BSD family of licenses and consumer rights

[Krush206]

Under no circumstances can the inclusion of a copyrighted BSD project used as advertisment/representation for the new project - the new project can be proprietary or totally free, no representation is allowed unless explicitly allowed by contacting the copyright holder.

The FTC doesn't care only for advertisements. Read the FTC policy statements on unfairness and deception. A representation can be either express or implied. And the reasonableness is verified from the perspective of the targeted group. A representation is misleading if this is likely to influence the consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances. There's no requirement for an act or practice to cause actual deception. Moreover, deception is classified as an unfair method of competition.

Even if millions of licensees don't believe they're misled, the FTC can potentially frame the act of omitting source code as deceptive.

 

[Krush206]

but obviously SONY is not selling the PlayStation with a contract that stipulates "use in source form", because BSD license does not apply to the PlayStation as a product. The BSD license grants permissions to SONY for using the BSD code inside the PlayStation product, only if they meet some conditions. It is a license and not a contract, and it is between SONY and the authors and contributors of BSD code, not with the users of the product.

This isn't what PROCON's told me. I was told a purchase is a binding contract, and this isn't different in US.

 

[Krush206]

"usable in source form" has no precise meaning.

This is authorization. Frustrating this legitimate authorization is unlawful.

 

[SirDice]

Post the exact, and entire, responses you got. And a case number. Until then I'm going to take everything you claim with a grain of salt. Because nothing you have said here can be verified.

 

[OpenFreeNet]

This isn't what PROCON's told me. I was told a purchase is a binding contract, and this isn't different in US.

This is the EULA between SONY and a buyer of PlayStation 4. In the restriction section

You may not lease, rent, sublicense, publish, modify, patch, adapt or translate System Software. You may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble System Software, create System Software derivative works, or attempt to create System Software source code from its object code.

so it is completely different from BSD license.

In the LICENSE GRANT section they tell that they reserve all rights:

All use of or access to System Software is subject to this Agreement's terms and applicable intellectual property laws. Except as this Agreement expressly grants, SIE Inc and its licensors reserve all rights in System Software.

.

And then they mention (indirectly) the BSD license:

Certain license terms for SIE Inc-licensed, third-party software or service may require that SIE Inc provide you with notices and license terms for that third-party software or service. These notices and license terms are available to you at https://doc.dl.playstation.net/doc/ps4-oss/ or any other place which SIE Inc thinks appropriate.

If you open the link, you see all the OSS software used by SONY, with proper credits.

So, yes, you have a license contract, but it is saying the opposite respect what you are saying.

Also SONY is a licensee, but they are respecting the license of the OSS they are using. If FreeBSD maintainers sue SONY, SONY can show they are respecting the BSD license.

 

[hedwards]

Lock?

I don't know, but it's certainly not going anywhere and the OP still hasn't actually justified their position to any reasonable degree nor does anything in the posts about the response suggest that the authorities really agree that there's a problem here.

 

[hedwards]

Post the exact, and entire, responses you got. And a case number. Until then I'm going to take everything you claim with a grain of salt. Because nothing you have said here can be verified.

Yep, I'm like 95% sure that it's legitimately just a "thank you for your feedback, we're looking into this" response while pretty much immediately filing it to the circular file.

I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of any of this is because at best what's likely to happen is for companies that are using BSD licensed code to just not offer the software there and call it good. Re-licensing code is typically anywhere from difficult to impossible depending on the specifics. Even without a metaphorical gun to the head, it's taken FreeBSD quite a while to get to the point where there's no GPL code in the base system.

 

[Krush206]

I'm not sending the documents, SirDice. Only those which are authorized may have access. Moreover, I've flagged the petition as private. Though SEI isn't restricted to Brazilian citizens, you'd have no access to the documents.

 

[kpedersen]

I can see it in ~4 months.

Outcome: unsuccessful
Outcome: unsuccessful
Outcome: unsuccessful
Outcome: unsuccessful

And to be fair, even if OP did have a case that was missed by decades of expert analysis... the outcome would still be unsuccessful. They would need to go through a solicitor and do things properly.

 

[hedwards]

I'm not sending the documents, SirDice. Only those which are authorized may have access. Moreover, I've flagged the petition as private. Though SEI isn't restricted to Brazilian citizens, you'd have no access to the documents.

In other words trust me bro. The likelihood of you having success with this is approximately 0 and I genuinely think you're misunderstanding what you're being told because it seems rather unlikely that nobody in the last few decades has though about this and asked any questions.

Having courts radically reinterpret licenses that have been around for so many decades would cause absolute chaos.