[antirez]

I may be wrong since IMNAL, but something is strange about this:

1) inspeqtor is written in Go and shares no code with Monit anyway.

2) The takedown claims violation of license. Licenses only apply to code, so patents and similar are out of this game.

1+2 don't stay together. How is a code license violated if the code is totally different between the two projects? I believe this is something that can be easily fixed with a good lawyer.

[belorn]

Imagine a non-technical judge or a random group of people that forms a jury, and imagine asking them if the two written utilities are two different programs. What would the reply be?

inspeqtor would likely argue that the programming language is different and no copying happened, while monit will compare it to a translated book. Which argument will be strongest, and what will be the central question of a lawsuit? Would art, interface, configuration language and API affect the question? Is the Twitter message relevant for the narrative?

I personally think inspeqtor has a decent defense since technically, no copying of bytes has happened. That said, legal theory is not so clean cut and context always matters.

[danielweber]

The takedown claims copyright violation. They also say that copyright violation can be avoided by adhering to the license.

I don't have a general right to distribute Emacs; I must distribute it in terms of the license. If I were to distribute Emacs in a way that FSF didn't like, they would come after me for copyright violation.

NB: I'm not saying anything about the accuracy of their copyright claims.

[viraptor]

Anyone can request DMCA-based takedown - it's up to inspeqtor guys to say "not true, restore the project, they can sue us if they want to" now. Hopefully they will.

With or without lawsuit to follow, this is an interesting case. I'd also agree that (unless it's an automatically done 1:1 codebase translation) AGPL doesn't apply.

[paulgb]

This is an unfortunate double-standard in the DMCA -- to file all you have to state under perjury you are acting on behalf of the party whose work is claimed to be infringed. The claim of infringement itself does not have to be stated under penalty of perjury.

On the other hand, in the counter-takedown notice you have to state under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification. It's a scary thing to do unless you can afford a lawyer.

[pdq]

Their claim is only that Inspeqtor needs to keep the previous license.

    We will withdraw this takedown notice if and only if [private] and
    Inspeqtor adhere to the GNU Affero General Public License 
    which Monit is licensed under. This means;

    Our copyright notice is retained in the derivate work, and ALL 
    the derivate work is licensed and provided to users as “open
    source” under the AGPL. This include the so called pro features 
    of Inspeqtor which are closed source and licensed under a
    proprietary license.

Translating languages of a GPL codebase and then removing the license is not within the spirit of the license. Otherwise I can translate your code from C to Go, remove the license, then translate from Go to C, and voila, license-free code.

[icebraining]

The spirit of the license is irrelevant, since the question is whether the license applies at all. Assuming it is in fact a clean-room implementation - and I have no position on that regard -, it doesn't.

[olefoo]

"Translating" a program from one language to another is not a straightforward mechanical process.

In US copyright law and most of the countries that adhere to the Berne Convention there is a concept of a derived work. What the legal standard is varies, usually a translation of a work of literature would qualify, but whether a "translation" of a work of software would be considered a derived work is an open question that will not be resolved without litigation.

But it certainly seems that this takedown is bogus in terms of the DMCA since it is not a copyrighted work itself, but an ( allegedly ) derived work.

It certainly looks like an attempt to misuse intellectual property law to protect a product from functional equivalents that would not otherwise be excludable from the market.

[Rizz]

A derived work is still protected by the original copyright. Because there is a substantial creative contribution the derived work is also copyrighted in its own right, but that doesn't diminish the original copyright.

Translating a book into a foreign language is also a creative process, but the author of the original still has the right to say whether such a translation can be distributed and would expect a royalty.

[justinsb]

1) At the extreme example, putting code through a mechanical transformation would result in no overlap, yet obviously would not change the license. Monit is arguing that inspeqtor is insufficiently dis-similar to escape the GPL.

2) You can have patent licenses, trademark licenses etc. Though I don't believe Monit are claiming that here.

[tomp]

If you rewrite Harry Potter in a different script, language, or some plot twists, it's still "derived work".

[wpietri]

Analogies between novels and code bases are misleading. For the former, the consumer experiences the copyrighted material directly. For the latter, many different expressions (which are protected) result in the same effect (which is not).

That Inspeqtor works with Monit configuration files is definitely not proof of copyright violation. Neither an admission of "heavy influence". As far as I know, the only thing that would prove that this is a derivative work (and therefore possibly a copyright violation) would be a comparison of the source code, one demonstrating a number of features in the Inspeqtor code base that show that Inspeqtor's implementor was doing something more like a port to Go than a compatible implementation.

That's sure not part of the takedown. From the way it's worded, I worry that Monit's authors are not totally clear on the distinction between patents and copyrights, and that they have not taken the advice of a competent IP attorney before taking this step.

[Zikes]

Say I wrote a story about a young orphan boy who meets a mysterious stranger that reveals to him that he has magical powers and must now go defeat a villain with shocking connections to his parents, what would you say?

And if I called that story Star Wars?

[mentat]

Which in turn is derived (on purpose) from the various sources as composed together by Joseph Campbell in "Hero with a Thousand Faces". Narrative is even more absurd to call duplicate than a totally new implementation in a different computer language.

[zenciadam]

If the work meets the established criteria regarding transformative changes, then it can be considered its own.

Rewriting a program in a new language is a large change in its own right; even more so, if it it uses features in the new language which were unavailable in the original.

[pritambaral]

Just a note for others: antires is talking about 'License', and tomp is talking about 'Copyright'.

[stonemetal]

I am not sure I get your meaning. A license is how you access a copyrighted work. Therefore they are speaking about the same set of laws.

Antirez is taking a very narrow copying must include a figurative Ctrl-c Ctrl-v. Where as tomp is taking the wider and I think more legally supported(at least as far as art goes) stance that a work can be 100% your own effort but still be a derivative work if it was inspired by an existing work.(i.e. taking a photo of a sculpture is a derivative work )

[mnarayan01]

It appears (IANAL) that Monit is alleging a copyright violation which would be eliminated if the License was followed, thus the two words can probably be used interchangeably.