What one could possibly do about this? We submitted reports everywhere but even the GNU guys said they could do nothing about it — are licenses even worth anything or it's just a fancy marketing thing today?
Yes and no. The current geopolitical winds made this not an impossible development. There is a reason we are hearing about it now ( not dissimilar to TikTok news ).
China is 0% possible to enforce it. I had Chinese guys cloning one of my software without respecting the licence, and their answer was a big fuck you message mixed with lot of insults.
So, "reality sucks, deal with it" (Linus Torvalds).
People don't buy Xiaomi because of their fancy tech, they buy it because it's cheap. Tech YouTuber telling people they steal that tech to make it cheap won't make people stop buying their cheap phones.
You can ask your government to take action for this IP violation by taxing those brands more, or banning them until they stop violating licenses. I'm sure they'll start caring more after that.
Actually, if you look at the custom ROM community, only my device had more than 50K official downloads from just the ArrowOS ROM 's website, and this device is actually more popular on the unofficial side so there's at least x3 more people on lineage and others ROMs - that's not a small amount of people (using arrowos as an example because they have telemetry)
So, me and many others are very angry about this and this is our first and last time getting a Xiaomi device
i.e. only the telegram update channels have 25k-65k subscribers per a single xiaomi device, let alone the whole XDA community
You think China is going to change their national policies and business practices because some Western YouTubers make videos about it? Unless you're like 14, I'm in absolute awe that any adult with even the most minimal understanding of geopolitics would think this is a solution.
At least one tech YouTuber, Naomi Wu (a.k.a. RealSexyCyborg) has in fact already covered this topic and successfully got a company to comply with their GPL obligations.
Her comment[0] at the time directed at other Tech YouTubers was:
> YouTubers- you CAN make a difference by making GPL compliance
> a condition of your product reviews. I'm happy to mediate in
> Chinese if there is any miscommunication. GPL compliance means better,
> more functional, more innovative phones for everyone.
You could just cross out the OSS part and say licenses.
China has a ton of copyright infringing knockoffs of anything remotely popular outside its borders. For a long time, companies like Microsoft took it as granted that the vast majority of their software running in SE Asia was likely pirated.
Stop the sale of products that violate licenses in markets the US controls, and compel other states to enforce those licenses, as well. US already does it for other licensed IP.
We would be operating under the assumption that our current licensing law is ideal. Meanwhile, China/other countries will benefit from new products that we are too principled to use. Over time, what do you think will happen to the half of the world that arbitrarily chooses not to use a whole slew of new technologies?
Copyright/patent law only "works" if everyone is compelled to adhere to it. Otherwise, you're just willingly putting yourself at a technological disadvantage.
In some twisted way, copyright infringement in this case benefits US consumers because they are able to afford devices cheaper because the manufacturer doesn't pay the proper (commercial closed) licensing fees.
Yes. And as long as this relationship only works in this direction, China has no incentive to cooperate. If Chinese citizens were also able to buy US products for cheap because they used Chinese tech while ignoring licenses, then China would care.
But they know this and are not interested in a partnership. So they took the other, more totalitarian route: make it illegal for their citizens to do that. They're not stupid though, they know that for a totalitarian govt to work they have to keep their citizens happy. So if their citizens are unhappy that they can't purchase a US product, they'll just spawn a Chinese company out of thin air to produce the same thing under a Chinese brand. If they can get away with it, they'll sell it outside China too. All of this is only possible because the west has already been manufacturing all its products over there for decades.
The west made itself incredibly vulnerable by moving all manufacturing to China, and now China is taking advantage of that in every way it can.
IMO the only way out of this mess is moving the vast majority of our manufacturing back out of China, but it would have to be heavily subsidized because people won't be able to afford it at first.
A contract, license, or agreement are only "real" if both parties have the means to enforce them.
Which means, you have to lawyer up and spend vast sums of money to go after people violating your license (GPL here).
Which is why you routinely hear about people violating the GPL - the interested parties have no means to enforce their license, and the counter party likely has deep pockets; deep enough to out last, out spend, and bury the licenser.
What if the license says "licencee will provide source code (GPL) or pay $n per device" ? If the lawyers then demand the source code and they don't comply then sue for n x number of devices.
The reality of the legal system is, it often does not matter who is most righteous, but rather who has more money and more lawyers.
There are no provisions of any contract or agreement that matter if you are not prepared to enforce them, no matter the cost.
So, while you can insert a clause like you have described above, but you are still in the same position - drain your bank account paying lawyers to maybe recover some damages after probably many months or years of posturing and litigation.
The calculus on that effort often means it's not financially sound, or worth trying to enforce the contract. Just to see the inside of a court room, you will already be in the hole for at least six figures. If the other side manages to drag things out for years, the costs increase dramatically. So it becomes - pay $xxx,xxx to litigate and take a chance that maybe if you win, you might recover some of that money... maybe.
This is why, again, so many GPL violations exist today. The FOSS projects lack the means to enforce the license.
This is also why organizations like the FSF exist - to help FOSS projects (and others) negotiate and litigate these costly-and-usually-not-profitable conflicts.
- Are you willing to hire lawyers or approach lawyers?
- Yes:
- Xiaomi sells products outside of China, both through their own website and through Amazon and Walmart. Sue retailers who carry Xiaomi products and sell them in the US and Europe.
- In theory, this is what the US International Trade Commission can do - block imports of products that violate US laws. EU probably has similar
- You can't do anything about Xiaomi with China's kangaroo courts within China's borders, but Xiaomi wants US dollars and Euros too so eventually they'll play ball if you're willing to take this far enough
- No:
- There is exactly nothing you can do so you should learn to take it and like it.
I doubt it's going to happen, but if the author(s) of stolen open source code file a lawsuit, they may force the matter through the courts.
A copyright holder publishing code under the GPLv3 has the ability to revoke permissions to violators. If, say Linus Torvalds or another (big) author of Linux kernel code forces the issue, Xiaomi would perform IP violations every time they try to sell a device running Linux.
If this happen, Xiaomi be given a chance to correct the situation at the very least, before revoking becomes possible. If they still don't comply, kernel contributors may use such court cases to get governments to take action. IP theft has led to phones being barred from sale before, and that was because of vague things like "rounded corners".
It'll take years of legal fees, but it's possible to hit them where it hurts: denying them access to the lucrative western markets.
It is a depressing fact that the wast majority of all crime goes by without any consequences, and that the biggest factor why we have laws in the first place is norm changing and deterrence from the risk of legal consequences. Once in a while we see selective enforcement when some small individuals goes against large companies that has both money and political influence to get laws enforced, which of course has a bunch of negative consequences.
Like everything else, licenses are great if you've got the money to take on a behemoth in court. Otherwise you're depending on morality, which tends to take a back seat in big business.
In fact, no, open source licenses have a four-decade-long history of being well enforced and broadly honored in the west. Every major software company employs groups whose sole job is to manage open source license compliance in their code base[1].
This is absolutely a solvable problem and a winnable war without the "money to take on a behemoth in court". And in fact the war was won, long ago[2]. In the west.
The difference is the idea of "rule of law", certainly not a cynical take on resourcing.
[1] In fact it's more common to see companies irrationally afraid of the consequences of a license violation than ones trying to evade enforcement.
[2] Edit, because two replies have wanted to pick on the fact that violations still occur occasionally to try to invalidate the point. Open source software licenses in the modern US and Europe are overwhelmingly honored in commercial software. Period. Yes, companies mess up. But claiming somehow that everywhere-is-as-bad-as-china-and-this-cannot-work is ridiculous. Please stop, that kind of argument is hurting the discourse.
The fact that the Software Freedom Conservancy currently has an active lawsuit against Vizio (Founded "October 2002 in Costa Mesa, California, U.S.") suggests the war has not, in fact, been won "in the west": <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizio#Lawsuit>
Every tech company of meaningful size is violating the GPL. Every open source project of meaningful popularity is having it's license violated in USA and EU (even permissively licensed projects). The idea that this is somehow a solved problem is very far fetched.
When a company with a market cap of ~$USD115 billion shows the "inability to provide complete corresponding source to us for all requested products more than 2 years after our first request"[iii] then (a) by my standard that cannot be considered merely a "mess up"; and, (b) given general corporate aversion to legal risk that implies, for me, many smaller companies with even less visibility also think & act the same way.
I don't see either reply to your previous comment mention China at all.
But when there are multiple unresolved issues with Western companies that in theory are directly subject to Western "IP" laws, one could ask where it would be most productive to expend one's efforts.
> In fact, no, open source licenses have a four-decade-long history of being well enforced and broadly honored in the west.
Two questions, I guess:
* Who enforces them in the US/Europe?
* Is there data on open source compliance in commercial software?
I'm not being obtuse but when people in the comments provided counter examples, you game argumentative (edit 2). I'm not sure you've proven that anything has been enforced or honored.
Add Unihertz to the list. I'd love to buy a Jelly2 but not with their stock software. I don't understand the dynamics at play and it's hard to not get a bit conspiratorial..
You don't need kernel sources to change Android software though.
But I hate Unihertz for other reason. You can pretty much buy their hardware exclusively on their website which is a horrible e-merchant: Their delivery failed (maybe they never sent it, maybe they sent it with the cheapest post service possible, i don't know), and well pretty much they stole money from me. That was a "kickstarter" [1], so I couldn't ask my credit card for a refund.
And that's after I was already a sold customer since I already ordered one before, AND I gave them visibility by having custom ROM support for their devices.
[1] the quotes are here because the device was Google-certified months before, so clearly the product didn't need a "kickstart", they hide behind it to steal from users
And China DOES enforce IP laws in China. They just don't enforce USA copyright laws, cause it's not the USA. And The USA doesn't enforce Chinese IP laws.
Eventually, the IP laws will be mutually respected. It'll take time. But in the meantime, this is more a trade dispute. That means that larger vendors need to be legally forced to stop shipment and sale of said violating items, and CBP needs to do more in stopping shipments coming in-country.
I mean, there's stories on the HN frontpage right now about how Lego and John Deere are also violating the GPL. It seems a bit knee-jerky to see this story and start shaking your fist at China in general.
It is important to realise, that most cultures do not believe in Intellectual Property the eay 'the West' does.
It is not just 'cheating', it is also a matter of significantly different values.
Arguably IP laws in the west have gone too far.
India was pushing for opening up IP on covid vaccines - the taxpayer paid for their development and deployment, but the profits and IP is private. US has voted against.
China and Chinese companies would have no issue enforcing heavily on Western companies that did the same with their IP (or sometimes even another China domestic company)
I'm no fan of the IP insanity, but in this situation, I can only see hypocrisy.
> It is important to realise, that most cultures do not believe in Intellectual Property the eay 'the West' does.
That's definitely true, but it's not really in a "let's take it more a lenient way" kind, because otherwise Xiaomi would have published those kernel sources
> do not believe in Intellectual Property the eay 'the West' does.
Oh, I assure you Chinese companies very much believe in IP, at least their own - use some of theirs without permission and watch how their “don't believe” attitude sticks around. There are IP violation cases between Chinese companies, it just isn't practical for most non-Chinese concerns to try enforce anything from the outside.
What we see in China these days is very similar to the US back in Dickens' time, when copying literature like his works was rampant in the US and there was very little people from outside the US could do about it. The US only started to care about international IP regulation once they had enough to defend for it to be worth playing ball. Currently, China's companies and government have more to gain from not caring than they do from playing nice.
>most cultures do not believe in Intellectual Property the way 'the West' does.
I'd phrase this as "In most cultures, you have no real, legal way of getting back at others taking your intellectual property". They absolutely do recognize, value, and try to protect their own intellectual property. Not believing in it would mean that things are public domain mostly, which is absolutely not the case.
Meanwhile yes, western IP laws have a lot of bullshit going on.
Seems to be standard practice for Chinese companies. I like the look of some of Onyx's ebook products, but I've refrained from being tempted as they have been in violation for ages. Unless you are a huge company there is very little you can do. There is probably very little you can do even if you are a huge company. Enforcing our laws & licences over there is nigh on impossible, and appealing to their laws is pointless as the government seems to very openly not care about such violations (some would say their attitude practically encourages such violations) unless they happen against one of their interests. This is not at all specific to open-source licences either.
My current phone is a Xiaomi, looks like my next one won't be (it may not have been anyway, due to a list of minor irritations & larger red flags like impossible to uninstall apps and a default clock app that demands full contacts access in order to be able to set an alarm, but this is definitely another point against).
> The GPL has strict "give back" requirements, which they are not honoring.
What's the status of the GPL under Chinese law? Because maybe they're not required to honor it. IIRC, the GPL was written in the context of certain Western legal systems and depends on certain characteristics of those systems.
Even in a Western country, there's probably situations "give back" requirements become unenforceable (e.g. the copyright on the code runs out).
I have no idea if they are legally in the right to not honor the GPL under Chinese law. But that doesn't matter. What they are doing is morally repugnant regardless of legality.
Taking someone’s work that they made available under terms which you can always renegotiate with the copyright holder if you want different terms and they are amicable to it is pretty morally repugnant. The terms are the terms and people should be free to choose the terms of their license.
I would be surprised if China was not a signatory od the international copyright law agreements: without that, works coming out of China would arguably be unprotected in the rest of the world too.
As such, even if there might specific incompatible provisions in GPL, the nature of the license should be enforceable only if they cared.
Though, to be honest, even in US and the "West", we haven't seen many cases where non-copyright-owner was able to score many GPL wins.
The PRC was allowed into the WTO on December 11th, 2001. Under the TRIPS Agreement, computer programs are protected as literary works, and per that same agreement, the general term of protection is 50 years and shorter terms may not be applied. There’s some stuff in there too about the life of the author, but basic no frills copyright: no fewer than 50 years. The first works covered by the GPL are not yet that old.
Yeah, the PRC is basically disregarding that, and yes, the Courts of WTO members are empowered under the TRIPS agreement to provide relief to the copyright holders. Start with Article 42 and work your way up. Chinese law doesn’t even enter into it, and under their political system, is explicitly “rules for thee but not for me” given that the CCP sits above the government and the law.
The core copyright law is not a western thing - while it's not completely universal, the Berne convention harmonizes it to almost all countries in the world, see map at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention#/media/File:B... . It doesn't apply in Iran and Somalia, for example, but in does apply in all the economies from China to Chile, even in North Korea.
The source code for all software produced by Chinese companies is most certainly not available in a “public domain” manner. Hence the complaining about GPL violation.
China’s lack of respect for intellectual property is not the same as open source at all.
Spoken like someone who has never been in a secure facility in a Chinese software company where you have to go through metal detectors to access air gapped computers just to see some code.
> Seems to be standard practice for Chinese companies.
I mean looking at the strings in Huawei's switch firmware revealed Cisco copyright notices. They were too lazy (or didn't understand) how to remove them! [0]
> My current phone is a Xiaomi, looks like my next one won't be (it may not have been anyway, due to a list of minor irritations & larger red flags like impossible to uninstall apps and a default clock app that demands full contacts access in order to be able to set an alarm, but this is definitely another point against).
Does NSFW necessarily mean pornographic though? I can well imagine that there exist employers that would readily discipline or terminate someone if they were caught viewing a scantily clad female on a company owned computer.
You can't attack another user on HN the way you've done in this thread. You also can't post slurs like you did here. (Incidentally, I don't believe that the person you're attacking is in any way a "white american male", so your slur actually hit someone other than you thought it did. But it would be just as bad either way.)
I've banned the account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
If you're in NA, I bet there's undergrads running around campus just as skimpily dressed. What do you do, walk around with your eyes closed lest you be fired for looking at a woman in public?
NSFW means not safe for work. I work at a university and there is no way this is an acceptable video to play on my work computer. So save your judgment for someone else.
What did they do and what are the implications? Is that something that every phone company does (having their own kernel version and not sharing it)? Do others use modules? Does this make it possible to easily release a postmarketOS port for recent Xiaomi phones?
While I have briefly been to China I cannot claim particularly deep knowledge about Chinese culture, customs & values and thus prefer to turn to people with more knowledge & experience, such as a local:
Based on this video by Naomi Wu (a.k.a RealSexyCyborg), it's certainly been possible to convince at least one Chinese company to fulfil its obligations under the GPL:
Content Advisory: If you are an employee of YouTube.com the above video may be considered NSFW.
(If your own cultural context means you feel compelled to comment on how Naomi chooses to present herself to the world, feel free to watch this explanatory video she has generously provided for your benefit: "Why Do I Look Like...This? The SexyCyborg Origin Story" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9vW_MpXTfs>.)
FWIW it is actually worse than it looks like. Even when Xiaomi did/do provide some kernel sources, it's never anywhere near the production code you're running on your smartphone!
It's hard to believe, but the "GPL release" they made were actually full clean rewrite of the hardware support made on top of SoC vendor's (say Qualcomm) kernel release. I have a very hard time understanding why they did, but there were definitely inconsistencies that are very hard to explain another way.
All it takes is someone with standing to sue and win a preliminary injunction cutting off sales in the US. They'll swiftly comply and the case can be dropped. You'd think the EFF and FSF would be interested in pursuing this approach to prove the GPL had teeth.
I'm not sure why you think the EFF would get involved in this. They have no stake or relationship to GPL or software freedom or the software in question.
FSF lost interest in GPL enforcement years ago.
Conservancy is the only org doing GPL enforcement in the public interest, and they only have enough funding to do about one lawsuit at a time.
GPL doesn’t work unless it can be enforced at a global scale. It hamstrings companies that observe and follow IP law while giving advantages to those that don’t.
122 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadDefending a license takes money.
The ability to earn money is limited by open source licensing.
Open source licensing is largely self defeating --- as proven by the case in point.
So, "reality sucks, deal with it" (Linus Torvalds).
All you need to do is hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit.
The obvious problem being that open source developers may lack the revenue/income/funds to make this a practical reality.
In other cases, the GPL has been shown to be decently effective.
Yes.
You can ask your government to take action for this IP violation by taxing those brands more, or banning them until they stop violating licenses. I'm sure they'll start caring more after that.
So, me and many others are very angry about this and this is our first and last time getting a Xiaomi device
i.e. only the telegram update channels have 25k-65k subscribers per a single xiaomi device, let alone the whole XDA community
Her comment[0] at the time directed at other Tech YouTubers was:
> YouTubers- you CAN make a difference by making GPL compliance
> a condition of your product reviews. I'm happy to mediate in
> Chinese if there is any miscommunication. GPL compliance means better,
> more functional, more innovative phones for everyone.
[0] https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/143734308046669414...
And this wasn't the first time she was involved in the resolution of such situations:
* "Creality GPL Update - Naomi Wu Released CR-10S Marlin Source Code" Joel Telling (a.k.a 3D Printing Nerd) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pODH6FR4nU8>
Content Advisory: Joel chooses not to wear a suit & tie to present his videos.
https://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/GPL%20Enforcement%20Cases
China has a ton of copyright infringing knockoffs of anything remotely popular outside its borders. For a long time, companies like Microsoft took it as granted that the vast majority of their software running in SE Asia was likely pirated.
They don't export it to other countries with different laws but any company in China that wants/needs access can get it.
They don't have copyrights.
Copyright/patent law only "works" if everyone is compelled to adhere to it. Otherwise, you're just willingly putting yourself at a technological disadvantage.
But they know this and are not interested in a partnership. So they took the other, more totalitarian route: make it illegal for their citizens to do that. They're not stupid though, they know that for a totalitarian govt to work they have to keep their citizens happy. So if their citizens are unhappy that they can't purchase a US product, they'll just spawn a Chinese company out of thin air to produce the same thing under a Chinese brand. If they can get away with it, they'll sell it outside China too. All of this is only possible because the west has already been manufacturing all its products over there for decades.
The west made itself incredibly vulnerable by moving all manufacturing to China, and now China is taking advantage of that in every way it can.
IMO the only way out of this mess is moving the vast majority of our manufacturing back out of China, but it would have to be heavily subsidized because people won't be able to afford it at first.
Which means, you have to lawyer up and spend vast sums of money to go after people violating your license (GPL here).
Which is why you routinely hear about people violating the GPL - the interested parties have no means to enforce their license, and the counter party likely has deep pockets; deep enough to out last, out spend, and bury the licenser.
There are no provisions of any contract or agreement that matter if you are not prepared to enforce them, no matter the cost.
So, while you can insert a clause like you have described above, but you are still in the same position - drain your bank account paying lawyers to maybe recover some damages after probably many months or years of posturing and litigation.
The calculus on that effort often means it's not financially sound, or worth trying to enforce the contract. Just to see the inside of a court room, you will already be in the hole for at least six figures. If the other side manages to drag things out for years, the costs increase dramatically. So it becomes - pay $xxx,xxx to litigate and take a chance that maybe if you win, you might recover some of that money... maybe.
This is why, again, so many GPL violations exist today. The FOSS projects lack the means to enforce the license.
This is also why organizations like the FSF exist - to help FOSS projects (and others) negotiate and litigate these costly-and-usually-not-profitable conflicts.
And the Free Software Foundation (FSF) - https://www.fsf.org/
I doubt it's going to happen, but if the author(s) of stolen open source code file a lawsuit, they may force the matter through the courts.
A copyright holder publishing code under the GPLv3 has the ability to revoke permissions to violators. If, say Linus Torvalds or another (big) author of Linux kernel code forces the issue, Xiaomi would perform IP violations every time they try to sell a device running Linux.
If this happen, Xiaomi be given a chance to correct the situation at the very least, before revoking becomes possible. If they still don't comply, kernel contributors may use such court cases to get governments to take action. IP theft has led to phones being barred from sale before, and that was because of vague things like "rounded corners".
It'll take years of legal fees, but it's possible to hit them where it hurts: denying them access to the lucrative western markets.
This is absolutely a solvable problem and a winnable war without the "money to take on a behemoth in court". And in fact the war was won, long ago[2]. In the west.
The difference is the idea of "rule of law", certainly not a cynical take on resourcing.
[1] In fact it's more common to see companies irrationally afraid of the consequences of a license violation than ones trying to evade enforcement.
[2] Edit, because two replies have wanted to pick on the fact that violations still occur occasionally to try to invalidate the point. Open source software licenses in the modern US and Europe are overwhelmingly honored in commercial software. Period. Yes, companies mess up. But claiming somehow that everywhere-is-as-bad-as-china-and-this-cannot-work is ridiculous. Please stop, that kind of argument is hurting the discourse.
More details: <https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html>
Edit #1:
* Also, John Deere: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/mar/16/john-deere-gpl-vi...
Er, how? Like... Apple, let's say. They ship GPLv2 software in their OS, they ship code on their website. How are they violating it?
It appears that people have different definitions of what "won" means...
> [2] ... violations still occur occasionally ... Yes, companies mess up.
...and also, apparently, "occasionally".
When a company with a market cap of ~$USD115 billion shows the "inability to provide complete corresponding source to us for all requested products more than 2 years after our first request"[iii] then (a) by my standard that cannot be considered merely a "mess up"; and, (b) given general corporate aversion to legal risk that implies, for me, many smaller companies with even less visibility also think & act the same way.
You may disagree with that assessment.
"Voice AI" is another recent example: https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/08/voiceai_open_source/
I don't see either reply to your previous comment mention China at all.
But when there are multiple unresolved issues with Western companies that in theory are directly subject to Western "IP" laws, one could ask where it would be most productive to expend one's efforts.
[iii] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/mar/16/john-deere-gpl-vi...
Two questions, I guess:
* Who enforces them in the US/Europe?
* Is there data on open source compliance in commercial software?
I'm not being obtuse but when people in the comments provided counter examples, you game argumentative (edit 2). I'm not sure you've proven that anything has been enforced or honored.
But I hate Unihertz for other reason. You can pretty much buy their hardware exclusively on their website which is a horrible e-merchant: Their delivery failed (maybe they never sent it, maybe they sent it with the cheapest post service possible, i don't know), and well pretty much they stole money from me. That was a "kickstarter" [1], so I couldn't ask my credit card for a refund.
And that's after I was already a sold customer since I already ordered one before, AND I gave them visibility by having custom ROM support for their devices.
[1] the quotes are here because the device was Google-certified months before, so clearly the product didn't need a "kickstart", they hide behind it to steal from users
On a scale of 1 to China, what level of IP infringement, technology theft, and corporate espionage are Xiaomi operating at?
China.
https://www.gizchina.com/2022/01/09/xiaomi-when-will-you-sto...
When the USA was early on, before and during the War of Independence, we routinely ignored the set of IP laws from European countries.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/an-economic-history-of-copyright...
And China DOES enforce IP laws in China. They just don't enforce USA copyright laws, cause it's not the USA. And The USA doesn't enforce Chinese IP laws.
Eventually, the IP laws will be mutually respected. It'll take time. But in the meantime, this is more a trade dispute. That means that larger vendors need to be legally forced to stop shipment and sale of said violating items, and CBP needs to do more in stopping shipments coming in-country.
Yes, oddly the the US does enforce the CCP's "Chinese companies automatically win" laws. How strange.
It is not just 'cheating', it is also a matter of significantly different values.
Arguably IP laws in the west have gone too far.
India was pushing for opening up IP on covid vaccines - the taxpayer paid for their development and deployment, but the profits and IP is private. US has voted against.
I'm no fan of the IP insanity, but in this situation, I can only see hypocrisy.
That's definitely true, but it's not really in a "let's take it more a lenient way" kind, because otherwise Xiaomi would have published those kernel sources
Oh, I assure you Chinese companies very much believe in IP, at least their own - use some of theirs without permission and watch how their “don't believe” attitude sticks around. There are IP violation cases between Chinese companies, it just isn't practical for most non-Chinese concerns to try enforce anything from the outside.
What we see in China these days is very similar to the US back in Dickens' time, when copying literature like his works was rampant in the US and there was very little people from outside the US could do about it. The US only started to care about international IP regulation once they had enough to defend for it to be worth playing ball. Currently, China's companies and government have more to gain from not caring than they do from playing nice.
I'd phrase this as "In most cultures, you have no real, legal way of getting back at others taking your intellectual property". They absolutely do recognize, value, and try to protect their own intellectual property. Not believing in it would mean that things are public domain mostly, which is absolutely not the case.
Meanwhile yes, western IP laws have a lot of bullshit going on.
My current phone is a Xiaomi, looks like my next one won't be (it may not have been anyway, due to a list of minor irritations & larger red flags like impossible to uninstall apps and a default clock app that demands full contacts access in order to be able to set an alarm, but this is definitely another point against).
The GPL has strict "give back" requirements, which they are not honoring.
What's the status of the GPL under Chinese law? Because maybe they're not required to honor it. IIRC, the GPL was written in the context of certain Western legal systems and depends on certain characteristics of those systems.
Even in a Western country, there's probably situations "give back" requirements become unenforceable (e.g. the copyright on the code runs out).
Not honoring the GPL very, very far down the list of moral wrongs, and certainly isn't in the "morally repugnant" category.
As such, even if there might specific incompatible provisions in GPL, the nature of the license should be enforceable only if they cared.
Though, to be honest, even in US and the "West", we haven't seen many cases where non-copyright-owner was able to score many GPL wins.
Yeah, the PRC is basically disregarding that, and yes, the Courts of WTO members are empowered under the TRIPS agreement to provide relief to the copyright holders. Start with Article 42 and work your way up. Chinese law doesn’t even enter into it, and under their political system, is explicitly “rules for thee but not for me” given that the CCP sits above the government and the law.
China’s lack of respect for intellectual property is not the same as open source at all.
Spoken like someone who has never been in a secure facility in a Chinese software company where you have to go through metal detectors to access air gapped computers just to see some code.
I mean looking at the strings in Huawei's switch firmware revealed Cisco copyright notices. They were too lazy (or didn't understand) how to remove them! [0]
> My current phone is a Xiaomi, looks like my next one won't be (it may not have been anyway, due to a list of minor irritations & larger red flags like impossible to uninstall apps and a default clock app that demands full contacts access in order to be able to set an alarm, but this is definitely another point against).
Wait until you check you network logs!
[0] https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...
Xiaomi at least still allow bootloader unlocks for phones and other devices whereas others including western companies do not.
And some models do have sources available, just buy the ones that do.
At least it's not something economically important like an all American made tractor though!
I've banned the account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What kind of weird university is it?
Based on this video by Naomi Wu (a.k.a RealSexyCyborg), it's certainly been possible to convince at least one Chinese company to fulfil its obligations under the GPL:
* "Getting GPLv2 Compliance From A Chinese Company- In Person!": <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ>
Content Advisory: If you are an employee of YouTube.com the above video may be considered NSFW.
(If your own cultural context means you feel compelled to comment on how Naomi chooses to present herself to the world, feel free to watch this explanatory video she has generously provided for your benefit: "Why Do I Look Like...This? The SexyCyborg Origin Story" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9vW_MpXTfs>.)
- 1. Moot, and therefore language models are fine
- 2. Enforceable, and language models will be neutered
It's hard to believe, but the "GPL release" they made were actually full clean rewrite of the hardware support made on top of SoC vendor's (say Qualcomm) kernel release. I have a very hard time understanding why they did, but there were definitely inconsistencies that are very hard to explain another way.
FSF lost interest in GPL enforcement years ago.
Conservancy is the only org doing GPL enforcement in the public interest, and they only have enough funding to do about one lawsuit at a time.