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Busybox Developer Responds To Andersen-SFLC Lawsuits
Bruce Perens writes "I'm the creator of the Busybox program. I have released a statement on the past and current Busybox lawsuits, which do not represent my interest."
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The version 0.60.3 of Busybox upon which Mr. Andersen claims copyright registration in the lawsuits is to a great extent my own work and that of other developers. I am not party to the registration. It is not at all clear that Mr. Andersen holds a majority interest in that work.
Perhaps it is high time you looked into the allegations that "every line of code you wrote for Busybox is gone?" It is still GPLed, afterall. Wouldn't your old code diffed against the new code reveal the truth in that statement and set things straight in whose interest the SFLC should be representing?
If you can point me to a version/tag/branch/code repository where you assert your dominance in authorship, I would be more than happy to spend an hour when I get home tonight generating some stats against the current code (assuming that code hasn't been drastically moved around/repackaged/renamed). Even so, it would fairly trivial to script an expensive file-by-file comparison and return a set of the most likely matches based on percentage similarities to establish what work of yours may remain. Might even be a better tool out there than what I know of.
My work here is dung.
Sorry "editors" but many of us have no clue what this article is about based on the two sentence summary about a guy and company I have never heard of. Perhaps a little more explanation would help?
If Messrs Andersen and Landley own copyrights to any part of the Busybox program, they can sue for infringement of the copyright on their bit of the code, even if the majority of it was written by you.
In any case, I believe it contains a Linux kernel, or at least parts of it, written by Linus Torvalds and his friends, and presumably at least parts of the gnu tools that Busybox provides stripped down versions of. This of course is perfectly permissible, and the whole point of the GPL and other free and open source software licences is to allow and encourage this sort of thing to happen. All these developers have a copyright interest in the Busybox program, and could sue if they wanted to.
The current suit is brought in the name of Erik Andersen. Erik worked for an embedded Linux company, now defunct, for a few years and was paid to maintain Busybox during that time. During that time the company's name appeared in copyright statements, and mine mostly disappeared.
Bruce Perens.
In the U.S. any of the copyright holders can sue independently. Elsewhere, that might not be true. And they each have the right to decide to look for damages, or not. Mostly, Free Software developers forgive past infringement in exchange for current compliance and do not ask for damages. However, if a company is a long-term non-responder, they will look for compensation for their time.
Bruce Perens.
Yes, there's that. He also worked on the program after he was no longer employed by that company. I am not disputing that he has significant copyright interest in the program as it exists today.
Bruce Perens.
Anybody who has contributed to a piece of GPL software has standing to bring lawsuits against people who violate the GPL. Who has contributed the "majority" of the code is immaterial. I'm sorry this is inconvenient for Bruce Perens, but it can't reasonably work any different.
I don't think Bruce wants to stop the lawsuit, he justs wants to get a piece of the pie.
Doesn't sound like that to me.
I'm not really sure what he hopes to gain unless he wants a piece of any monetary damages awarded ... ?
How about clarification, like he says in his letter:
Unfortunately, all of this is confusing my strategic consulting customers. Thus, I will offer them a waiver of my interest where appropriate.
What this says to me is that he has clients who got spooked by the suit, and he's publically stating that he's not a party to it, and won't sue them... which is pretty much the opposite of "wanting a piece of the pie."
I am the one that handed BusyBox over to Anderson after maintaining it for 2 years.
I believe I worked with Busybox longer then Bruce did and during my time I reorganized the code, but still consider Bruce the primary root Copyright holder and license grantor. Anderson is claiming complete Copyright and that is simply an impossibility. As far as I am concerned, this claim is a GPL violation in and of itself.
Even if every line of code Bruce or myself wrote were replaced, it was done so on his and subsequently my license terms which are the GPL. My privileges and Anderson's privileges (if any ?) to alter and redistribute Bruce's work are based on those license terms derived from Bruce's initial publication and you can not simply 'code them away' unless you start from scratch.
It seems from your post that:
1) You seem upset that SFLC isn't representing *your* interests in the matter, but they are representing others.
2) You are unhappy that someone registered a copyright without including you on it.
3) You seem to imply that you'd be willing to waive your rights in the matter, or give your blessing to distribution without source.
1 is not relevant
2 would suggest you should go after the people who registered it - unless my interpretation of 3 is correct.
3 If true, why would you say that?
The only point I can see to your rant is to draw attention to yourself and your consulting business trying to raise doubts about a bunch of things.
What exactly is your point here?
You might find Jacobsen v. Katzer educational. Jacobsen was using the Artistic License 1.0, and this did not protect him from Katzer.
Bruce Perens.
You don't believe I've never communicated with these folks, do you? I did. And learned very quickly that it was the wrong approach where Mr. Landley was involved.
Bruce Perens.
In my mind, Eric was the inventor. I paid him in 2000 to add some uClinux / Busybox code to the Coldfire project for my Blabbermouth product at airlib.com.
I would probe the uClinux guys, Lineo, Greg Ungerer, Phil Wilshire...
Sometimes its the guy who "ran with it" who assumes ownership....
After the fact, that is tough to swallow. And the Busybox name and concept is genius whoever did it.
Merry Christmas