Does Using GPL Software Violate Sarbanes-Oxley? 272
Anonymous Coward writes "eWeek is reporting that The Software Freedom Law Center has published a white paper that dismisses recent publications from embedded systems seller Wasabi Systems. Wasabi recently released statements focusing on alleged GNU General Public License violations in relation to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The white paper, titled "Sarbanes-Oxley and the GPL: No Special Risk," essentially counsels users of the free software license that they have no need to worry."
The original article says ... (Score:5, Insightful)
solution: don't violate the GPL.
Tastes Great! Less Filling! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ultimately, there is only one kind of person who can tell you if it is legal or not. That person is called a Judge or, in rare instances for corporations, a Jury.
Re:More info on SOX (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coming soon to slashdot: (Score:4, Insightful)
In the vast majority of possible temperatures it is gas or solid. So I'd say, on average, no; water is not wet.
Re:SOX is change management over financial systems (Score:2, Insightful)
SOX can be boiled down to two things: #1) The opinion from the auditor of how effective your controls are (this includes everything from IT to Payroll, and everything in between), and #2) The opinion from the auditor expressing their evaluation of if or if not you are following the controls.
Now. Consider what you said:
"SOX requires strict change management..." -- While true, it is somewhat misleading. Your company has established a Change Management methodology as a control to cover the accountability of changes to the systems. You follow these Change Management guidelines as if it were a religion. That results in #1 - their opinion of your C/M after evaluting it, and #2 - their opinion of if you're following it religiously.
Scuttlemonkey does it again! (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this actually have anything to do with the article? No
The Article says that violating the GPL may be a SOX violation, but no more so than any other EULA.I've seen a lot of complaints about Zonk; SM is worse.
Re:Intended Consequences of laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you believe that?
Business can not happen without the government. Its in any economics101 course and certain services can not be done by business. Mainly things in public consumption since its not profitable to help everyone.
The free market works best when the market is stable. The government tries to setup the market as free as possible and to stabilize it so it can grow.
Without SOX you would have problems of more problems of bad accounting reporting which would hurt the general market more.
The government is not always the bad guy here and many market purist forget withotu the government regulating currency, providing roads, educating yoru workforce, and making trade negotiations with foreign nations we wouldn't have a market for you to sell products to.
It seems all these mu8lti billion dollar right wing think tanks sponsored by big businesses have quite a few followers today. I just dont understand the American obsession agaisnt government but not at all agaisnt big business?
Re:Intended Consequences of laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of requiring companies to do anything, how about telling people that they really shouldn't put their money anywhere but where they trust?
Our culture has accepted a lie about trust. We believe that it is the obligation of people to extend trust, and that it is a moral failing when they do not. In reality, the exact opposite is true. Nobody should be trusted until they have proved themselves trustworthy. If person A fails to trust person B, that is solely and completely person B's responsibility. It is not person A's fault. A has to earn B's trust.
This was clear to me during my dating days in an online singles community when I'd hear women who had just been jilted say, "How can I ever trust anyone again?" Well, the problem is that they were extending trust to people who had not yet earned it, and those people performed as could be expected. Then these women were viewing it as somehow their own moral obligation to trust people after that. In reality they were receiving an education that was pointing them to the obvious conclusion that it was not their responsibility to trust people who have not earned it.
Extending that to business is left as an exercise for the reader; I've had more success in dating than I have in business. ;)
Re:More info on SOX (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the biggest arguments against the GPL is that if you use it in your own code, you have to agree to its terms. In the case of the GPL, those terms mean that your code must be GPLed. Other licenses set other terms; many licenses don't even ALLOW you to use their code in your code. In any case, if you don't follow the terms, you can be sued for copyright violation. So you always have a choice, no matter what the license -- either follow the license, or get sued.
you know (Score:3, Insightful)
The Founders of this insane country have got to be spinning in their graves.
Re:Coming soon to slashdot: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe I'm a bit thick but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Intended Consequences of laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Contracts are only worth the paper they're printed on because the law enforces consequences if they're broken. In the end, it still falls back on the law to enforce good behavior. The problem isn't that the laws to force the truth don't work- its that they aren't actively investigated or enforced until after a major collapse such as Enron. And that even after that, most of the people get away with it. What we need is better enforcement.
So what if it does violate SO (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats no better than what you complain about (Score:5, Insightful)
I tend to take a decidedly buddhist view when it comes to that, nothing to do with the religion (before I get a religious flamewar going here), but I believe in moderation. Completely distrusting everyone is no worse than complete trusting everyone. You have to strike a balance - the way our world works depends upon it. Buisness depend upon trusting that the average consumer is not a theif (someone should tell the RIAA that, before they strangle the music industry), relationships depend upon trusting that the person you are with will be true to you, in whatever way that means to you.
~ Wizardry Dragon
Re:Intended Consequences of laws (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just one industry. In india there are a huge number of people who are in similar situations.
No thanks.
Re:Intended Consequences of laws (Score:3, Insightful)
I seem to recall that much of the economic success the jewish communities had in the early 20th century and before was based on trust, i. e. you could give someone locally some money and some business partner of them would pay the same sum (minus some fees maybe) to the final recipient. Very useful in the times before international banking systems were firmly established.
Why were they trustworthy? Because their reputation depended on it, and reputation is rather important in small communities.
Today, the communities are much larger, so you wouldn't know someone personally or be able to learn anything about his personal reputation. That's why there are companies like Western Union, Paypal and banks. These entities are under the rule of law, in which you trust. The law has therefore become a proxy for trust.
Re:More info on SOX (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you meant 'binaries' of course, obviously you can redistribute the source code, it just won't Compile or if it compiles it won't 'run' without the proprietary bits that you had to seperate out.
anyways, it's just a sign of how sad and pathetic things are nowadays. back in the old days if you invented something, but hated patents, you could just tell people how to do it, and no one else could patent it, because you'd proven how to do it first... but with software, you can't even GIVE it away without being at risk of being sued, hense the various 'open source' licences.
Re:Intended Consequences of laws (Score:3, Insightful)
In any country there will be the poor and the rich. The measure of a countries civility and humanity is how the poor live. The fact that there are people "getting ahead" in India is of little consequence when they are getting ahead on the backs of child labor, prison labor, and slavery.
A programmer in India is able to charge two dollars an hour because his house was built by the destiture using bricks made by five year old girls, using furniture made by slave children.
Like I said. No thanks.
"In American, we carry the burden of our parents on our heads so much that by the time we'll retire, we'll have to pass our our expenses to the next generation."
Unlike most of the world your parents will get Social security, medicare or medicaid. Imagine your burden if those weren't there?
"I see opportunities for growth in India, I see almost none hear."
In that case you are blind. If you don't see opportunity in America you are not looking.
"This country, the US, will learn a very harsh lesson, very soon. If it wasn't for the imperialist wars waged against others, I think we'd have collapsed by now."
And we will continue to wage wars to prop ourselves up. One of the reasons we invaded iraq was to prevent them from asking euros for their oil. Make no bones about it. We will kill anybody who gets in our way. This is why America is dominant. We have no morals when it comes to money. This is also why there is more opportunity here then anyplace else.
Re:More info on SOX (Score:1, Insightful)