Slashdot Mirror
Palm Sued Over Palm Pre GPL Violation
zaxl writes "Palm is being sued by Artifex Software over the PDF viewer in Palm's Pre smartphone, which may violate the GNU GPL. Artifex alleges that Palm has copied Artifex's PDF rendering engine, called muPDF, and integrated it into the Palm Pre's PDF viewer application without the proper licensing conditions. The entire application must be licensed under the GPL if muPDF is part of the application. It seems more and more cell phones are shipping with open source code, but in a closed manner."
Further to your comment, I pulled down the source code from Palm (http://opensource.palm.com/1.3.1/index.html) and compared it to the the earliest source I could find on Artifex's site. Palm is using an earlier version (02-Mar-2008) of the muPDF source which is licensed under GPLv2. Artifex's available source(01-Jul-2009) is GPLv3.
IIRC GPLv2 allows Palm to distribute the application as they are doing.
A game has objectives and is competitive, anything else is just play
Just got my N900 the other day... and the way this phone integrates with Skype is a thing of beauty. With WiFi + 3G and I have slim to no reason to use any minutes. You are right though.... carriers are afraid of this.. and I can see why... because who's going to pay $70 a month for lackluster internet service... while the whole arbitrary minutes to $ value is a good way to make a lot of money. Thus I had to order my phone from Dell... and T-Mobile gives you the same deals as a contract with no contract if you don't want any phone subsidies. I think all communications companies need to realize they're all going to be ISPs in the future, and the only thing they'll be able to charge for is how much bandwidth they deliver. I also think that T-Mobile starting to realize that... seeing as how they offer a $40 data-only plan... to which I'm considering switching eventually.... after I see how this Skype thing plays out over time...