You are mixing issues [LWN.net]

You are mixing issues

Posted Jun 7, 2012 19:45 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: SFC expands license compliance efforts by armijn
Parent article: SFC expands license compliance efforts

First, please stop the Sony FUD as it is simply not true. It has been stated multiple times by both Tim Bird and Rob Landley that Toybox (which is, like BusyBox, a reimplementation of standard Unix and Linux tools) did not come from Sony.

You are mixing issues. It's similar to FSF vs OSI difference. While they support many projects they are not identical and the goals are different.

Tim Bird's Busybox replacement project is now pointless. In fact situation for the potential infringers is even worse then it was before.

Rob Landley's Toybox which was explicitly revived with the goal "to become the default command line implementation of Android systems everywhere" is alive and well.

Fourth, the Linux kernel has already been enforced many times (in Europe). So it is not that it 'is now available'. That would be denying 8 years of enforcement work being done by gpl-violations.org and other copyright holders in the kernel.

Again, you are mixing issues. This is not about enforcement in general. This is about enforcement efforts of SFC. Tim Bird quite explicitly said that he started the projects with the goal to make SFC toothless (the very first message says that) - and this plot failed. Now SFC will just enforce Linux kernel copyright directly without using busybox as a crutch. I'm pretty sure this will stop expected massive rush of busybox/toybox switchers: it makes no sense anymore. In this sense SONY's cynical plot failed. But of course replacement may be better in other senses besides the ability to circumvent SFC's encforcers. This means it'll be used by some new projects.

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