News First GPL lawsuit filed

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/09/21/first_gpl_lawsuit_filed/1

The SFLC has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia for not giving access to the source code of the software to all customers.

 

Good for the SFLC and the Busybox developers!

Is it not enough that the developers put their effort into writing the software, and then giving it away for free?

For the GPL to be effective, action does have to be taken, otherwise we might as well all use BSD, and that won't be beneficial to the open software movement...

 

Yay! I support this, they used open sourced code according to a legal license, if they don't stick to their side then they shouldn't use it.

 

you can have other sources of income.... and if your code is GPL you are forced to give away the source code, if you don't want to don't register it as GPL.

 

The point here is that the developers gave their work away for free, why should someone else profit?

 

yeah

 

This is good for the GPL/GNU developers. Rules and laws are worthless if no one calls "foul" when something goes off track.
I think that this is pretty ace. I think this situation is exactly what should happen so that companies know that they can't
just walk all over the "little guy". Now lets just hope they win this case and set a prescedent.

 

This is like a community putting up a public park and someone coming in and charging admission to use the swings. Go GPL/GNU and take every last dollar from these leeches!

 

tut tut tut, naughty naughty

 

If you build on someone elses GPL product, by default yours is too and so you must follow the same terms and conditions of the GPL. Monsoon haven't done that in this case.