PicoTech driver violates GPL

[Stefano Sanfilippo]

I am bringing to your attention the case of PicoTech, a UK-based
hardware producer, whose drivers are clearly GPL-licensed but firmly
refuses to release source code.

You can easily test that the software is released under GPL by
downloading any driver package for the PicoScope-family from their
download page [1], extracting the installer package from the tarball and

rpm -qip $packagename.rpm

if it is a RPM, or by inspecting the content if it is a DEB (the
debian/control file even containes a link to the GPLv3 online text). I
shall stress that the package contains no other license text (which is a
common practice on Debian-like systems, since all the OSS licenses are
gathered in /usr/share/common-licenses).

I requested source code to their tech support twice, first being
answered with a routine email (attached), then I was ignored for three
days. Their forum contains extensive discussion on this topic ([2] being
the most representative instance), mainly showing two things:

a) they do not seem to realize or understand the clauses of the GPL.
b) they are refusing to comply with the very same license they applied.

As a personal (non-legal, non-formal) aside, the driver itself is a
small 40kB blob whose quality and lack of documentation is simply
blood-curling. Releasing it to the public might allow to understand and
rewrite the protocol in an usable, modern fashion.

Having been ignored for too long now, I am resorting to your help.
Should you need any further information, please answer to my email.

Regards,

--S


[1] http://www.picotech.com/linux.html
[2] http://www.picotech.com/support/topic2429.html

[Clemens Ladisch]

Post by Stefano Sanfilippo
I am bringing to your attention the case of PicoTech, a UK-based
hardware producer, whose drivers are clearly GPL-licensed but firmly
refuses to release source code.

For enforcement, the GPL relies on the (threat of the) loss of the
upstream license (or on criminal persecution based on that lack of
license). However, this particular driver appears to be a simple
userspace library written by PicoTech and is not derived from any other
code. As the copyright holder, they can do with this driver whatever
they want. If they violate the terms of the GPL, they are, as far as
copyright law is concerned, only hurting themselves, so nobody else has
the standing to persecute them.

They also distribute a copy of libusb (named libusb_pico). The libusb
copyright holders could force them to stop distributing _that_, or to
ship the libusb source code.


Regards,
Clemens

[Ian Stirling]

This is in

reference with your Request Ticket Number: TS00056203.

I am sorry

but we are not able to provide the source code for our custom drivers.

Kind regards.,
Pico Technical Support
Please reply back to

this email without changing the subject line if you have further
clarifications.

The inclusion of a GPL licence in with source does not
make it GPL licensed.

It is a strong indication that it's GPL
licensed, and would likely eliminate any penalties due to that


assumption, but its inclusion in error doesn't make that code GPL
licensed.

For the GPL to apply to the code - there has to have been -
at some point in time - the intent to

release it as GPL.

The above
only applies if they wrote the code.

If they got the code GPL licensed
from some other vendor - then they clearly have to release code.