BusyBox has been busy. With the help of the Software Freedom Law Center, it recently sued Verizon for infringing the GNU General Public License (GPL). This marks a distinct shift in strategy for Eben Moglen, the SFLC's counsel, as Pamela at Groklaw notes:
Remember how Eben Moglen used to say that negotiations were the best solution years ago, because the GPL was new and funds were limited? And then when he went to the Software Freedom Law Center he said he'd be in a position to do more? I think he told us the truth.
For the record, I like the conciliatory approach. As a lawyer by training, I heartily dislike the use of the law as a club. Occasionally it is needful to right wrongs against the otherwise weak and defenseless, but I'm not sure this is the case with BusyBox. I don't remember Erik Anderson (primary developer behind BusyBox) being particularly litigious when we worked together at Lineo back in 2000, but something seems to have changed.
Maybe he got fed up with people free-riding on open-source software, using it without abiding by its license terms. This certainly seems to be the case with Eben, who let loose on Tim O'Reilly at last year's OSCON for not being enough of a friend to free software.
... Read moreIt seems that most of the world's open source-related lawsuits emerge from Utah, for whatever reason. First there was Caldera vs. Microsoft (which, of course, didn't have anything to do with open source, but for Caldera's inclusion). Then there was SCO. Somewhere along the way there was Linksys, which didn't have anything more to do with Utah than that I used to visit its offices, and I'm from Utah.
And now we have BusyBox (through the Software Freedom Law Center) suing Monsoon Multimedia, with BusyBox's project founder, Erik Andersen, a former colleague of mine at Lineo (based in Utah). This is the industry's first US copyright lawsuit based on an alleged violation of the GPL (GNU General Public License). You can read the complaint here [PDF].
There really is no compelling news story here, but for the fact that this will be the first time that the GPL gets tested in court (if the suit ever makes it to court - most lawsuits don't). I doubt it will make it to court, denying us of the test many of us long to see. Oh, well.
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