verizon settles over busybox infringement

Erik Andersen andersen at codepoet.org
Wed Mar 19 15:51:36 UTC 2008


On Mon Mar 17, 2008 at 07:01:47PM -0400, Paul Fox wrote:
> in case anyone missed it on slashdot, verizon has settled the
> suit that rob and erik brought against them for GPL infringement
> on a router they were distributing (based on busybox).
> 
> http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206904096&subSection=News
> 
> since i'm guessing either rob or erik is still on the list, can you
> tell us anything more?  do we even get a "woohoo, we won another
> one!" message?  :-)

As part of the settlement we agreed not to talk about it.  Which
sortof sucks, but is apparently pretty standard for these sorts
of things.  For their part, they agreed to abide by the GPL
forever, fixup their past problems by releasing source even for
past products, and they will set up an employee as their GPL
compliance dude to ensure that all products using BusyBox (and
hopefully any other Open Source/Free Software) will forever
comply with the GPL.  That covers everything I had hoped for.

It sucks to have to use the law to enforce compliance.  But
unlike past efforts (such as the Hall of Shame and my earlier
attempts at sending nasty letters to license violators) this is
actually working and is thus ensuring that everyone receiving a
product based on BusyBox will receive the rights they are
entitled to through the GPL.

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen             http://codepoet-consulting.com/
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--



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