Settlement Reached in Verizon GPL Violation Suit

eldavojohn writes "A settlement has been reached in the Verizon GPLv2 violation suit. The now famous BusyBox developers, Erick Andersen and Rob Landley, will receive an undisclosed sum from subcontractor Actiontec Electronics. 'Actiontec supplied Verizon with wireless routers for its FiOS broadband service that use an open source program called BusyBox. BusyBox developers Andersen and Landley in December sued Verizon -- claiming that the usage violated terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License.'"

Comments

I'm a little disappointed . . .

[coldfarnorth]

. . . that they settled. I would have liked to see a ruling that established a precident for dealing with this kind of violation.

Ah well. I'm sure that there were other details that were equally important in determining the outcome.

Re:I'm a little disappointed . . .

[Qubit]

I would have liked to see a ruling that established a precident for dealing with this kind of violation.

Sure -- a lot of us would like to see the certainty (well, some certainty, anyhow) that a precedent would set, but I can't think of a single FOSS developer who is in it for the litigation. Harald Welte, the founder of gpl-violations.org, has stated several times that as important as it has been for him to address violations of the GPL, he really wants to get back to developing software, not spending time with lawyers and courtrooms.

Besides, we're the "good guys" -- even if it looks like a company should have known better, and even if it's pretty much a given that the company did know better (and is just trying to get away with not releasing source code), then we need to keep on taking the moral high ground and try to resolve the issue in a settlement out of court. At the end of the day, what most FOSS software developers want is to be recognized for their work and to have people respect the terms of the license under which they released their code.

If a company keeps on committing violations time and time again, then sure -- give ESR and RMS their swords and wish them Happy Hacking -- but otherwise, deal with the underlying gpl violation issue, and move on.

Re:I'm a little disappointed . . .

[Svartalf]

Why do you need a precedent? Especially in the case of the V2.0 of the GPL, it's solidly based
in current Copyright law. It's a derivative works license. The royalty owed for the derivative work
you produce from the original protected work is to allow YOUR derivations to be available under the
same license and to provide an offer of the source code for any derivatives or mere copies of the
protected work.

Don't comply with the royalty arrangement, the agreement is invalidated. If you're not operating
under an agreement with the original works providers (in toto) you're guilty of the act of Infringement,
which is actionable just as if you'd illegally duplicated thousands upon thousands of Brittney's latest
album (though why anyone in their right mind would want to DO that is beyond me... :-D ).

And, that is what you keep seeing here. People caught with their hand in the cookie jar, breaking
Copyright law and capitulating instead of facing the much worse penalties which are typically involved
with such a breach of law.

You don't NEED the GPL to be "validated", each settlement of this scope and scale (especially THIS one,
if you think long and hard about it...)- have already DONE so.

Re:Now that they have the money..

[dgatwood]

How is it different from a patent troll? The patent troll doesn't bother with that pesky "create" step.

Re:Now that they have the money..

[Chyeld]

Umm...

It's nothing like a patent troll. They provided software and said you could use it in your product if you follow a simple set of rules. The people making the product didn't follow the rules, and didn't bother to correct this till they were sued.

A patent troll doesn't provide squat. They just wait for someone to come up with an idea the troll might have already patented and then attempts to extort that person after they've managed to implement the idea and make it profitable.

This isn't even apples and oranges. It's apples and school bus yellow race cars.

Re:Mixed Victory

[Belial6]

This is not any worse PR than the running of the mouths we always hear. This situation would not have changed one bit if the software used was proprietary. The fact that it was F/OSS had no bearing on the situation, other than the fact that Verizon had a get out of free jail card that they decided not to play. With proprietary software, they would have HAD to pay on the lawsuit. With the F/OSS software they could have just published the source.

Re:Mixed Victory

[Lumpy]

HUH? The companies involved were being snnotty thieves and REFUSED to abide after being contact several times.

All they had to do was publish and make available the source code. they told them basically to go to hell, we dont have to do anything we are bigger than you.

The FSF forced the big bully to give them money because the big bully acted like asshats and refused to abide.

If it reduces the use of GPL code and apps in companies that like to act illegally or above the law, I see it as a good thing.

Re:Now that they have the money..

[WarJolt]

How is this different from a pantent troll?

You can use busybox on the same hardware with proprietary software without getting sued or having to pay royalties. It's the same as having proprietary software running on a Linux box even though Linux kernel is GPLed.

Follow a few simple rules. The main ones are don't link to busybox(or any other GPLed software) and you must offer the source of busybox to people you distribute that binary to.

Busybox is an executable. Your program may be an executable. Simply because they exist on the same filesystem doesn't make your software GPL'ed. It's a 'mere aggregation'. I've a programmer who viewed the GPL as a threat to the point he wouldn't write Linux software. After I explained a few things to him he started using it as a tool.

People who don't read the GPL before using it gives the GPL a bad name.

Re:Now that they have the money..

[WebCowboy]

How is this different from a pantent troll? Create a program, GPL it, wait for some company to use it, and sue?

Well, the biggest difference is that it is 100% UNLIKE a patent troll because it is a COPYRIGHT case, not a patent case. But lets look at this from a more philosophical perspective.

Patent trolls don't create any new intellectual property. Almost the entire energy of a patent troll business like Acacia is to buy up obscure patents, often of questionable validity, for ideas that are already widely implemented. Once the patent is bought they then go out and sue the pants of the people who actually did the real "creating". In this case, the authors of Busybox worked hard and have dedicated countless hours of time supporting and improving their creation and have been courteous enough to offer their creation under very generous terms. Instead of a monetary obligation in return for the right to use Busybox, they instead asked that any derivative works or redistributions require the obligation of source code redistribution.

Patent trolls rely on deception and hidden information as their business model. They look for "hidden treasures" where a little known patent could potentially be broadly applied across a huge number of implementations developed by unsuspecting inventors. Busybox is most definitely NOT obscure, and its terms-of-use are most definitely VERY well known and even more easily understood than most EULAs used in the industry. The authors of Busybox and the SFLC did nothing at all to deceive anyone or trick them into using the software improperly.

This is basically an example of why intellectual property rights are so important. The Free software community needs to have the same tools (weapons) at their disposal to defend the freedom of their software as the "mafIAA" wield to try to restrict and control information.

Re:Andersen and Landley - You don't have copyright

[bug1]

I was also a busybox developer for a number of years, there are some important issues to mention...

1) The people involved Erik, Rob, SFLC have all donated much of their time over the years to advance the cause, im sure its about the principle, not the money.
2) They are enforcing the license, its been abused for years, its painful work and they are enforce it, successfully, its an important step in corporations to get past.
3) Getting the infringing company to pay _someone_ is the only punishment that might change their behavior, companies like this care more about the bottom line than they do about ethics.
4) Its not free money, the case has been going for months, and im sure they spent a lot of time on it.
5) SFLC was involved, im sure they have a lot of costs, and my guess is they got some of the settlement too.
6) Erik and Rob can enforce their contributions to busybox without requiring agreement from other copyright holders, the SFLC wouldnt stand by and let them do anything unethical.
7) Best not to jump and down about free money unless you know how much it is.

Having to pay an "undisclosed sum" to every open source coder they they have wronged must scare the crap out the corporate laweryers who are all to happy to roll the dice and advise a strategy of "do what we like until we get caught, then expect forgiveness".

If this news gets around, corporate lawyers might even take the time to read the GPL.

Re:Andersen and Landley - You don't have copyright

[arcade]

Shut up and sue them yourself.

Seriously. Shut up. If you own part of the copyright, go sue verison yourself. See if you too can't get a nice share of it all. If you don't, you're part of the problem - not the solution.

SERIOUSLY. Shut up. Those guys may sue as much as they want for breach of their copyright. If you've got a different copyright, or didn't licence it under the GPL but under something else - then you might have a suit against both verizon and against those guys. If you licenced it under the BSD licence, you're just So Out Of Luck (Or maybe not, I'm not entirely certain about this GPL BSD thing).