Busybox and GPL

[beebee at piments.com]

On 08/07/10 03:06, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> On Friday 06 August 2010 15:43, walter harms wrote:
>> this artikel may be interesting for people concerning about the rights ...
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/04/gpl_violation_westinghouse/
>
> In your (and other readers') personal opinion, is it good or bad
> that we are getting this kind of "PR"?
>
> One important detail that the company which was violating GPL
> in this particular case is bankrupt at the moment; do we look bad
> by making its life even harder? -
>
>> Westinghouse Digital Electronics was also ordered to hand over
>> equipment in its possession that contained GPL code
>> and forbidden to distribute devices which contained
>> the BusyBox software.
>
> Your thoughts?

If they can't even turn a profit when they rip off other peoples work, 
maybe they need to go anyway.

A 90k fine is a piss in the ocean for this sort of company.They would 
likely have spend more than that trying to defend an indefensible 
position, so they cut their losses an did not even appear.

FSF does not dive into litigation as a first step, this action was 
necessary because not only was their a flagrant violation of copyright 
but a total refusal to comply with the licence when asked to do so.

They clearly regard the OSS community as a bunch of tossers who are too 
small to defend themselves and thought they were big enough to laugh off 
the licence terms. In view of the list of other names in that article 
they are not alone.

It is hard to have anything but contempt for such a contemptuous, 
bullying attitude.

Kick the bastards while they're down , I say.

Since they are effectively bankrupt this ruling is only a moral victory 
since they will probably only pay a fraction of the fine and other 
creditors probably have a claim on the products.

It may be a useful precedent for the other cases, though.

And yes this sort of publicity is good in making it known that FSF has 
enough clout to bring actions and get results.

/my2c/