Busybox lawsuits: installation scripts and instructions [LWN.net]

Busybox lawsuits: installation scripts and instructions

Posted Nov 4, 2010 20:59 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: ELCE: The state of embedded Linux by tbird20d
Parent article: ELCE: The state of embedded Linux

While the GPL v2 does say "scripts for ... installation", not everyone interprets that as installation to the device.

Plus, it sounds like they're demanding more than scripts for installation to the device. "Instructions" sounds like some document that doesn't already exist. When I read the GPL, it sounds all about releasing what you've got, not generating new stuff to help people to work with your code. You have to release the source code you use to generate the binary, but it doesn't have to be readable and you don't have to write up a tutorial on how to work with it. Or answer emails asking how it works.

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Busybox lawsuits: installation scripts and instructions

Posted Nov 8, 2010 18:50 UTC (Mon) by johnflux (subscriber, #58833) [Link]

The worry might be if it's almost impossibly hard to install.

Busybox lawsuits: installation scripts and instructions

Posted Nov 9, 2010 4:01 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

The worry might be if it's almost impossibly hard to install.

Yes, that's a well known weakness of GPL. It's possible in a number of ways to meet all its conditions and avail oneself of gratis code without actually giving anything back. GPL 3 attempts to severely reduce the ways to do that.

But the lawsuit won't be concerned with the license that the authors of Busybox intended to or would have liked to give. All that matters is the license they did give. If that license is effective even when the code is impossible to install, so be it.