Amusing article about busybox

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 7:00 AM, Rogelio Serrano
<rogelio.serrano at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:12 AM, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Cathey, Jim <jcathey at ciena.com> wrote:
>>> My (lay) understanding of this is that there are two separate
>>> issues:
>>>
>>> 1) Company contributes (back) to the project.
>>> 2) Company provides sources of whatever they did.
>>>
>>> Obviously #1 is preferable, assuming the mods are palatable,
>>> but only #2 is required.  It would take an interested (and
>>> possibly third) party to fold #2's back to #1's.
>>>
>>> All this discussion seems to be focused on #1, but Sony
>>> is (?) in the #2 camp.  Unless maybe they're in #3:
>>>
>>> 3) Company takes sources and never exhibits its modifications.
>>>
>>> I thought that only #3's were liable.  #2's are merely annoying.
>>
>> The problem is that the whole Sony would be liable, even if only parts
>> of it did #3 (by mistake), and other parts did their duty, even #1.
>
> does the law see it that way? can you sue only the division
> responsible for the violation? no. the law says its one big entity and
> we cant do anything about it. so one part violates the law the entire
> entity violated the law.

Yeah, and that's a problem for good divisions in a company that
doesn't care much.

>>  % git log --author="sony.com" --oneline | wc -l
>>  190
>>
>> At least they seem to be doing something for the Linux kernel, so I
>> don't buy this "Sony" wants to do something illegal (#3).
>>
>> Cheers.
>
> i myself want guarantees. not just their word that they will behave.
> "oops my bad"! just doesnt cut it. if its not gpl im not contributing.

There will never be a guarantee that they will become community
members, which is what I care about.

Either way, busybox is not that important, Linux is. Linux developers
don't care about enforcement, so if busybox does, the only thing that
will be achieved is that companies will stop using busybox.

I'm just trying to explain you _why_ that is going to happen.

You want your stick, well, why would companies go to the only place
you can actually use it?

-- 
Felipe Contreras