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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.'"
And people say you can't make money by giving your software away.
. . . 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.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
How is this different from a pantent troll? Create a program, GPL it, wait for some company to use it, and sue?
Except in this case the license is *right there* in the code they used. Also, they weren't prevented from writing something functionally similar to BusyBox.
Basically, Patents != Copyrights.
IP is "Imaginary Property" that doesn't actually exist or have any laws on it.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
How is it different from a patent troll? The patent troll doesn't bother with that pesky "create" step.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Are you serious? A GPL'd program is labeled as such, with conditions for redistribution. If you don't like the conditions, don't distribute it. Using patented technologies these days is as simple as thinking up something obvious and uncomplicated, without reference to what is patented. Searching for every patented technology before using obvious ideas would be quite costly. It's not like patent trolls say "here's this patented technology, and if you use it without paying royalties, we'll sue you later".
Patent trolls wait for some one to implement an obvious idea and strike. This is some one choosing to distribute a particular piece of software in violation of the license.
How are those similar?
Using patented technologies these days is as simple as thinking up something obvious and uncomplicated, without reference to what is patented.
To be fair, the whole problem with patent trolling is that this isn't all that simple any more. Obvious and uncomplicated things get patented with alarming frequency.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
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.
The difference is that these people actually put a lot of time and thought into *creating* something. They deserve all kinds of protection by law. A patent troll merely patents some obvious idea and sits there, but never creates anything.
Huge difference.
Actually the software was free. The expensive part was hording the source code. So, the correct statement is "That was pretty expensive hording."
I don't quite know what you mean. The court enforced the GPL license as it is written, and GPL is easily available. It isn't like Verizon couldn't see that the code was under the GPL, or what the GPL says.
If a company can't have someone look over a license to see if they want to accept it, then they probably shouldn't be using GPLd code.
Or do companies just blindly accept any sort of contract you send their way?
This also means that if a company wants to release code under the GPL, there is some precedent for enforcing it against someone else that uses the code without releasing their changes.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
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.
oholoh.net estimates the cost of developing the software at $2,446,697.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You've managed to create a car analogy without really creating a car analogy. This is almost as good as recursion.
Congrats!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I would have thought so too, at first glance.. But what if the GPL were proven in court?
It wouldn't just be a problem for businesses that illegally use open source software and pass it off as their own, it might also give an air of business legitimacy to OSS in general (not that most businesses don't use OSS every day, but they don't necessarily know that they do). I can think of a few business models that might be put under pressure if that happened.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
It's way different. GPL code ALWAYS has the notification of the license and terms of use as part the code/comments. People who pick up the code and use it have no excuse for not noticing that it was GPL'd. With patents, you generally/often have no idea if someone has a patent on what you think is your own original work.
No, they basically paid for the license that they should have bought in the first place.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
"must pay an undisclosed sum to developers Erick Andersen and Rob Landley."
Now this pisses me off. Anderson you AIN'T GOT FULL COPYRIGHT OF BUSYBOX. I handled it for 2 years prior to you and Perens wrote the original. (And might I add I warned you about improperly changing copyright notices back then.)
Did you even bother to contact Perens on this?
If you sued to get them to abide by the GPL, that's one thing. But a personal payout without consideration for the other developers involved? Hell no...
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.
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.
How is this different from a pantent troll?
It is different from a patent troll in much the same way a football is different from space rocket - by having no properties in common!
May we live long and die out
Well, they're both solid shells within which is contained compressed air.
Much like a patent troll.
I used to work for AEI. Back in the day there was another product sold by Qwest and others that also ran Busybox. We were found to be on the Wall of Shame. At that time there were some of us who cared about FOSS and we were ashamed of this. Unfortunately AEI is not a company who gives a shit about its pissant workers. These workers are people the suits jokingly call "monkeys" on phone calls with each other and the suits from the other companies they dealt with such as Qwest, Verizon, etc.. "You want that by Tuesday? OK, we'll just have the monkeys work the weekend." Those underlings who cared about linux cried out about licensing and getting in good with the FOSS community went unheard. AEI's actions seemed hypocritical because we used FOSS so much. Almost the entire dev team used Linux. We used Linux to route our networks, run test servers, etc.. (That being said, we also used an amazing amount of expensive pirated software like Windows Server 2000/2003, NetIQ Chariot, etc., but I digress...) One of us who was high enough up in the company took it upon himself to bring the issue forward and managed to get us off The Wall of Shame by posting source-code on our site. We thought of this as a big win. We thought maybe this suit driven company with its BMW 7's out front and its sweatshop monkeys in the back of 760 N Mary might actually be turning over a new leaf. No, that's not the case. One small win. Then later, the man who had gotten us off The Wall of Shame left the company. It was only a matter of time before we got back up on that wall, nobody else knew the FOSS culture and cared enough, let alone had a voice in that company. I'm glad AEI lost that battle. That settlement money might not be going to all their employees who go year after year without even getting a raise or a Christmas bonus, but at least it's not in the grubby hands of Dean and the rest of the suits.
They did not need to publish their proprietary code unless they linked to or incorporated busybox. Merely having busybox executables in the same system is "mere aggregation", and only required that they offer to distribute busybox code, not their own. So that payment was not necessary to keep Verizon code closed. It was necessary because they violated the license.
It is different from a patent troll in much the same way a football is different from space rocket - by having no properties in common!
Now I object to that. It simply isn't true. They have lots in common
The rocket is made of matter, and the football team is made of matter.
The rocket has no brains and neither does the football team.
The rocket overcomes the enemy (gravity) by means of brute force and so does the football team.
The rocket going up may generate interest among females, and unlike the typical slashdotter so will the football team.
The rocket is dangerous and must be treated with respect to avoid injury. Likewise the football team.
The rocket will launch you into the straosphere, and so will the football team if you're not careful.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer