A majority vote of the current board members is required for the following Inkscape GPL violation matter.
Proposal:
[ ] a. Approve purchase of Digital Fashion Pro by the Conservancy lawyers, up to $250. [ ] b. Approve purchase of Digital Fashion Pro by the Conservancy lawyers, at any price. [ ] c. Do not approve purchase
Background:
Hi guys,
It's been brought to our attention that there is a company selling software called Digital Fashion Pro, which in actuality is just Inkscape with some templates thrown in, and a price tag in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. It appears they neither mention that the software is open source under the GPL, nor make offers of source code for download, which is a GPL violation.
In order to establish legal proof of the violation, Conservancy needs to verify the lack of source offer, and to do that they need to examine a purchased copy of the software. Their policy is to ask the infringed project (i.e. us) to foot the bill for that copy. If it is found that the company is in fact in violation, they will be asked (or legally required) to repay this amount. They may also be required to pay legal fees, and to come into compliance with the GPL.
The price of the software has varied during the time of observation. Currently it is "on sale" for $200, but I've seen it offered at $500 and even $1500.
Please see below for the Conservancy's estimation of the likely best/typical/worst case resolution of this.
Bryce
------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 04/08/2015 04:33 AM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Before we get too far into this, can I ask a basic question? What is the best/likely/worst outcomes we should expect from engaging with them on this?
Probably the best outcome would be for us to find that they already include a fully-compliant source release of Digital Fashion Pro along with the product itself, and that they are willing to update their advertising to make it clear that Digital Fashion Pro is a modified version of Inkscape (assuming that lack of clarity is one of the current issues). Even better would be for them to release Digital Fashion Pro and its source code at no charge, but I don't think this is likely given that it seems to be a main revenue stream so I wouldn't consider it a possible outcome really. Another good outcome would be that, though they didn't ship source initially, they give us a source candidate when we first contact them and it happens to be compliant, so we charge them for our time and they pay us. They might even agree to allow us to write a Conservancy blog post praising them for coming into compliance, though usually companies don't since they don't like people knowing that they weren't in compliance to begin with. But if we did get that, perhaps by giving them a discount on what we charge them for our time checking their source, it would be very helpful in deterring future violators and encouraging compliance generally, as people would see Conservancy is reasonable and willing to work with violators to amicably resolve issues without public shaming.
The worst outcome would be that we spend a lot of resources on this issue and it drags on for a year or more and they're unwilling to budge so we have to file a lawsuit and we eventually have to agree to a settlement that offers only the minimum compliance required by the GPL. That minimum compliance might not resolve the trademark issues, which we could try to resolve some other way (through a separate action, possibly also including a lawsuit). "Minimum compliance" would in practice likely involve them providing source only to people who have purchased Digital Fashion Pro and who have asked for source. Also, we may have to keep chasing them as they may then release new versions that are not compliant. Note that we very rarely file lawsuits to achieve compliance - this is a worst-case scenario.
A likely outcome is that we buy Digital Fashion Pro, find that it doesn't include source code or an offer for source code, and then when we ask for source, they initially claim they don't need to send us any, but eventually they capitulate and send us some source code they think corresponds to the Digital Fashion Pro binaries they ship. We will probably need to go back and forth with them a few times when it doesn't build correctly, but we will likely reach a point where they have provided all the source to us. We'll ask them to include an offer for source with their product, which they'll do, and provide source on a CD or similar to anyone who's bought the product and asks for source. This who process would probably take 6 months to a year. I hesitate somewhat to say this is a "likely outcome", but given the information I have so far (see below), it's difficult to provide a more accurate assessment.
Another possible outcome is that they agree to stop distributing Digital Fashion Pro and any other software that includes or is based on Inkscape. This would be compliant, but is also an unlikely outcome since Inkscape-derived copies of software seem to be one of their main revenue streams.
I ask because I know it'll be a hassle to pursue this, and want to make sure the benefits are going worth the effort. I'll need to get Inkscape's board to agree to pay for the validation copy of the software, so I'd like to communicate to them what outcome we're aiming to see.
Hopefully the above will help with that, though I would emphasize that it's very difficult to tell where any violation matter might go, especially in a situation like this where it is extremely unclear how close to compliance they might be (without buying the software). One option for getting a better idea without buying Digital Fashion Pro would be to contact a person who has received Digital Fashion Pro and ask them whether the distribution they received was compliant - we could contact such a person for you if you know of one. In any case, we will probably have a much better idea of the willingness of Digital Fashion Pro's distributors to work with us after we have downloaded Digital Fashion Pro and made initial contact with them (assuming it is violating, which seems likely). We could most likely make this initial contact within a month or two of us buying Digital Fashion Pro.
Let me know if you have any questions about any of this. Thanks!
Denver ------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Forwarded message from Denver Gingerich <compliance@...41...> -----
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2015 18:15:31 -0400 From: Denver Gingerich <compliance@...41...> To: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...107...> Cc: Karen Sandler <karen@...41...>, Tony Sebro <tony@...41...> Subject: Re: GPL violation on Inkscape
On 03/31/2015 02:16 PM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Hi Karen,
Guessing this got lost amongst all the GPL violation mail... I know you're really busy. Real quick though, is this something SFC might be able to help us with, or should we pursue it ourselves?
Yes, Conservancy can help with this, though we will likely need more facts in order to take action. I've described what we need below.
Apologies for the delay in responding; compliance matters like this are generally handled by me, but I only work at Conservancy one day a week.
On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 05:20:09PM -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Hi Karen,
See email from Maren below. This company is selling a product called Digital Fashion Pro for $1446 (academic price $499), which consists of Inkscape bundled with some training materials and templates. You can see the software is just rebranded Inkscape via their main video:
There are likely both copyright and trademark issues here. I mainly work with the copyright issues myself; I've CCed Tony, Conservancy's general counsel, who has more knowledge of trademark issues.
To continue with investigating the possible copyright infringement case (that is, the potential GPL violation), we normally prefer to have some "hard evidence". To obtain this evidence, we'd like to purchase Digital Fashion Pro to confirm that it does indeed violate the GPL (likely by failing to provide source code or an offer for source).
I see at http://shop.startingaclothingline.com/ that "1b- Digital Fashion Pro V8 Basic" is currently available for $199. That seems to be the least expensive version that's likely to include Inkscape. With enforcement work like this, we typically ask the member project to pay any direct costs, such as the $199 cost of buying Digital Fashion Pro in this case, but we do not charge the member project for any Conservancy staff time. Of course, we will ask the violator to pay our costs, including the cost of buying the product (ie. Digital Fashion Pro), which would then revert to the member project. However, be aware that we often aren't able to collect from violators, for a variety of reasons.
For more details about Conservancy's usual procedures for enforcing the GPL, feel free to read https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2012/feb/01/gpl-enforcement/ .
Also, on their troubleshooting page it explicitly references "Free IS.48 Vector Application", which they copy protect with a serial number to unlock it during install.
It's hard to say from that page exactly how the serial number is being used and whether their method would violate the GPL. Since we should obtain the software anyway in order to check more general compliance, we can assess the serial number issue once we receive the software.
----- Forwarded message from maren@...92... -----
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 22:56:58 +0100 From: maren@...92... To: Bryce Harrington <bryce@...2...> Subject: Strange Inkscape redistribution - could this be a GPL violation?
[...]
You can follow up on this here: https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape/+question/263166
Also, it is not clear if they offer a modified version or the original software. At least they seem to call it differently.
This is another fact pattern that we'd like to confirm, which again would be most easily done after we receive the software.
Please let me know if you have any questions at all about any of this. Thanks!
Denver Gingerich FLOSS License Compliance Engineer Software Freedom Conservancy
----- End forwarded message -----