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[Ask HN] IBM has served a DMCA notice to the GPLed repo of the OpenLava Project

28 points by project2501a ↗ HN
OpenLava is a workload manager, which means that if you have N computers and M scientists, it will decide what program will run in which computer and when.

OpenLava is a GPL'ed version of Platform LSF 4.5, under the GPL2. It was forked by Platform LSF as an agreement with Redhat in 2007, before IBM bought Platform LSF.

According to the project leader, David Bigagli, IBM has decided to target the project by submitting a DMCA notice for the current version of the program on Github (https://github.com/openlava) and now asks that the website hosted on AWS be shut down.

What can these guys do?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openlava-users/z4V4oF1tfdY

Update: apparently, on Reddit, there is the guy that was directly involved in the process of releasing some of the Platform LSF parts as GPL:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5j3mn2/ibm_is_trying_to_bully_the_openlava_project_a/dbd5ipp/

8 comments

[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 24.5 ms ] thread
greenyoda
They could file a DMCA counter-claim (claiming that they are the legal copyright holder), at which point IBM would need to take legal action to get the DMCA takedown reinstated.

But to be really sure that IBM doesn't have any claim to this version of the software, they should first consult an intellectual property lawyer. They could contact the EFF to see if they'd be willing to offer free legal representation.

whatnotests
Please consider reformatting this post as an [Ask HN] and without the (as I read it) accusatory tone.

I say this in the interest of raising awareness of what may be happening here.

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csdreamer7
Why is this news in December? The announcement of the take down notice seems to have been on November 1st.

It is important, but the titles suggest the take down happened today.

From what I can tell the only change is that a Fedora maintainer has claimed he was involved in the fork and IBM has no right to DMCA this. This seems to have happened after OP posted according to the update.