Settlement Reached in Verizon GPL Violation Suit

eldavojohn writes "A settlement has been reached in the Verizon GPLv2 violation suit. The now famous BusyBox developers, Erick Andersen and Rob Landley, will receive an undisclosed sum from subcontractor Actiontec Electronics. 'Actiontec supplied Verizon with wireless routers for its FiOS broadband service that use an open source program called BusyBox. BusyBox developers Andersen and Landley in December sued Verizon -- claiming that the usage violated terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License.'"

Re:I'm not disappointed

[Gideon Fubar]

I would have thought so too, at first glance.. But what if the GPL were proven in court?

It wouldn't just be a problem for businesses that illegally use open source software and pass it off as their own, it might also give an air of business legitimacy to OSS in general (not that most businesses don't use OSS every day, but they don't necessarily know that they do). I can think of a few business models that might be put under pressure if that happened.

Re:Now that they have the money..

[zkiwi34]

It's way different. GPL code ALWAYS has the notification of the license and terms of use as part the code/comments. People who pick up the code and use it have no excuse for not noticing that it was GPL'd. With patents, you generally/often have no idea if someone has a patent on what you think is your own original work.

Re:Shut up and go away kid...

[an.echte.trilingue]

No, they basically paid for the license that they should have bought in the first place.

Andersen and Landley - You don't have copyright

[Diesel Dave]

"must pay an undisclosed sum to developers Erick Andersen and Rob Landley."

Now this pisses me off. Anderson you AIN'T GOT FULL COPYRIGHT OF BUSYBOX. I handled it for 2 years prior to you and Perens wrote the original. (And might I add I warned you about improperly changing copyright notices back then.)

Did you even bother to contact Perens on this?

If you sued to get them to abide by the GPL, that's one thing. But a personal payout without consideration for the other developers involved? Hell no...

Re:Andersen and Landley - You don't have copyright

[AceJohnny]

and that, right there, is basicly why it is a good idea to assign the copyright to a unique entity. Such as, for example, the FSF.

Besides, were you a plaintiff in this suit? Did you make the effort of building the evidence and starting the fight against such a Big Scary Entity as Verizon?

Seriously, give us your part of the story. All of it.

Re:Andersen and Landley - You don't have copyright

[QuantumG]

What exactly is your complaint?

Are you trying to suggest that a single contributor to an open source project can't sue for violation of their copyright?

If you want a cut, file your own lawsuit against Verizon.. you shouldn't have any trouble getting a settlement nor that Erick and Rob have done the hard work for you.

Re:I'm a little disappointed . . .

[chromatic]

On one side, you a loose collection of individual developers who distribute their software freely, with the restriction that if you also distribute it or a derived version, you must distribute it under the same terms.

On the other side, you have a company who knowingly infringes the copyright of the first group.

What else would you call the first group but "good guys"?

Re:Andersen and Landley - You don't have copyright

[Svartalf]

Seriously, give us your part of the story. All of it.

It's called, "Sour Grapes". He didn't think to get himself added to the list of litigants or viewed the whole process with disdain and didn't
get to be part of it. Now that they're settling with PART of the Copyright holders (Here's the key thing there- doesn't matter WHO does the
filing so long as they have standing. Sorry Diesel Dave, they had Standing, just like you did.) he's pissed off he wasn't in on the whole deal.

You may not LIKE it, Diesel Dave, but they bothered to litigate- YOU didn't. You all have Standing to sue the hell out of the Infringers.
Keep in mind, though, Actiontec settled the infringement matter with THEM, but not YOU unless you tacitly chose to allow them to do so.
Perhaps you can sue them too... It certainly wouldn't be the first time for a Legal "dogpile" on someone who was guilty of Infringement.
Also keep in mind that they actually brought the matter to the point of an actual trial being filed against them for Infringement- I would
consider it a matter that they pay SOMETHING back to me and possibly the community at large after the cute games they played. You don't
get to just publish stuff when you play the "I'm bigger than you are, go to Hell!" card on something like this.

A little history

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for AEI. Back in the day there was another product sold by Qwest and others that also ran Busybox. We were found to be on the Wall of Shame. At that time there were some of us who cared about FOSS and we were ashamed of this. Unfortunately AEI is not a company who gives a shit about its pissant workers. These workers are people the suits jokingly call "monkeys" on phone calls with each other and the suits from the other companies they dealt with such as Qwest, Verizon, etc.. "You want that by Tuesday? OK, we'll just have the monkeys work the weekend." Those underlings who cared about linux cried out about licensing and getting in good with the FOSS community went unheard. AEI's actions seemed hypocritical because we used FOSS so much. Almost the entire dev team used Linux. We used Linux to route our networks, run test servers, etc.. (That being said, we also used an amazing amount of expensive pirated software like Windows Server 2000/2003, NetIQ Chariot, etc., but I digress...) One of us who was high enough up in the company took it upon himself to bring the issue forward and managed to get us off The Wall of Shame by posting source-code on our site. We thought of this as a big win. We thought maybe this suit driven company with its BMW 7's out front and its sweatshop monkeys in the back of 760 N Mary might actually be turning over a new leaf. No, that's not the case. One small win. Then later, the man who had gotten us off The Wall of Shame left the company. It was only a matter of time before we got back up on that wall, nobody else knew the FOSS culture and cared enough, let alone had a voice in that company. I'm glad AEI lost that battle. That settlement money might not be going to all their employees who go year after year without even getting a raise or a Christmas bonus, but at least it's not in the grubby hands of Dean and the rest of the suits.