First Test of GPL in US as BusyBox Developers Sue Monsoon
In what their lawyers are characterizing as the first test of the legal mettle of the General Public License in the US, the developers of a multipurpose UNIX-style utilities package have sued Monsoon Multimedia - which makes a competitive product to SlingBox called Hava. Their claim is that Monsoon redistributes their BusyBox utilities as part of Hava's software, without also distributing the source code along with it as the GPL mandates.
It is an extremely simple case, at least as laid out by the Software Freedom Law Center, which is pursuing the case on the BusyBox team's behalf.
"Upon information and belief, Defendant's Firmware contains BusyBox, or a modified version of BusyBox that is substantially similar to BusyBox, in object code or executable form. Distribution of the Firmware, either as part of the Infringing Products or by itself, thus inherently includes distribution of BusyBox and, as such, Defendant is required to have Plaintiffs' permission to make that distribution. The only such permission available for BusyBox is the contingent one granted under the License... Upon information and belief, Defendant offers copies of the Firmware on its website, but does not offer any source code corresponding to the Firmware."
Thus far, Monsoon has yet to issue a statement on the matter. But one may rightly wonder, if the BusyBox developers' only problem is that Hava doesn't support the community BusyBox serves by distributing the team's source code, why the matter couldn't have been resolved with a simple phone call.
According to the complaint (PDF available here), BusyBox's lawyers contacted Monsoon for the first time only ten days ago, even though the suit alleges "upon information and belief" that Hava included an inappropriate version of BusyBox since January 2006.
In a statement yesterday from the SFLC, founding director Eben Moglen said, "Free software licenses such as the GPL exist to protect the freedom of computer users. If we don't ensure that these licenses are respected, then they will not be able to achieve their goal. Our goal is simply to ensure that Monsoon Multimedia complies with the terms of the GPL."