Tencent has officially announced its participation in the GPL Commitment initiated by Red Hat. Tencent’s support for this commitment reflects its recognition of the open source culture and the concept of open source compliance, as well as its respect for intellectual property rights, and recognizes that open source compliance is an extremely important link in the open source ecosystem.

Xu Yong, head of Tencent open Source Management Office, said, “Tencent, as a leading Internet company in the world, has always identified with the open source culture and believes that the open source community should be given the appropriate space for innovation. Only through full exchange of opinions can the open source community be stimulated to its maximum potential. “Compliance with open source licenses and related open source compliance is important and necessary, and the GPL commitment, initiated by Red Hat, creates a more rational and predictable way to promote the importance of open source compliance and the protection of intellectual property rights while promoting innovation in the open source community.”

The GPL Commitment was initiated by Red Hat, a company that refuses to enforce open source licenses in a strict manner and aims to improve the rationality and predictability of GPLv2, LGPLv2, and LGPLv2.1 open source licenses. This commitment maintains the open source community’s collaborative and open atmosphere by giving reasonable opportunity to correct wrongdoing that violates the aforementioned Open Source license.

The GPL commitment initiated by Red Hat has been publicly supported by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, IBM, SAP, SONY, NEC, Arm and Royal Philips, among others. These supporters are widely distributed around the world, covering IT services, software development tools and platforms, social networking, Internet finance, semiconductors, e-commerce, multimedia software and other industries. They are also important members of the open source community and contribute significantly to the open source culture.

The following is Tencent’s original GPL commitment:

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, 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.

In the end, all of you are Limited and in their points of view.