Tencent Joins the GPL Cooperation Commitment

Hong Kong, 07 November, 2018 – Tencent, a leading provider of Internet services in China, today announced that it has joined the GPL Cooperation Commitment (see full text below) initiated by Red Hat Inc. Tencent’s support for the initiative reflects the company’s recognition of open source culture and compliance needs, in line with which it commits to upholding intellectual property rights and maintaining its high regard for open source compliance in the open source ecosystem. 

Xu Yong, Head of Open Source Management Office at Tencent, said, “As one of the world’s leading Internet service providers, Tencent is a strong supporter of open source culture and believes that the open source communities should be given the leeway needed to innovate. The sufficient exchange of ideas is the key to facilitating this and to unlocking the future potential of the open source communities alike.” 

“It is important and necessary to comply with open source licensing and to carry out works on open source compliance, and Red Hat’s GPL Cooperation Commitment, which takes a reasonable and predictable approach, is a better solution to achieve that and to encourage innovation in the open source communities. The commitment also promotes the importance of open source compliance and the protection of intellectual property rights.”

The Red Hat-initiative GPL Cooperation Commitment also rejects a harsh approach to enforcing open source licenses. Its objective is instead to make the enforcement of GPLv2 and LGPLv2 and 2.1 reasonable and predictable by providing opportunities for licensees to cure errors in compliance with GPLv2 and LGPLv2 and 2.1-licensed software before taking action to terminate the licenses, so that an open and collaborative atmosphere can be maintained in the open source communities. 

Several global leading companies in the Internet and technology industries have expressed their support for the GPL Cooperation Commitment, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, IBM, SAP, Sony, NEC, Arm, and Royal Philips. These companies hail from many different parts of the world and industries, including IT services, software development tools and platforms, social networking, fintech, semiconductors, e-commerce and electronics. These companies are also key members of open source communities and have contributed significantly to the open source ecosystem.

Tencent has made its GPL Cooperation Commitment as stated below:

Our Commitment

Before filing or continuing to prosecute any legal proceeding or claim (other than a Defensive Action) arising from termination of a Covered License, Tencent commits to extend to the person or entity (“you”) accused of violating the Covered License the following provisions regarding cure and reinstatement, taken from GPL version 3. As used here, the term ‘this License’ refers to the specific Covered License being enforced.

However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.

Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.

Tencent intends this Commitment to be irrevocable, and binding and enforceable against Tencent and assignees of or successors to Tencent’s copyrights.

Tencent may modify this Commitment by publishing a new edition on this page or a successor location.

Definitions

‘Covered License’ means the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2), the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1), or the GNU Library General Public License, version 2 (LGPLv2), all as published by the Free Software Foundation.

‘Defensive Action’ means a legal proceeding or claim that Tencent brings against you in response to a prior proceeding or claim initiated by you or your affiliate.

‘Tencent’ means THL A29 Limited and its subsidiaries.