21 September 2007

Eben Gets Busy Over BusyBox

One of the things that Eben Moglen has impressed on me when I've talked to him was that he - and Richard Stallman - have always preferred to negotiate settlements in cases of alleged breaches of the GNU GPL, rather than to rush to litigation. Hitherto, that's always worked, in the US at least. So it's extremely significant that Moglen's SFLC has decided to change tactics:



Clearly something big is afoot, here. Perhaps Moglen thinks the time has come to establish the legal solidity of the GNU GPL once and for all, and that this is the case to do it with. It will certainly be fascinating to see how this plays out.


Anonymous said...

Perhaps they did try to settle outside of court first but did not succeed?

I don't know. Just speculating.

Glyn Moody said...

From what I've read (I can't remember where), you're right, but there was no response at all to such attempts.

What's interesting is that Eben and his mates seem to have gone straight to litigation, rather than being patient as they usually are. There's a reason, I suspect....

johndrinkwater said...

Possibly: because it’s an easy to win case; and the GPL needs some… gravitas at the moment to show (legal proof, at least) companies that the GPL is enforcable, and therefore a substanially smaller legal problem for them to use?

Really couldn’t be certain at all.

Glyn Moody said...

That may well be the case.

Anonymous said...

Hi Glyn,

Here's a speculative article of interest.

Glyn Moody said...

Thanks for that.

But given the comments there, I'm still a bit confused why this has escalated to this level so fast: the company looks like it will comply, so why bother?