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21 September 2007

FOSS fighters launch first US copyright action for GPL violation

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has launched a legal action, on behalf of two GPL software developers, against Monsoon Multimedia. SFLC claims this to be the first time that a copyright infringement claim based on GPL violation has been launched in the US courts. (Note that it's not the first time that the US courts have looked at FOSS licences - see our report on Jacobsen v Katzer for example.)

Monsoon Multimedia's website states that the company produces "digital video software and applications". According to the SFLC press release, Monsoon Media uses Busybox, a set of utilities issued under GPL2, as part of the software in its products.

SFLC claim centers around the allegation that Monsoon Media fails to provide users of its products with access to the Busybox source code, and therefore breaches the terms of GPL2.

Posted at 10:03 AM in Open source & free software |

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