Monsoon Multimedia, which was subjected to the first US lawsuit on non-compliance with the GPL, has published a press release in which they agree to make any modifications public and thereby complying to the requirements stipulated in the GPL license. "Monsoon Multimedia today announced efforts to fully comply with the GPL. Monsoon is in settlement negotiations with BusyBox to resolve the matter and intends to fully comply with all open-source software license requirements. Monsoon will make modified BusyBox source code publicly available on the company web-site in the coming weeks."
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Member since:2005-11-05
Actually, you are a bit wrong. You only have to provided code to people you distribute the software to. As in if you don't pay for my product, I don't have to give you a copy of the gpl code on it even if you ask.
Most companies distribute the code to everyone in good faith, but the gpl does not require it.
Edit:
Clear up a disambiguation
Edited 2007-09-24 20:15
Member since:2007-02-23
You are almost right.
If you distribute the source with the binaries, then you have no obligations to third parties. This is section 3(a) compliance.
If you do not distribute the source with binaries, then you must make available to any third party the source. Or quoting directly from the GPLv2, section 3(b):
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
(emphasis added). I'm unsure how you can conclude that this applies only to your customers. To me the plain language says what it means. Any means any.
section 3(c) compliance doesn't matter for this case, since this would clearly be commercial, and 3(c) is available only for non-commercial distribution.
Member since:2005-10-02
Actually, that is wrong. Even if I don't pay for your binary product I'm still entitled to receive the source code. But you are of course free to charge me as you see fit.
Member since:
2007-02-23
The GPL specifically states that you must either ship your modified source with the product (well, with the object, to be pedantic), or you must provide a written offer, valid for any third party, to obtain the code.
What is *NOT* acceptable is to say 'you can get it from the standard places' unless you've made arrangements with the standard places to keep it archived for 3 years. There's a lot of companies trying to skate under this clause as well, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.
It is fear against exactly this kind of lawsuit and bad publicity that has caused a former employer to base their products on FreeBSD and to eliminate all GPL'd software from the flash image that goes inside their products. That company did dozens of releases a year, and making sure every last bit of GPL'd source was released and archived properly for 3 years was considered more effort than simply eliminating all GPL software.
The one bad thing about the settlement, assuming there will be one, is that there's no legal precedent set by it, so the world still doesn't know if the GPL is valid in the US, or the extent to which it can be enforced. All we still have are legal theories, although quite good, that haven't been tested in a court of law in the US.