Before the new LPG cooperation commitment initiative that has emerged to increase the predictability of the open source licensing process, news has been released that 17 new entrants have joined who agreed to apply license revocation terms for their open source projects, providing time to eliminate identified violations.
Until At the moment the total number of companies that have signed this agreement has already exceeded 60.
The 17 startups in today's announcement are a diverse set of leading companies whose participation highlights the global reach of the GPL Commitment to Cooperation. They comprise companies that operate globally and mark a significant expansion of the initiative.
And is that the movement arises, because the GPLv2 license defines the possibility of immediate revocation of the license by the offender and the termination of all the rights of the licensee who grants this license, which allows interpreting the breach of GPLv2 as a violation of the contract for which financial sanctions can be obtained from the court.
This feature creates additional risks for companies using GPLv2 on its products and makes the legal support of derivative solutions unpredictable, as even inadvertent oversight or oversight creates conditions for obtaining compensation through legal proceedings.
This agreement transfers to GPLv2 the termination terms used In the GPLv3 license and that are distinguished by the explicit definition of the terms and procedures to correct violations.
According to the rules adopted in GPLv3, if the violations are detected for the first time and removed within 30 days from the notification date, the license rights are restored and the license is not completely revoked (the contract remains intact).
Rights are immediately returned also in case of elimination of violations, if the copyright holder has not notified about the violation within 60 days.
Otherwise, the issue of rights restoration should be discussed separately with each copyright holder. When the new conditions apply, financial compensation may not be filed in court immediately after the violation is revealed, but only after 30 days, which are allotted to eliminate licensing problems
What is the GPL Cooperation Commitment?
The Cooperation Commitment of GPL is a statement of the copyright holders of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x and other supporters that it gives licensees a fair opportunity to correct violations before their licenses expire.
The "automatic termination" feature of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x does not provide an express "cure" period in the event of a violation. This means that a single act of inadvertent breach could lead to a lawsuit for infringement, without obligation to notify it before taking legal action. When GPLv3 was introduced in 2007, one of the key improvements was the inclusion of a healing period.
In order to address this imbalance in the application of GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x licenses, Red Hat, IBM, Google, and Facebook announced in November 2017 a commitment to enforce GPLv3 curation provisions for their GPLv2 and LGPLv2 licensed software. x.
About the new members
New members joining the initiative of GPL's commitment to cooperation are: NetApp, Salesforce, Seagate Technology, Ericsson, Fujitsu Limited, Indeed, Infosys, Lenovo, LG Electronics, Camuda, Capital One, CloudBees, Colt, Comcast, Ellucian, EPAM Systems, and Volvo Car Corporation.
Signatory companies in recent years include: Red Hat, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, HPE, SAP, SUSE, Amazon, Arm, Canonical, GitLab, Intel, NEC, Philips, Toyota, Adobe, Alibaba, Amadeus, Ant Financial, Atlassian, Atos, AT&T, Bandwidth, Etsy, GitHub, Hitachi, NVIDIA, Oath, Renesas, Tencent, and Twitter. The signed terms apply to the GPLv2, LGPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 licensed code and fully comply with the terms accepted by the Linux kernel developers.
Source: https://www.redhat.com