14.17 "No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory.”
The copyright terms of the GPL require source code to be shareable with third parties for the copyright licence is valid. It means GPLed products can never be distributed.
It means anything that uses the linux kernel cannot be distributed within TPP countries. A lot of consumer devices use GPL software such as ADSL modems, TV’s, other “smart” consumer devices, anything android uses GPLed kernel.
It means the death of software like Wordpress, software that runs 74 million websites.
I wasnt expecting good news, but im stunned. (I hope im making a mistake)
EDIT: There are over 1 billion active android devices in the world.
The long answer is that governments cannot stipulate that the source be disclosed as a condition of import (etc). It does not prevent a user or a government requiring the source code under a licence that is self-imposed by the copyright holder.
Generally only the copyright holder can enforce the terms of FLOSS licences (including the GPL), depending on the specific provisions of each licence. Ordinarily a government would not be a copyright holder in these circumstances.
Ok i think i understand now, i didnt see the difference between ‘the government requiring’ and ‘the government enforcing laws they create that allow a person to require’.
Its still going to end in court im sure of it. deepest pockets will win, and thats not going to be a GPL copyright holder.
It might. But to be honest, I think it’s just to maintain the status quo of allowing companies to freely import/distribute/sell closed source software.
A decade ago or so, there was a thing called “NSA Linux” where the US government agency contributed to a GPL’ed project to try and enhance security.
I dont want to even guess what this means for governments who want to do collaborative software development with other governments under a copyleft agreement.
Im not sure why they would need restrictions like this is they want to maintain the status quo.
For the purposes of this Article, software subject to [art 14.7(1)] is limited to mass-market software or products containing such software and does not include software used for critical infrastructure.
It also doesn’t prevent governments from using a copyleft licence for their collaboration if that’s what they agree to use.
Without this a country could legislate to require that source code be disclosed. This clause prevents them from doing that.
14.17 "No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory.”
It doesn’t mean that individuals (or corporations) can’t have a term in the licence agreement (such as the GPL) that require access to source code.
It means that the government (in terms of the TPP “Party” means one of the governments involved) can’t make laws that say “the source code must be provided to import such-and-such proprietary software” (i.e. can’t force open source).