Slashdot Mirror
Munich Court Again Enforces GPL
BrianWCarver writes "Despite earlier concerns reported on Slashdot that the GPL might be particularly difficult to enforce in Germany, that country's courts now hold the distinction of having enforced it twice. The first enforcement came in 2004 when Harald Welte of the netfilter/iptables core team sought to enjoin Sitecom from distributing its WL-122 router, which used netfilter's GPL'd code, without also providing the source code and a copy of the GPL, as that license requires. The Munich Court granted Welte a preliminary injunction and then upheld that injunction (Court's decision in English pdf) and now Sitecom provides the source code from their website. Welte, who also now runs gpl-violations.org to track GPL violations, and who personally handed over warning letters at Cebit to companies not in compliance with the GPL, reported on his blog today that he has obtained a new preliminary injunction enforcing the GPL, this time against Fortinet for distributing their firewall products (FortiGate and FortiWiFi) that include GPL'd code while Fortinet refuses to release the source. Congratulations again to Welte and his attorneys!"
Funny how the FUDmeisters at C|Net translate the exact same story:
Shadow over open sourcei ctory/2100-7344_3-5671209.html?tag=nefd.lede
German court ruling halts shipments of one company's Linux wares; license spat could soon hit U.S
http://news.com.com/Linux+programmer+wins+legal+v
As the CNET News.com FUDmeister who wrote the story in question, I recommend you also look at the story headline, Linux programmer wins legal victory, which I don't think raises too much FUD around open-source programmers. Nor does the text of the story itself, in my opinion. You had a legitimate gripe with the initial "shadow" wording you quote (which is a sort of uberheadline, not the story headline proper). I didn't write it and didn't agree with it; as soon as I noticed it we changed it. Any time you have a problem with or suggested changes for a story I write, I welcome direct feedback by e-mailing me directly; my byline on the story is a mailto hyperlink. --Stephen Shankland