How Hardware Makers Come To Violate Free Software Licenses

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 24, 2009 @09:02PM from the they-were-hoping-to-ask-permission dept.

H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "Veteran violation chasers Shane Coughlan and Armijn Hemel have summarized how license violations are caused in the consumer electronics market under time-to-market pressure and thin profit margins: 'This problem is compounded when one board with a problem appears in devices supplied to a number of western companies. A host of violation reports spanning a dozen European and American businesses may eventually point towards a single mistake during development at an Asian supplier.' They also discuss the helpful organizations which have sprung up and the documents and procedures now available."

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Re:NO, this is NOT the reason by petrus4 · 2009-09-25 02:02 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I almost actually forgot to mention something else.
You may not have heard about this, (after all, it was a largely irrelevant occurrence) but Steve Jobs partly based his new operating system on FreeBSD as well, not too long ago.
Of course, as we all know, Steve has always been a wacky, crazy, maverick kind of guy. I'm sure if he'd been able to see your post a few years earlier, it might have prevented him from making a truly disastrous decision.
I mean, after all, why would a major corporation want to base a new operating system on dead code?