Posted on 09/21/2007 9:11:32 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
In what may be the first action of its kind in the U.S., the Software Freedom Law Center has filed a lawsuit to enforce an open-source license.
The SFLC filed the suit on Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Monsoon Multimedia Inc., on behalf of the developers of BusyBox, Erik Andersen and Rob Landley. The suit charges Monsoon with using BusyBox under the GNU General Public License version 2 but failing to publish its source code. Under the terms of the license, distributors of software that uses the licensed software must make their source code available. Failing to do so is considered copyright infringement.
BusyBox, members of the public and the SFLC legal team notified Monsoon of its responsibilities, but Monsoon has not yet published the code, said Dan Ravicher, legal director at SFLC. While it's relatively common for licensees to neglect to share their code, parties typically work through the issue without having to go to court, he said.
This case is a last resort after Monsoon failed to rectify the situation, he said. The suit is necessary because from a legal perspective, copyright owners can start to lose rights if they don't act to protect them, he said.
BusyBox is a lightweight set of Unix utilities used in embedded systems. Monsoon develops digital video products, including a Slingbox-like device that enables remote TV viewing.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
I didn't sign for the license for thousands of dollars of software I've bought. Does that mean I'm free to do whatever I want?
In any case, you are missing a BIG concept here. Let's say that a judge tosses out the ENTIRE GPL in this case, the whole thing is declared unenforceable. Where does this leave the company?
It leaves them distributing copyrighted works without a license.
Doesn't matter to Golden Eagle -- he's made it pretty clear that it's OK by him to steal other people's work if he doesn't like those people.
That's the perfect definition. The catch in the GPL, MPL and CDDL is that the original work must remain free to be used by and open to all. In contrast, BSD works can be made closed, and thus no longer free.
This company doesn't have to publish its code under the GPL. However, doing so will likely be a much cheaper option than a court injunction to cease infringement that would probably kill the business.
So let me get this straight you think developers should spend copious time doing research to make sure they are not violating patents but not take the time to read a license?
I already told you on another thread I won’t respond to you as it took you months before you finally admitted to knowingly making up lies in defense of the Russian hackers who cracked Apple’s Unix, nor should anyone else. Maybe someone else is interested in your comments but based on the history of dishonesty I’m not wasting my time on them.
History of dishonesty? I have at least ten links to proven lies of yours.
Don't post unless you're willing to defend your arguments based on the facts.
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