The US' first GPL-violation case
Apologies for this inordinate gaps in postings to this blog. My semester started, and I'm teaching three classes. 'Nuff said. Anyway, a very interesting piece of news wandered across the top of my mail inbox the other day; about the first court case involving GPL compliance problems here in the US. We've had GPL compliance cases in Germany, but this is the first one I've noted in the US. Initial reports made it sound like Erik Andersen and Rob Landley [Busybox developers] v. Monsoon Multimedia Inc., (case number 07-CV-8205, to be heard Senior District Judge John E. Sprizzo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York; the Software Freedom Law Center filed on behalf of the Busybox developers) was headed for a quick settlement. But today, that doesn't seem to be the case any more. As Daniel Ravicher of the SFLC puts it:
Simply coming into compliance now is not sufficient to settle the matter, because that would mean anyone can violate the license until caught, because the only punishment would be to come into complianceYou can check out the SFLC's complaint as well. From the point of view of developing a body of case law dealing with the GPL, it'd be useful for this case to come to an in-court resolution, I'm guessing.
posted by Samir Chopra at 6:22 PM
2 Comments:
The beauty of RSS is that it's not bother at all when you don't post, unless I take the time to wonder what you've been up to ;-)
"The first, against Monsoon Multimedia, was settled out of court on October 30, with Monsoon agreeing to remedy its prior violation, ensure future compliance, and financially compensate the plaintiffs."
Post a Comment
<< Home