Bruce Perens wrote:

The parties didn't wish to contest whether they were in compliance or not. They 
instead took the route of requesting forgiveness for infringement as a 
settlement or before a suit was filed, since the terms to get that forgiveness 
end up being far less expensive than fighting the case.



I can't argue against a quick settlement on terms cheaper than prolonged 
litigation. I've recommended that many times to clients, and if my client in 
this example was anything other than hypothetical, I'd seriously consider your 
advice. That's much safer than a hypothetical battle in court with Bradley Kuhn 
over Busybox enforcement; I know Bradley! But I also know companies that would 
fight Bradley all the way to the Supreme Court before they disclosed their 
crown jewel proprietary software to him.

 

That sort of litigation blackmail was prevalent in personal injury tort cases 
also until the insurance companies realized that most juries were on their side 
and they started fighting back in edge cases. It is much harder to get a 
valuable settlement in those cases nowadays. GPL litigation might be next! :-)

 

/Larry

 

 

From: license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org 
[mailto:license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Perens
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2012 11:41 AM
To: license-discuss@opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Linking question

 

Larry Rosen wrote:



Is anything else required under the GPL or by the Busybox copyright owners? 
Specifically, is any of my client's proprietary software subject to disclosure? 
Must my client help anyone -- through product documentation or the disclosure 
of his proprietary code that he has purposely linked statically to Busybox -- 
to replace or upgrade Busybox itself in those millions of distributed 
proprietary wireless devices?


I am aware of a number of negotiations with Bradley Kuhn regarding Busybox and 
uClibc enforcement. Bradley was not representing my interest. When I was 
involved, I was working for the manufacturer's attorney and had waived my own 
copyright interest with regard to that customer. Some of the cases I know of 
played out before my involvement with that customer, and some with my direct 
involvement.

The parties didn't wish to contest whether they were in compliance or not. They 
instead took the route of requesting forgiveness for infringement as a 
settlement or before a suit was filed, since the terms to get that forgiveness 
end up being far less expensive than fighting the case.

In order to get this forgiveness, all parties that I know of have been required 
to provide complete and corresponding source code for all software with a Free 
Software license in the system, regardless of its connection with Busybox or 
whether SFC or SFLC was representing the interest of the developers of that 
software.

When there was static linking to uClibc, it had to become dynamic.

Parties had to provide source code for run-time loaded kernel drivers.

Once a set of Complete and Corresponding Source Code for a release was 
constructed, that release was made available to customers as an update, and I 
suspect was automatically updated in some devices. I have not heard that anyone 
was required to cause every customer to update.

In all cases, Bradley was reasonable and a pleasure to work with. When he 
became overloaded and was unable to respond to companies in time, he did not 
enforce upon those companies obligations that he otherwise could have.

Of course, Larry, I understand that this is not what you think should happen. 
However, it appears to be how a lawsuit or something that could have become a 
lawsuit has been resolved, in every case that I know of.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On 03/02/2012 11:13 AM, Lawrence Rosen wrote: 

Is anything else required under the GPL or by the Busybox copyright owners? 
Specifically, is any of my client's proprietary software subject to disclosure? 
Must my client help anyone -- through product documentation or the disclosure 
of his proprietary code that he has purposely linked statically to Busybox -- 
to replace or upgrade Busybox itself in those millions of distributed 
proprietary wireless devices?

 

_______________________________________________
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Reply via email to