Violations of the GPL, LGPL, and GFDL

If you think you see a violation of the GPL [ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html ] (or the LGPL [ http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html ], or the GFDL [ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html ]) the first thing you should do is double-check the facts:

If there seems to be a real violation, the next thing you need to do is record the details carefully:

The more of these details that you have, the easier it is for the copyright holder to pursue the matter.

Once you have collected the details, you should send a precise report to the copyright holder of the packages that are being misused. The copyright holder is the one who is legally authorized to take action to enforce the license.

If the copyright holder is the Free Software Foundation, please send the report to <license-violation@gnu.org>.

Note that the GPL, and other copyleft licenses, are copyright licenses. This means that only the copyright holders are empowered to act against violations. The FSF acts on all GPL violations reported on FSF copyrighted code, and we offer assistance to any other copyright holder who wishes to do the same.

But, we cannot act on our own if we do not hold copyright. Thus, be sure to find out who the copyright holders of the software are before reporting a violation.

Copyright (C) 1999, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2001/10/22 18:58:35 $ $Author: rluddy $