Samsung, JVC, Best Buy and 11 other consumer electronics companies have just been smacked-down for their continued breaching of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has just filed a lawsuit, stating that the companies have had plenty of time to respond to repeated requests of compliance with the GPL. Now their fate rests with the justice system... and I hope they crash and burn.
The lawsuit revolves around a tool called BusyBox. Often referred to as Linux's 'Swiss Army Knife', BusyBox is a compact, modular and highly-optimized package of utilities for the Linux operating system. It's used in vast number of scenarios and applications, commercial or otherwise, and usually without issue. For some unknown reason these 14 companies have decided to disregard the SFLC's requests to comply with the GPL -- all they had to do was make their source code available to download!
Yes, the GPL is about as 'free' as software gets, but it is share-and-share-alike. That's the basis of the open source software (OSS) movement. It's only fair, after all, that you give as well as take. What these large companies are doing is simply ignorant, pig-headed and brutish. It's a blatant discourtesy towards the developers and beautiful code of BusyBox.
[via ZDNet]
14 corporate bad boys named in BusyBox lawsuit for GPL violations originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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