A few days ago, housemate Abi posted about action being taken in court over a GPL violation in the US. And I'm sure astute readers who looked at the facts thought "what? that's so obviously violation. how can they possibly think they had the right to do that?" I know that's what I thought. Of course along with that thought goes another thought: this will be another win we can chalk up on the side of the GPL and the Free Software Foundation.

Anyway, the point is, it won't be getting to court because the defendants capitulated. According to Linux Watch, Monsoon Multimedia "admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license."

This shows that the system works. The GPL must be clear enough that it is obvious what you can't do. (Okay, there's still some discussion, but on the day to day stuff, everything is going just fine).

Labels: ben, cases, gpl