SFLC Files First Ever U.S. GPL Violation Lawsuit

[Dennis Kibbe]

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I received this from Jim Garrison of the SFLC yesterday and I'm sure it
will be on Groklaw & Slashdot as well.

"NEW YORK, September 20, 2007 -- The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC)
today announced that it has filed the first ever U.S. copyright
infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public
License (GPL) on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of
BusyBox, against Monsoon Multimedia, Inc. BusyBox is a lightweight set
of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is
open source software licensed under GPL version 2."

A little history on the enforcement of the GPL:

Richard Stallman's first instructions to Eben Moglen 15 years ago when
he became the legal representative (pro bono publico) for the FSF was to
never let a demand for compensation stand in the way of an offer to settle.

Eben took this to mean that his first phone call to a violator of the
GPL could be like this.

"We don't money and we don't want publicity. What we want is compliance
and we will accept nothing less than compliance. Now let me show you how
easy it is to make ice in the wintertime."

This was usually all it took for the offending party to see the light.

With the projected growth of Linux in embedded devices, cellphones and
$200 laptops I can imagine this is the first of many lawsuits to protect
the GPL. I'm sure Eben forsaw the need for an organization like the
Software Freedom Law Center for just this purpose. Plus to server as an
educational resource to help train lawyers in the matters of F/OSS legal
issues.

Of course, this is not the first time the GPL has been in court. A
German court confirmed it validity a couple of years ago. And the fact
the the GPL hasn't been in court that much is a tribute to it's robustness.

Dennisk
- --
Free Software, Free Society
www.fsf.org
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