First GPL lawsuit will settle out of court

THE FIRST lawsuit ever filed in the US to enforce the GNU General Public Licence version 2 (GPLv2) apparently will be settled before trial, Linux-Watch has reported.

Defendant Monsoon Multimedia admitted that it had violated the GPLv2, will comply by releasing its source code changes to Busybox, and is in talks to settle out of court.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) had filed suit on behalf of two Busybox developers seeking an injunction and damages plus attorneys' fees and court costs.

Busybox provides a lightweight set of common Unix software utilities that is embedded in many Linux based hardware devices.

Monsoon Multimedia, a maker of consumer multimedia devices, modified the Busybox software for use in its products but did not publish its modified Busybox source code. It initially did not respond to contacts made by the Busybox developers requesting that it comply with the GPLv2 by making its source code modifications to Busybox available.

Eben Moglen, attorney for the Free Software Foundation and SFLC director, indicated that the lawsuit's objective was to obtain GPL compliance, saying "Free software licenses such as the GPL exist to protect the freedom of computer users. If we don't ensure that these licenses are respected, then they will not be able to achieve their goal. Our goal is simply to ensure that Monsoon Multimedia complies with the terms of the GPL."

In a statement, Graham Radstone, chairman and COO of Monsoon Multimedia, said "Since we intend to and always intended to comply with all open source software license requirements, we are confident that the matter will be quickly resolved."

Of course, the company could have saved itself some trouble merely by agreeing to comply with the GPL and publishing the source code when it was first contacted by the plaintiffs. µ

L'INQ
Linux-Watch

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GPL violation gets to court