the terms and conditions is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and redistribute the work or any derivative version. The licensee is allowed to charge a fee for this service, or do this free of charge. This latter point distinguishes the GPL from software licenses that prohibit commercial redistribution. The FSF argues that free software should not place restrictions on commercial use, and the GPL explicitly states that GPL works may be sold at any price.

However, if your company is distributing the software under another license not compatible with GPL, then they're violating their license.

ZenCart is also licensed under GPL, so the same restrictions apply.

Answer 5

If they are passing off someone else's work as their own, then regardless of the legal status, I would personally consider that pretty unethical.

From the point of view of your own self interest, this would be one that I would post as anonymous.

Answer 6

How do people who have been around the company for a while behave? For example, are they careful to make sure that the terms of the GPL are satisfied? Or are they acting like they are pulling a fast one over on their clients or the softwares (pre)developers? Do they act like they are experts on law and don't need to check with a lawyer?

This test is not conclusive but it can be very revealing.

Answer 7

As long you give the source code to your clients, and let them the freedom to read, modify and distribute the code they received, you are completely fulfilling the license agreement. You need alse to be sure that your clients know what they can do with the software. Handle your clients the text of the license and a link to the code (or the code itself) will be fine.

The practice of modify and selling code under GPL is explicitly approved by FSF, you can refer to the GPL official faq:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney

LGPL differs from GPl because you can mix LGPL code and code released under closed licenses (as far as I know LGPL was created for libraries, in order to spread the use of the free software as much as possible). GPL don't permits linking with code licensed under non GPL compatible licenses.

Answer 8

Another big thing to look out for is if the company is replacing MODx's copyright notices with their own. As for bringing this to the attention of management, that depends on your work environment. Will they be thankful for you pointing out a potential legal problem, or blame you for creating a big legal mess?

If JohnClaymore is your real name or an alias easily linkable to your real life identity, you will most likely be fired if you bring this to management's attention, as posting your question here has created potential evidence to support the charge of willful infringement, which triples any damages awarded in a copyright lawsuit.

IANAL, this is not legal advice, blah, blah, blah....

Answer 9

I don't know about the legal side, but I think it's very unethical to sell open source software as if it is something that your company developed in-house, when it's only a mod of an open source project.

Now, if you're selling the service and the support, as in, "we'll take care of powering up your site & keeping it up and running", then it's different.
I mean, if the customers probably don't have many (or any) people that have technical knowledge about running websites, then it wouldn't really make much difference whether they know that your using an open source system, since they still wouldn't have a clue how to use it to run a website.

Answer 10

There is nothing in what you said that is illegal. However, when your company distributes (sells) the software, it must

• Distribute the modified program under the same license the unmodified program used.
• Fufil all your obligations as a distributer under the GPL. Generally this means your customers must have access to the sources in such a way that it would be possible for them to build the executables themselves if they want to.

Of course your company's legal department should be aware of this situation. If not, they should be made aware of it.