SFLC Sues 14 Companies For BusyBox GPL Violations 309
eldavojohn writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has filed a lawsuit accusing fourteen companies, including Best Buy, Samsung and Westinghouse, of violating the GPL in nearly 20 separate products. This is similar to earlier BusyBox GPL suits. The commercial uses of BusyBox must be much more prolific than anyone could have imagined. Having dealt with hundreds of compliance problems and finding an average of one violation per day, the SFLC recommends one thing: be responsive to their requests (they try to settle things in private first) lest you find one of these (PDF) in your inbox."
Works for me. (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlike the patent trolls and the **AA, at least these guys do it right. You don't find a summons showing up without knowing that one is coming, there's no extortionist tactics, and they're not doing it for profit motive.
Now why in the hell don't we see state/federal laws that require such behavior? I mean, why not have something sane like a law detailing that first the litigant must prove that they spent at least x days/weeks/months trying to negotiate a change in behavior first, and must prove that they had done so in a good faith effort? (that last part is important, as otherwise one could see the likes of the RIAA sending some ungodly demand down, then claiming that they "tried")?
Re:Works for me. (Score:4, Insightful)
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A cool 100 Grand. Unfortunately, she doesn't eat candy bars [nestleusa.com].
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Doesn't that one unfriendly, intimidating legal notice with more threats than the US banks have dollars count as a good faith effort?
But who gets paid? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know much about this product, but in general...
If there is a community supported project then
a) Who gets to sue companies/people who violate the project's GPL or other open source license
b) Who gets paid should the lawsuit be successful
c) Who gets in debt should the lawsuit not be successful?
d) Who funds the lawsuit?
e) Doesn't the possibility exist for "open source trolls" who scour the world looking for GPL/Apache/BSD/whatever violations and sue the offender hoping to make a few dollars?
Re:But who gets paid? (Score:5, Informative)
a - b) The copyright holder or his/her appointed representative
c - d) The copyright holder or the organization which volunteers to file the lawsuit on the copyright holder's behalf
e) No -- the copyright holder is in charge of who gets sued
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Well, IANAL, but as anyone can claim to be the owner, I think anyone can sue.
And logically, that one gets paid or gets the debt, and funds the lawsuit, as a result of being the one who sued.
About e): Well, I guess same as someone can “troll’ by taking the free software (work of others) and selling it for money. But that’s kinda the point of GPL, no? Dunno.
Anyone who is a lawyer here to enlighten us?
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a) Any author of part of the software gets to sue (unless they had to assign copyright to the project*). In short, whoever owns the rights to the work! It's just copyright. The SFLC often gets asked to help by the people who's work has been stolen. I do not believe the poster above me who says that anyone can claim to own it.
b) In the past, the end result has been future compliance, and various "undisclosed contributions" to projects (no idea how you keep the amount of a donation to an open-source
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No.
Open source software is acquired through some method of distribution, that is a good portion of what the licensing covers.
You don't develop your own software and have some troll come along and take you to court for having the concept of their open source software that may or may not exist included in your code. If you are in violati
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Got an e-mail from the SFLC this morning (Score:5, Informative)
A little over two years ago, I discovered that my VersaTek modem was using Linux/BusyBox. I requested the source, and the company refused saying that their Chinese OEM didn't give it to them, so that they couldn't give it to me. This is, of course, still a violation of the GPL in the same way that selling a stolen stereo doesn't change the fact that the stereo is stolen.
I mailed a report of this to the BusyBox author, and this morning the SFLC sent me an e-mail letting me know that VersaTek was being included in this lawsuit. They don't mention the specific VersaTek product that I notified them about, but it's nice that they followed up.
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Re:Got an e-mail from the SFLC this morning (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what's so galling about these cases; these companies are distributing unmodified BusyBox so complying with GPL shouldn't be that hard and it doesn't even require them to release any of their code. Yet they don't even bother to provide unmodified BusyBox source.
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Let's read the license [gnu.org], shall we?
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Somehow I seriously doubt a judge or jury will accept the "well our Chinese OEM didn't give it to us" defense.
Just because you hire a Chinese company to develop a product for you doesn't mean you aren't required to ensure your product doesn't violate any laws or license agreements when you sell it here in the USA.
SFLC Sues 14 Companies for Copyright Violations (Score:3, Interesting)
What the hell, I have karma to burn: It doesn't sound as nice when I put it that way, does it?
Granted, (before I get 20 responses telling me just how many ways the SFLC is different than the RIAA), I acknowledge that the tactics that the SFLC is using are actually sane and civil. The point remains, however: all the pirate supporters on this website don't like it when you shove their arguments back in their face. If there were no copyright, or if copyright were limited to 2 years, then Linux 2.6.15 would be in the public domain by now and anyone could put it into any product they wanted without giving back to the people that created it.
Speak for yourself, white man. (Score:2)
The point remains, however: all the pirate supporters on this website don't like it when you shove their arguments back in their face.
Which pirate supporters are you referring to?
Re:SFLC Sues 14 Companies for Copyright Violations (Score:5, Informative)
I think these mythical piracy supporters would be all for that. Many seem to be of the mind of "if you are going to make this copyright shit that gets in the way of real progress, then we will use your tool against you." There's nothing wrong with taking the tools of your enemy and using them against him. And so I think the mythical pirates you refer to would be happy to have the problem you describe, as long as it came with the 2 year cap to copyright you mentioned (or even abolition).
Re:SFLC Sues 14 Companies for Copyright Violations (Score:4, Insightful)
And I have no idea why they were dumped into one group as if there is no difference in opinion between any of them.
I disagree.
So, when they are all lumped together, there's no problem, but when there is a difference of opinion from within that lump, that's a problem?
It would amount to free software developers giving away their code as charity to proprietary shops, who would then sell it for a profit. Free software developers would get absolutely nothing in return.
As opposed to today, where the exact same thing you are saying would be a bad result is happening now.
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he point remains, however: all the pirate supporters on this website don't like it when you shove their arguments back in their face.
Slashdot user base is big.
Didn't it occur to you that these might be completely different individuals?
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Except a large number of pirate supporters support limited copyright for commercial applications only. It's a perfectly reasonable solution: Hollywood could still make $800 million box office sales with a monopoly on movie theater viewing.
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Credible arguments for short/no term of copyright? (Score:2)
Can you point to serious refutations of copyright where the point of the argument is that copyright should last 2 years or not exist at all? FSF speakers have long pointed out the problem of no copyright, a very short term of copyright, and overly long copyright. My experience is that calls for no or very short terms of copyright are posited by people who ought to reconsider what is in society's best interests.
No copyright means no end to the tyranny of proprietary software (said programs never enter the
Re:Credible arguments for short/no term of copyrig (Score:2)
Finally, some semblance of sanity.
Can you point to serious refutations of copyright where the point of the argument is that copyright should last 2 years or not exist at all?
No. The only arguments I have heard in this vein are from Slashdotters who like The Pirate Bay too much.
My experience is that calls for no or very short terms of copyright are posited by people who ought to reconsider what is in society's best interests.
Agreed again.
I can't ascertain your position on copyright from your post. Stallman seems to grudgingly favor a medium-length copyright out of necessity, a "least evil" approach if you will, where he thinks copyright in and of itself is generally evil. I don't agree with that. From what I can tell, Stallman thinks that all software should be developed and effectively g
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Slashdot is a community with a lot of different groups and opinions represented.
You can't just take two opinions that have been expressed at various times, declare them incompatible, and pretend that you have scored some kind of point.
There are people here that are for an abolishment of copyright. There are also people here that a big believers in the GPL. This does not mean that there is even one slashdotter out there that have both opinions!
If you find one, you may have a debate, but until then you are ju
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Well, it should also be mandatory that source code be made available when a binary falls into the public domain...
And yes, the terms should be very short especially for software, because software ages so quickly. Even stuff that is 2 years old is often considered obsolete and has already been superseded by newer versions.
I finally understand!!! (Score:2)
1.) Write F/OSS.
2.) File Lawsuits against infringers.
3.) ???
4.) Profit!!!
I'm curious... how much money would he have made from the software if he didn't sue?
Bill
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It's been said here 10 times, but I'll say it again.
The FSF/SFLC GPL (ok, that's a load of acronyms) enforcement efforts are not about money; they're about compliance. These people try hard to create a peaceful solution for GPL violations, and only resort to lawsuits when it's clear that they're not intent on cooperating.
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Well, if the company had followed the rules, then either a) the company would have paid the author some money for a closed-license version of the source so they could incorporate it into their product without releasing the source, or b) the company would have had to release their changes, which could then be merged back into the project (not directly money, but programmer time is a resource with non-zero value). Or c) the company made no changes to the GPLed code but wouldn't redistribute the source even af
provide non-"free" alternatives (Score:2)
Emprex too (Score:3, Informative)
I got one of their ME1 multimedia enclosures. It's great, and uses Busybox. I can't find the source code anywhere on their web site.
http://www.emprex.com/03_support_02.php?pg_no=10&group=84&kind=1 [emprex.com]
Re:WDTV (Score:4, Informative)
Well, this was mentioned in page 8 of the PDF:
"Western Digital's WDBABF0000NBK WD TV HD Media Player;"
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Here's the pdf:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2009/busybox-complaint-2009-12-14.pdf [softwarefreedom.org]
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like they were given enough chances to respond, it would've been the same with proprietary software.
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. The SFLC have consistently been proponents of working with violators in private whenever possible; see, for example:
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html [ebb.org]
If they're resorting to a suit, it's likely only after making serious efforts to resolve the conflict some other way.
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Reasonable lawyers resorting to suing as a last resort?
My God, the world is ending. Quick, I'll start looking up oceanic seismic sensor data for anything about the size of an Old One, and you look to the sky for the flaming hellfire!
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> Just look at the lack of a stable driver ABI that makes shopping for Linux compatible devices in 2009 a case of paperweight roulette for example.
Utter nonsense.
Linux has better driver support than MacOS for most things and it has a smaller marketshare. Most drivers are supported by the community and the requirement for a binary ABI simply doesn't exist. The few hardware vendors that directly support Linux are not visibly hampered by this "binary ABI problem".
It's just something for Lemming Trolls to wh
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Its not that difficult to comply with the GPL.
I've been emailing Humax for the last year (since I bought one of their digital TV STB) to get hold of the code in accordance with the GPL and they've either sent me a manual for a different device, told me that they didn't need to provide the code as I was unable to update the firmware myself so its useless me having any source code.
They do provide some GPL code for a box they sell in Germany though - but not the UK one, and there is no mention of using GPL code in their manuals.
If you want to try and get anything GPL related out of Humax you can try emailing them
gnu@humaxdigital.com (who never reply)
support@humaxdigital.com (who say they don't need to provide the code and can't even C&P a name properly)
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
No the GPL is just somewhere between "actually free" and totally proprietary...
How do you think most commercial vendors would react if you started distributing their code in violation of their terms?
The GPL is a defence mechanism, primarily against vendors who would take open code, perform minor changes to break compatibility and they try to lock people in to proprietary forks. Noone really likes it, it's just a sad fact of life that if you give people too much freedom they will abuse it.
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I am unaware of any commercial vendor telling me that their code is free, or, for that matter, encouraging me to use their code in my own projects. This, however, is the dominant litany for GPL code.
People can release code under any conditions they like, and I'm all for it. What I don't particularly like is false claims; and the claim that GPL code is "free" is one of those. It's no
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
People can release code under any conditions they like, and I'm all for it. What I don't particularly like is false claims; and the claim that GPL code is "free" is one of those. It's no more free than commercial code is (and in fact, takes on much of the same character... do something we don't like and we'll sue you.) Because of the legal ramifications, it has real monetary cost as well; you think you're saving time, while your lawyer is planning on you paying for their new car. Or house. That's why I don't use GPL'd code, and why I don't use the GPL on my code. It's the same as commercial code - a legal minefield, and as such, totally not worth my time.
Forgive me, but I'm just not seeing the issue here.
The GPL boils down to the following:
If you don't want to follow these rules, don't use pre-existing GPL code as the basis for your product. Problem solved. Or, if you want to see if the author (or authors) is/are willing to re-license it under a different license for your project, you can do that too. And yes, there are additional details regarding patents and such, but the above is the gist of the license. Those additional details are intended to ensure that any downstream recipients won't be encumbered by other legal restrictions that may prevent them from exercising the rights they receive with the source code.
For all the complaining about the restrictions placed on them by the GPL, the above seems pretty simple to me. What am I missing? I must be missing something for all the complaints I read.
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In reality, most of the GPL code copyright owners are more than happy to drop the claims if you comply by releasing the changes.
No, proprietary software is anti-progress, because unlike free software it locks the people who bought the software out. People who license their code with GPL are simply saying "I don't want the software I wrote helping people getting locked out", while PD/BSD/MIT/etc are more than happy to
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you sure these companies "embrace" open source? sounds to me like they really just raped it...
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to give credit to Sharp. I bought an Aquos 52" TV this past year and they included the GPL statements and a link to obtain busybox on their site. The link wasn't working at first and I emailed them to get the source and the link started working again the next day. Following the rules isn't all that hard to do. I don't see why there would be such a huge problem with companies providing a link.
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Out of curiosity, what's a TV doing with BusyBox?
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I assume you have yet to see the latest range of net connected TVs?
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Following the rules isn't all that hard to do.
I agree. I really don't understand why companies get themselves in this hole. Though I wonder what happens if you do manage to customise and replace the code for your TV and something goes wrong with it. Could you really blame Sharp for not providing support to TVs with altered firmware? It would be a tech support nightmare!
The only time that GPL does become a problem is if you used it during the development process for something that you thought would never need to be released and then find that circumstan
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Without the litigation, you lose the purpose of the GPL, though.
We don't want people embracing open source if by "embrace" they mean "take this free code, create my own product, and sell it".
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Major correction. We do want people embracing open source if by "embrace" they mean "take this free code, create my own product, and sell it". If it happens to be free software as well, they just need to release the source code to their new product as well. If it's BSD or some other open source license, the conditions might be different (attribution in advertising, possibly). Very few open source licenses forbid the commercialization of code.
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
We don't want people embracing open source if by "embrace" they mean "take this free code, create my own product, and sell it".
No, you're dead wrong. The GPL allows exactly what you're describing.
It attaches a condition to that, though: It also says, 'Anything you distribute has to be available in source form as well.'
It's bad enough that proprietary software apologists try constantly to conflate the terms 'proprietary' and 'commercial' without GPL supporters showing equal ignorance. Proprietary software has exactly nothing to do with whether it's commercial or not. GPL has exactly nothing to do with price.
To back up parent..... (Score:4, Informative)
Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide “equivalent access” to download the source—therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.
It looks to me that I can charge $1,000,000 for my GPL software and charge another $1,000,000 for the source.
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Yes, it does look that way, but it's a one-shot deal.
Anyone who buys it has exactly the same rights as you do - including selling the binaries or source at half price.
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Depending on the actual worth of the software and its demand, one of two things will happen:
If the total worth of your software (value to each user * total users in the market) is less than $2,000,000, then obviously no one will buy it and you will earn a total of $0.
If the total worth of your software is greater than $2,000,000, then someone will pay you $2,000,000 to obtain your binary and source and re-distribute both under GPL at a reasonab
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I'm not so sure the parent post you are responding to is a supporter of open source or the GPL. Its not quite clear who "We" refers to in the post and to me suggests anti-GPL. In that context the sentence makes sense.
We (proprietary close source software developers) don't want people embracing open source...
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We don't want people embracing open source if by "embrace" they mean "take this free code, create my own product, and sell it".
Why not, as long as any GPL'd source "goes back into the pool", as it were.
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If by "We" you mean companies who license closed source proprietary software I guess you are absolutely correct.
There are many companies that use open source in their products that was licensed to them under the GPL as the open source method provides significant value beyond paying for a license to the closed source proprietary alternatives. Unfortunately for the closed source propr
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
And Microsoft shouldn't sue any of the Mom-n-Pop computer shops for selling boxes with phony Windows license keys, as it would discourage anyone from selling boxes based on commercial / propriatary software.
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Use doesn't require meeting conditions. (Score:3, Informative)
That depends on what you mean by "use". Typically people mean executing a program, running the software. The terms of the GPLv2 (Busybox's license) do not compel one to do anything upon running the software. And this quality is not unique to the GPL.
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Why - because if you take something that's GPL'd you have to offer the source? What's the big deal? It certainly costs less to make the source available to buyers than it would to write your own code from scratch.
What's a DVD cost nowadays - a dime? Heck, they could include it on a free USB key, or offer it for $1 (+ $10 shipping and handling) a pop in the written documentation [gnu.org]:
Re:Not such a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
In order for people to use open source software, someone has to write open source software. It does not appear by magic from the "software fairy".
The SFLC's primary purpose is to encourage people to write open source software, not to encourage people to use it. By encouraging people to write OSS, SFLC helps ensure that there is a large body of useful and relevant OSS available for people to use.
People who write OSS under the GPL are motivated by (among other things) the idea of sharing work: The price you pay to use my work is that you have to share any improvements you make, and you have to allow your users to share my work, too.
By bringing forward these lawsuits, the SFLC ensures that the author's sharing requirement is met, thus encouraging the author to make more OSS available.
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The issue at hand is that they do not embrace open source. They are using open source code under a license that requires they embrace open source as a condition of the license. They are now in violation of that license.
If we were to accept your logic then companies like Microsoft and members of the MPAA/RIAA are screwed every time they enforce their copyrights and licensing con
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Re:I can hear upper management screaming now (Score:4, Insightful)
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You don't need the license to *use* the code.
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Which is still possible without releasing any source code.
The keyword here is "distributing" - even if you don't create a derivative at all.
Re:I can hear upper management screaming now (Score:5, Interesting)
In which case - why didn't they simply remove it from the shipping version? They are free to use it as an internal tool, just not ship it with the product. Satisfies everyone - engineers, upper management, and the OSS lawyers.
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Busybox is used for setting up the ethernet interface most devices seem to have these days and to manage the internal filesystem most devices have for caching & downloadable content. Well thats what its for in the box I have. I wish they'd activated the HTTP server in Busybox aswell as then I could have some access to the content on the box from elsewhere on my home network.
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So, err, there's no risk of a lawsuit by stealing someone else's proprietary code? I sincerely beg to differ on that one.
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And then have their nephew i
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Unfortunately for them, the "old way" doesn't remove the requirements to think about the licensing.
Under no terms should ANY manager or exec be led to think they don't have to worry about license terms- period. Even with "buying" you have all sorts of landmines within the licensing that buying doesn't even avoid.
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It doesn't kill OSS, it kills the use of GPL'ed code. With our proprietary products, we were extremely careful that if we did use other code/libraries that they were either BSD or MIT style licenses.
Why do people forget that OSS is more than just the GPL?
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Because the folks using BSD- and MIT-style licenses don't care if the license terms are ignored?
No, wait, they do care. Funny that.
CC-BY and CC-BY-SA (Score:2)
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Unfortunately, this may be the kind of thing that makes upper management kill OSS in the shop. Who wants to risk a lawsuit? Forget that they have nothing to do with each other.
Yeah, I can see how that would play:
"Wait, what? This software has rules? We have to follow rules?!? And we get sued if we don't???!! Sandra, call my congressman, and take a memo: No more, uh, G-L-P software until we get this fixed!"
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But it will not stop that.
All you have to do is include a link to the source on your website and a GPL statment with the product.
You don't even have to include a link to the source you could "require" that they send you a written letter and pay for shipping of the source.
Which frankly is all just silly.
The source for BusyBox is freely available already so an extra link will not really make it any more free. Those are the rules but except for including the GPL in the docs for the product I see little value i
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Considering that it is used in over 20 of their products (N.B.: I have no idea how many products BusyBox is used in. These 20 products are just the ones produced by a certain set of companies that are non-compliant. I would speculate that BusyBox is used in far more products where they are compliant) I think we can probably throw out the idea that it is crap.
Considering that it is very easy to comply with GPL as many other posters have pointed out we can throw out the idea that it is a legal mine field. The
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Yeah, because if you steal commercial code and hide it in your product, you're sooo much better off.
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You can potentially buy off or negotiate a license with someone who wrote GPL code too, whoever holds the copyright on the code is free to make it available to you under different terms.
With closed source you're far less likely to do it in the first place, since not having the source will impair your ability to integrate it into your product... But it has happened.
With closed source you could be much worse off, the vendor may be too big for you to buy out, and may refuse to license the code to you at all. A
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In other news, thousands of corporate gpl users reevaluate violating the license.
Fixed that for you.
I feel dirty.
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In other news, thousands of corporate gpl users reevaluate their use of gpl software. I know... Many gpl advocates are ecstatic at the idea of corporations not using gpl code.
Any sane corporate user of software knows that software comes with a license, and at a price. If the software you use is licensed under GPL, the price is the cost and the effort of putting the source code on your web site for anyone to download. If the people responsible for software licensing are too stupid to read the GPL license, they deserve all that they get. Nobody wants corporate users who use GPL software because they are too stupid to read a license. And certainly nobody wants corporate users who u
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You mean, like Google?
sorry, you've made an incorrect statement (Score:4, Informative)
While I like your sentiment, your statement is wrong. You can selectively enforce copyright all you want.
It's trademarks that lose strength if you don't enforce them.
You must have forgotten laches (Score:4, Informative)
You can selectively enforce copyright all you want.
It's trademarks that lose strength if you don't enforce them.
Not exactly. Copyright and patent claims are still subject to laches [wikipedia.org], even if the penalty for delay is weaker than for a trademark claim.
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If you enforce 0.000001% of your copyrights, then many places will ignore them. If you enforce 100% of them, then no one will ignore them. That's what I took from them becoming weaker.
It's trademarks that lose strength if you don't enforce them.
I don't think I'd use the "lose strength" terms. It's either valid or not. There is no weak trademark, unless you are talking about one that wasn't vigo
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Actually, it doesn't. LEGO is an adjective, there are no "legos" or "leggos", they're LEGO bricks:
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It appears Erik Andersen is responsible for a large amount of rewritten core apps in BusyBox:
http://git.busybox.net/busybox/tree/AUTHORS [busybox.net]
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