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Bell, SuperMicro Sued Over GPL
Markus Toth writes "The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite. The suits allege that Bell Microproducts and SuperMicro Computer each violated redistribution stipulations of the GNU General Public License (GPL).The Bell Microproducts suit pertains to the Hammer MyShare NAS (network-attached storage) appliance, which is sold by Bell's Hammer Storage division. I was the one who alerted the busybox developers about the GPL violation after providing a script for disassembling the firmware and instructions about mounting the contained initrd. As you see in my first post at the gpl-violations.org mailing lists where I posted all mails that I sent to and received from Hammer Storage, they refused to provide me the GPL sources several times. Looks like they will have to provide them soon; I will post any updates in the nas-central blog."
If someone sent me a demand for code in poor grammar with some cheesy pseudonym, I would probably blow them off as well.
Now maybe if Markus has written a halfway compelling email, he would have received a more informative response. But when you send a jumble of words that fails to reach the 6th grade reading level to someone who has other priorities, it shouldn't come as a surprise that you get blown off.
Of course, if I were distributing a project based in part on GPL code, I would make darn sure to have the GPL'd code available for people to download with out hassling me or the engineers.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Growing up tattling was always frowned upon, however in cases like this .. it should be brought forward. But also if it news worthy .... you would expect you wouldn't have to try and toot your own horn, someone else would have posted the story for you.
"For those that use this as a reason to NOT use the GPL...
What would have happened if they instead used a copy of WinNT4.0 without paying Microsoft? Microsoft would want blood, and would extract it via the BSA."
You are correct, but the community has been trying to convince businesses to use "free" software for the past couple of years.
"The creators of Busybox just want you to host the changes you've done to it. They wanted no money."
Right, so instead of a company paying some money to license the software, their entire business potentially gets destroyed.
Maybe they shouldn't have used it in the first place, but the OSS community should stop using the world free to represent something that obviously isn't.
Markus is not a native english speaker. Way to make yourself look ignorant!