[OpenWrt-Devel] GPL Violation to chase + Engenius/Senao firmware non-update

[Paul Oranje]

Op 20 aug. 2018, om 17:37 heeft Michael Holstein <moholstein at gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> I'll get you the citations, but I know the busybox (vs various) one
> set precedent, and another held that GPL was an enforceable contract.
> Several companies have been dinged for it and offered settlements to
> purchasers (IIRC Cisco being one of them) .. if you pull their filings
> from Edgar and/or import records from USCIS you'll get an idea of how
> many you're talking about .. and don't forget the EU either, people
> live there also.
> 
> You'll clearly have >75k, multiple states, federal matter (copyright),
> and California is about the most liberal district you could ask for to
> file, although Texas would be better as long as you've project
> developers there as forum shopping has ended. It'll never get that
> far. The lawyer will get 40% original plaintiffs $10k each, and
> everyone else a claim to a coupon for $100 and they'll publish the
> code and agree not to do it again, long before it gets to using
> LinkedIn for Voir Dere to find a couple nerds to explain it to the
> other 11. It really couldn't be any clearer they've done it though.
> 
> It'd be expensive to loose, they'd settle .. If anyone has the
> background (legal and technical) and desire to persue this get ahold
> me of off-list, I can put you in touch with people that can further
> the process for you. It's not that anyone really cares about the law,
> but they do care about that 40% enough to look it up.
> 
> -Mike.
> 

GPL enforcement in court is seen by some as ineffective, an at-arms-length approach is not what makes FOSS strong and fits more closed source practices. LWN had a nice article on that in 2016 "The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement" [1].

As Engenius/Senao clearly already for a long time bases its product on (quite old) versions of OpenWrt (and LUCI !), it shouldn't be impossible to convince this company to be more cooperative; arguing that it would obviously be in their own benefit seems not to far fetched.

Another article in LWN, "Licenses and contracts", sheds some light on different law cultures in relation to some FOSS licences [2].

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/698452/
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/747563/

Regards, Paul
_______________________________________________
openwrt-devel mailing list
openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel