Rob Landley of Busybox on Groklaw
Posted Sep 21, 2007 3:21 UTC (Fri) by
gdt (subscriber, #6284)
In reply to:
U.S. GPL lawsuit for BusyBox - profit? by gdt
Parent article:
SFLC files first U.S. GPL violation lawsuit
Rob wrote this:
It's hard to engage company principals when the company
won't take your calls. (Or your emails. And signs for a
fedex containing your complaint and your contact info, but
haven't replied at all a week later.) The message board
shows they aware of the issue internally and that they are
capable of responding.
Ok, hypothetical: When a company is confronted by users,
they talk trash. Afterwards, when confronted by lawyers,
they clam up. Is this a recipe for avoiding a lawsuit?
The SFLC may not quite be at IBM's "blacken the skies of
Utah with lawyers" level, but they're not empty cease and
desist letters with no resources to back it up either.
To quote lolcats: They are serious lawyers, this is
serious lawsuit. (Against invisible defendant at the
time...)
As for venue, the SFLC is located in New York, so it's
convenient for them to ask for that as the venue. (There
was some legal case noticing that the internet is
everywhere that's precedent for this, they explained it to
me on the phone but it's not my area.) Since copyright is
federal this seems to me as much a matter of convenience
as anything, but IANAL. :) (Yeah, I know, different
precedents in different circuit courts. Not my area.
This is why one _has_ lawyers. I happily defer to their
expertise in matters of appropriate venue...)
P.S. Thank PJ for all this, she introduced Erik and me to
the SFLC back when we declared the "hall of shame" a
failure and turned to her for suggestions. We're pretty
happy so far... :)
and this, saying that using the SFLC is Busybox's response to the ineffectual vendor response to the Busybox Hall of Shame.
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