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Free Software Foundation probes Linksys (Register)
The Register covers
accusations made in the Linux Kernel Mailing List that Linksys has Linux
code in its proprietary software. "The Free Software Foundation says
that the copyright issue is "under investigation" but it would appear that
any action on this would be contingent on goodwill from Linksys, rather
than legal repercussions; FSF isn't wealthy, and has little clout apart
from the mind-share amongst a section of the developer community."
(Log in to post comments)
Well, actually... Posted Jun 10, 2003 5:16 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] The FSF does have one other *small* advantage, according to FSF General Counsel Eben Moglen. That is, of course, the fact that the GPL is a very simple, robust, and easily enforceable license, based purely in well-established copyright law and written in such a way that it's pretty difficult to misunderstand. According to Moglen's essay on the FSF website, Enforcing the GPL, the FSF deals with dozens of GPL violations each year. In every case, apparently, these have been resolved without going to trial, not because the FSF is afraid to take it to court, but because the offending party does not dare do so. The license's terms are simply such that no US court could rule against the GPL being enforceable without also undermining every other copyright license in existence.Given this fact, it seems to me that the FSF has a great deal of clout: the clout of being legally in the right, and in a very good position to win should any infringement case ever come to trial. I doubt it will, though; Linksys would be foolish to press the issue.
Except... Posted Jun 10, 2003 9:38 UTC (Tue) by dthurston (guest, #4603) [Link] The FSF has no copyright on either BusyBox or the Linux kernel, which were the two packages for which there were specific allegations. Otherwise they would be in a good position.
Except... Posted Jun 10, 2003 13:03 UTC (Tue) by rao (subscriber, #78) [Link] [rao@galen busybox-0.60.5]$ find . -name '*.c' -print|xargs grep "Copyright .* Free"./expr.c: * Copyright (C) 86, 1991-1997, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./md5sum.c: * Copyright (C) 1995-1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./printf.c: Copyright (C) 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./stty.c: Copyright (C) 1990-1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./time.c: Copyright (C) 1990, 91, 92, 93, 96 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./uname.c: Copyright (C) 1989-1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./uudecode.c: * Copyright (C) 1994, 1995 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./uuencode.c: * Copyright (C) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./libbb/libc5.c:/* Copyright (C) 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ./libbb/xgetcwd.c: * Copyright (C) 1992, 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
And... Posted Jun 10, 2003 18:49 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] ciaran@pooh:/stuff/src/linux-2.5.69$ grep "Copyright .* Free Sof" * -rs|grep '\.c'fs/udf/udftime.c:/* Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc. fs/xfs/support/qsort.c:/* Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1996, 1997, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc. (I thought IBM assigned their copyright to the FSF too?) Ciaran O'Riordan
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