Voting Machine Company Diebold Faces Lawsuit Over Software Use

Artifex Software, the company behind the open source Ghostscript PDF processing software, has filed a lawsuit against voting machine vendor Diebold and its subsidiary Premier Election Solutions. Artifex says that Diebold violated the GPL by incorporating Ghostscript into commercial electronic voting machine systems.

Ghostscript, which was originally developed in the late 80s, is distributed for free under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This license permits developers to study, modify, use, and redistribute the software but requires that derivatives be made available under the same terms. Companies that want to use Ghostscript in closed-source proprietary software projects can avoid the copyleft requirement by purchasing a commercial license from Artifex. Among commercial Ghostscript users who have purchased licenses from Artifex are some of the biggest names in the printing and technology industries, including HP, IBM, Kodak, Siemens, SGI, and Xerox.

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Comments

[Ranta]

11:41 PM on 11/10/2008

Another advantage with the Democratic victory is that many states will clean up their voting practices. Why should inner city polling places have as many as 375 voters per machine (as was true in areas of Virginia) and in the suburban areas virtually no lines and few voters per machine?

[temashana]

01:29 PM on 11/10/2008

this is great news! they're a bunch of criminals!

[sparkey]

12:19 PM on 11/09/2008

You have to wonder. If the machines were fixed to elect McSame and Obama still won, How many votes did Obama really get? Every machine needs to be checked before they are all destroyed.

[ScoobyDoo269]

01:10 PM on 11/09/2008

I agree - was it paper ballots that elected Obama? Destroy the electronic voting machines - they are toooooo easily modifiable and code can be easily altered and then destroyed automatically without anyone's knowledge - Computers can be a Great Help or a Devastating tool for people with Republican intent.

[BillMelater]

11:47 AM on 11/09/2008

So elections isn't the only thing Diebold has been stealing, eh? It figgers.

http://billmel8er.wordpress.com

[NoSillyName]

04:02 PM on 11/08/2008

I'm happy that NM went back to paper ballots/optical scanners.

[Ranta]

11:34 PM on 11/10/2008

It's especially important that Minnesota is also using "scanners". Think of how crazy any recount is without a paper trail.

[NWBrunette]

06:25 PM on 11/07/2008

Anything to put this company out of business is good for America.

[pons1595]

10:56 PM on 11/08/2008

Absolutely! Crooks and liars! Diebold deserves corporate death!

[mlaiuppa]

02:19 PM on 11/07/2008

If Diebold steals software, is there any reason to believe they are any more honest in any of their other dealings? Like....counting votes?

[wrylass]

01:44 PM on 11/07/2008

Time to put Diebold out of business. A recycled paper ballot in every voting booth ...

[TN]

10:46 AM on 11/07/2008

Isn't the ghost script software what was programmed into the cards that went into the machines. Those ladies in Ohio that dedicated themselves to figuring this stuff out were on a HBO special, where you could program the cards to flip votes from one candidate to another. That software should not have been on those cards. That's how Ohio was stolen. In Memphis, TN 5 cards were missing out of the voting machines a couple of days prior to the vote in 06. No one was checking the cards for programs on them, that cheat, before they were put into the machines.

[dadw5boys]

06:03 PM on 11/06/2008

Funny the Supreme Court is making it HARDER to enforce soferware patents. Funny when the well connected get lined up at the right time.

[Paralogos]

02:18 PM on 11/09/2008

This has nothing to do with patents.

[TLP]

03:20 PM on 11/06/2008

The head of Diebold guaranteed a Bush victory in 2004 and he may have in 2000. With their voting machines all over Ohio, I can see why. Big contributor to Bush.

[TrooAmerican]

04:03 PM on 11/06/2008

yeah, they are republican owned and operated and program them to falsify votes and fraud the public.

[Pdubya]

12:18 PM on 11/06/2008

Lets start with the New Hampshire primaries.

www.blackboxvoting.org

[frantaylor]

11:40 AM on 11/06/2008

Diebold is really f****d on this one, because the license that they at first agreed to, and then violated, provides that violators of the agreement are banned from further use of the software. This is really bad for them because there is really no practical replacement for GhostScript. The original PostScript engine from Adobe is nowhere near as flexible, and there's probably no way it could be "dropped in" as a replacement.

Diebold will be forced to settle the lawsuit. This is very good news for Free Software, as the copyright owners will negotiate a big financial package as part of the settlement, and the funds will undoubtedly be used to enhance Ghostscript further.

[dzent1]

05:18 PM on 11/05/2008

NO MORE VOTING MACHINES, END OF STORY. DEMAND PAPER BALLOTS, PERIOD.

[Northwest02]

10:22 PM on 11/05/2008

Could not agree more. Oregon has been voting via mail-in ballots for years and it works just fine and there is a paper trail. We need to remove all machines from our election process.

[dagnome27]

02:33 PM on 11/07/2008

not all machines - we need to remove Electronic Devices that allow voting that can be "rigged". The Ink-a-vote systems as used in California allow the voted ballots to provide a clear paper trail that can be recounted if needed (and no chads, btw) but provide an electronic method of tabulating the results quickly.
What we MUST do is tighten up the TABULATION process, to preserve security and prevent electronic vote-tampering there.

[NWBrunette]

06:31 PM on 11/07/2008

Absolutely right. All this fascination with electronic machines is just that - a fascination. It just gets in the way of voting and is a huge opportunity for repubs to mess with the system. Note folks - there is not one state-wide elected official in Oregon who's a repub - one reason is they have mail-in paper ballots. There's no way for the nefarious scoundrels to gum up the system. At least we have one State now where elections are on the merits - it'll be a long time before a repub wins in Oregon. Time for the rest of America to pay attention.

[drkazmd65]

06:10 PM on 11/06/2008

Have been saying that since before 2004 and Ohio dzent1,... What the hell is wrong with a paper ballot?

I mean,.. every friggin' test I ever took in college was on one of those damned 'scantron' sheets. The class I am teaching now at college STILL uses them.

Scannable, fast, reliable, and if there is a problem,... you can always have a human look over the sheets.

Problem is,... the paper trail makes the elections much harder to rig and get away with it,... hence the problem for Diebold and the Republican party,...

[DougNTexas]

10:50 PM on 11/06/2008

Bingo we have a winner. Why the Democrat Party after 2000 didn't raise hell over the Diebold Voting machines is beyond me. It was obvious the elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen. It was so easy to do and easy to program right from the start, and so hard to prove afterwords with no paper trail. I imagine the Minn. and Alaska Senate elections will have a little help from Diebold.

[sarchasm]

10:04 AM on 11/05/2008

Does anyone find it alarming and perhaps strangely ironic that Diebold is being sued for using open software called "Ghostscript?" I mean what the hell is ghostly about it? ... It's invisibility?

[TheVicar]

05:51 PM on 11/05/2008

It's a reverse-engineered interpreter for Adobe's PostScript page description language, which drives most high-end small laser printers and some others, and is used in all kinds of imaging systems. It's a ghost-written version of PostScript, get it?