linux-watch.com — The first U.S. GPL-related lawsuit appears to be headed for a quick out-of-court settlement. Device-maker Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it has violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license.
Sep 24, 2007 View in Crawl 4
onestoneSep 24, 2007
That's good news, although GPL remains untested in USA.
krachedSep 25, 2007
The GPL will be held valid, that is not the issue (unless the authors are really sloppy in having one license on the website and another in the tarball which is surprisingly common). The kicker is the remedy, contract or copyright? If it is considered a breach of contract, the the copyright owners will get their damages, which will be nothing. Even if it considered copyright infringement, most people have not registered their work within 90 days of publication. That bars an author from getting statutory damages. And they don't get all profit, the question is what would someone have paid a license for the code. Since this code wants to be free, it will probably get its wish. I think the GPL will turn out to be a toothless tiger.
geminitojanusSep 25, 2007
You're pretty much exactly wrong. The GPL is a license, not a contract, which is exactly why your entire argument is invalid (and believe me, you're not the first one to make this mistake, it's rampant due to the fact people don't understand the difference, and due to the fact in some countries there is no difference; in countries where the GPL would be a contract, the contract at this point would simply be called "invalid" and you would *still* be violating the copyright). The reason people settle so quickly in the light of GPL cases is because it's pretty much airtight in its design. Either you follow the letters of the License, or you don't have a right to use the code, which is still under copyright, a plain and simple copyright infringement case. For example: Trolltech has dual-licensed their Qt toolkit so that all applications written on top of it have to be GPL or they have to get a separate commercial license to use it. If you don't, Trolltech is well within their legal ability to sue you for using it, and either force you to license it, or make you stop distributing your code. In America (and most places), you don't have to register your copyright in order to retain it, so that argument's dead too. This isn't the first legal battle for the GPL, mind you. It's been around since 1991, and there have been a few cases overseas and every time to date, it's been settled out of court. It's a testament to its design.
geekeeSep 25, 2007
Who cares? Copyright violation is rampant on the internet. This case is a drop in the bucket for fighting copyright infringement.
bieberSep 25, 2007
You have no idea what this is about, do you.
geminitojanusSep 25, 2007
Please, please don't feed the trolls.