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Software Freedom Conservancy Wins GPL Case Against Westinghouse
fishthegeek writes "The Software Freedom Conservancy has received a judgement against Westinghouse Digital Electronics for $90,000 in damages, $50,000 in costs plus a donation of all of the offending HDTV's that were using BusyBox in violation of the GPL. Given that WDE is nearly bankrupt it's likely that most if not all of the cash will disappear in a legal 'poof,' but it is a victory regardless."
As has been discussed in the million other websites that jumped on this news earlier in the week:
It wasn't so much a win as a "no contest":
- The company that's gone bankrupt, went bankrupt (in a real, non-SCO fashion) and couldn't have afforded to fight the case.
- The people handling the bankruptcy don't want the lawyers who were working the case representing them any more (presumably they stopped paying them).
- The lawyers handling the case stopped defending it because they were asked not to provide any further representation.
In many senses it was a "win by default" - it was unchallenged, they couldn't afford to challenge it, and they were bankrupt anyway. In terms of legal precedent, this is like saying "I *do* own an acre of the moon because I presented it in a case against NASA and NASA went bankrupt before they could file any defence whatsoever" and then using this as a legal precedent that everyone with the same paper as you owns an acre of the moon. It's not a "win", it's not even a "loss", it's just a "nothing" in legal terms.
..but what matters is that a judge has issued a ruling on the matters before the court.
Its a common practise to start with little guys to get precedents and then work your way up to the bigger fish; the bad guys (eg, patent trolls) have been using this technique for ages, so its no biggie if the Good Guys learn from them,
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Isn't this the first proper test of GPL in a court of law?
I'm not a lawyer so maybe I'm not understanding the weight of "first proper test" but there have been many court cases I think most are settled out of court though. Example:
In 2002, MySQL AB sued Progress NuSphere for copyright and trademark infringement in United States district court. NuSphere had allegedly violated MySQL's copyright by linking code for the Gemini table type into the MySQL server. After a preliminary hearing before Judge Patti Saris on February 27, 2002, the parties entered settlement talks and eventually settled. At the hearing, Judge Saris "saw no reason" that the GPL would not be enforceable.
This might be the first one inside the United States to come down to a court decision without being short circuited by a settlement, yes. Keep in mind that they claim to find one violation per day so it's awfully kind of them to give years worth of warning before starting to take legal action. I'm sure that if someone with money really wanted to stick it to their competitors and they are listed as violators of the GPL (like any retailer who competes with Best Buy) they could probably be a real thorn in their side. The last thing you want is big companies afraid to use GPL'd code because it's a legal liability -- adoption and buy in from a huge company is one of the best things that could happen to a small GPL project because it means you'll always be around.
My work here is dung.
The GPL vs BSD license argument never gets old for some folk does it?
Some say BSD-like licenses are bad because they permit people to use the code in a closed, non-free way.
Some say GPL-like licenses are bad because they forbid the same behaviour.
Each to their own, but the GPL allows people who contribute to the public good to make sure that their work is not abused (as they see it), by taking their effort, profiting from it and not sharing back. If that's not the way you roll, so be it, but it gives freedom to users that the BSD license does not.
I cannot figure out why the headline says that the EFF won this case. This case was brought by the Software Freedom Conservancy, with the Software Freedom Law Center acting as the Conservancy's legal counsel. The EFF was not, nor has ever been to my knowledge, involved in anything to do with the GPL.
Also, winning the whole case is probably inaccurate. What's been achieved here is a permanent injunction and judgment against one of the violators. Thus, the case against Westinghouse has been won, but there are other defendants in the case as well.
— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy
One thing you can do is reverse engineer the product and keep an eye out for certain strings in the firmware. From what I have seen, most GPL violators do not even bother to try to cover their tracks, and will often leave author names, GPL notices, and so forth in the software. The biggest challenge with consumer electronics is actually reading the contents of the firmware; once you can do that, you can just do some basic checks.
Of course, that is not an easy thing to do, so it is possible that a number of consumer products contain GPL violations that go unnoticed.
Palm trees and 8
Slashdot readers might be interested to read the actual judgment as issued by the Court, which is available Conservancy's announcement of the decision. I also wrote a blog post about the decision that may be of interest.
— bkuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy
I don't think so. This is a court order assigning ownership of this property, not an unsecured debt. I think that it will be considered senior to the claims of the other creditors in the same way that a lien is senior to unpaid bills.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It would've been pretty easy to fully comply with the GPL in this situation without giving anything of substance away to competitors.
There's no reason to be afraid of using GPLed code as long as you actually READ THE DAMN LICENSE and comply. For something like busybox there is almost no one who would suffer any competitive disadvantage by publishing the source code for the GPL software used in compliance with the license, and a pretty good market advantage (don't have to develop any of the basic functions busybox provides, so you can focus on developing the product-specific functionality).
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Or, you could say, it TAKES freedom from users (ie: developers using a library) that the BSD license does not.
Not saying BSD is better, just saying GPL doesn't give "more freedoms" on a whole, it just assigns them to different people.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Or, you could say, it TAKES freedom from users (ie: developers using a library) that the BSD license does not.
Wrong. It takes freedom from those developers only while they are wearing their distributor hats. They can use GPLed libraries as much as they like. They are just limited from distributing in a way that takes freedom away from users. Their freedom as _users_ is not harmed.
Not saying BSD is better, just saying GPL doesn't give "more freedoms" on a whole, it just assigns them to different people.
You are right here. It takes freedom away from distributors, and gives it _all_ to users. Just they are not necessarily different people, just different roles.
OK, name a single one of the functions you described that would be handled by busybox.
Just because one component (busybox) to handle basic OS housekeeping functions is open source doesn't mean your main application (the TV stuff) has to be. That was my whole point. You can save a LOT of development time on OS housekeeping type stuff with busybox, and then publish that source code in compliance with the license and your competitors get NOTHING, because the stuff that matters is in another fully independent software component that does not fall under the GPL.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?