Amusing article about busybox

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Greetings, Tim, I'm hoping we can chat further about all this at Embedded
Linux Conference!  I think there are a lot of misconceptions going around
that maybe a face-to-face conversation between us can help clear up.

Bernhard has brought you into a thread occurring on BusyBox's mailing
list, which I understand fully if you don't want to be dragged into.  Also
the list requires one to be a subscriber to post, so I completely
understand if you don't want to go to the trouble of subscribing.

>On Feb 8, 2012 7:58 PM, "Bradley M. Kuhn" wrote:
>> Technically, it *does* impact other products.  The question is whether
>> or not Conservancy, as BusyBox's enforcement agent, would *insist* that
>> a company stop distributing *compliant* products when other products are
>> out of compliance.

Bernhard Reutner-Fischer replied today:
> How would you, ever? Can you elaborate or point to some resource,
> please?

Are you asking, "How would one stop distribution of compliant products?"
Well, copyright law is a huge stick, and a copyright holder can demand in
Court that distributions of their copyright works stop immediately, if
those distributions are made without license to do so.  BusyBox copyright
holders *could*, therefore, insist on that after just one violating
distribution.

Of course, we never do that!  We ask for the company to work with
Conservancy to come into compliance.  We ask the company to set the
deadlines that work for them, and to meet their own deadlines.  (I've only
once rejected a deadline, which was "we'll fix it in a year".)  Usually, a
month or so is proposed and Conservancy accepts.  Infringing distribution
continues during that period; Conservancy doesn't want to disrupt their
business if the company's intentions are clearly to comply with the GPL
and fix the problems.

>>> It's true that in very egregious cases, only after years of litigation,
>>> Conservancy ended up asking the court for that.  However, that's

>That as in stopping to distribute compliant products?

Actually, more specifically, by "that", I meant asking a Court to order a
company to stop distributing of any kind -- compliant *or* non-compliant.
Specifically, IIRC, Conservancy has only twice filed what's called an
"injunction motion" in Court.

> Do you, by chance, have publically visible documentation or reference
> about these, just out of curiosity ?

I'm pretty frustrated by this, but sadly, every violator I've ever worked
with has insisted that we make the settlement agreement confidential.
Conservancy would prefer to publish them, but the other side asks them to
be confidential.

That said, there are public documents of the one Court case that
Conservancy has ever filed, which was Conservancy vs. Best Buy, et al.
There were many defendants in that case, and only one is left (as of now).
I can't comment in detail, though, because the one defendant is still
pending, and it's always bad to speak about ongoing litigation.

Generally speaking, as I said in my previous email, injunction is a remedy
Conservancy only seeks as a last resort.  While we've gotten close to that
last resort a few times, we've been able to -- until now -- settle with
the party and help them into compliance before any injunction orders were
enforced.

Frankly, I think some of the comments on LWN about Conservancy's
enforcement are talking about things that "could happen", but the comments
represent them as if they are things that "have happened".

To set the record straight, unlike when Sony enforces its own copyrights,
Conservancy doesn't use anything near the maximum legal means at its
disposal to attack the other side.  Our goal is to develop a positive
relationship that helps a company come into compliance.  Sometimes, that
just doesn't work and they simply ignore us for months on end.  In only
those cases -- where the violation was egregious and requests to work
together are ignored -- does Conservancy ever seek remedy in Court.

Conservancy's lawyers will probably hate that I've admitted that publicly,
because it will inspire the worst violators to simply fail to act --
always waiting for the injunction motion to be filed before coming into
compliance.  But I'm nevertheless willing to lose a little bit on
enforcement strategy to make it abundantly clear that our goal is to get
compliance on GPL'd and LGPL'd software, and we try to use as little stick
as possible to get that done, and only increase the size of the stick when
the other side egregiously ignores our requests for compliance.

Conservancy's goal here is always to help people comply.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy