Information regarding today's BusyBox GPL enforcement lawsuit

Bradley M. Kuhn bkuhn at ebb.org
Mon Dec 14 21:32:14 UTC 2009


Dear BusyBox Developers,

As some of you know, BusyBox is a member project of the Software Freedom
Conservancy, Inc.  One of the services that the Conservancy offers is
assistance enforcing FLOSS licenses such as the GPL.  For some time, led
by efforts at the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) (who serve as
attorneys for both Conservancy and Erik Andersen), we have assisted Erik
Andersen in his enforcement of the GPL for BusyBox.

In some of these enforcement cases, we have determined, in consultation
with our attorneys at the SFLC, that litigation in the USA courts is
necessary to convince the companies to comply with the GPL.  Some GPL
violators are simply not responsive to our friendly requests for
compliance cooperation.  Ultimately, we are left with an unfortunate
choice: either we ignore the fact that they do not provide source code
to their customers as the GPL requires, or we use a lawsuit to get their
attention and compel them to follow the (actually easy) requirements of
FLOSS licensing.

Today, the SFLC filed a lawsuit naming fourteen companies that are
currently in this unfortunate state.  Conservancy and Erik Andersen (a
major copyright holder in BusyBox) are listed as co-plaintiffs on this
litigation.  You can see the press release here:
   http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit
and download a copy of the complaint here:
   http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2009/busybox-complaint-2009-12-14.pdf

If any BusyBox developers have questions about this litigation or GPL
enforcement in general, you should feel free to contact me directly.  I
suggest that we don't start a public thread about the litigation
specifically, as it's always better to not discuss details of pending
litigation publicly.

Sincerely,
Bradley M. Kuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy


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