[License-discuss] Linking question

[Lawrence Rosen]

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-bounces at opensource.org [mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Perens
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2012 11:41 AM
To: license-discuss at 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?

 

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