Monsoon Multimedia Sued In US Over GPL Violation; Already In Talks To Settle Out Of Court
By Nikhil Pahwa - Tue 25 Sep 2007 10:25 AM PST
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed a copyright infringement suit in the US against Noida headquartered Monsoon Multimedia, alleging a violation of the GNU General Public Licence version 2 (GPLv2), reports ITWire. Allegedly, Monsoon Multimedia had used code from BusyBox in one of its products, but not made the modified version of the code available. The BusyBox source code has been released under GPLv2 which allows anyone to use it free of charge, but requires any modifications to be published in order to benefit the community of users. This is the first instance that a lawsuit has been filed in the US alleging GPL violation, and the PDF of the complaint is available here.
Just a couple of days after this news spread, Monsoon Multimedia has issued a release saying that it is in talks with BusyBox to resolve the issue, and intends to fully comply with the GPL, and publish the code at its site myHAVA.com. The company has a product called Hava, a TV place-shifting device similar to Slingbox (which is being acquired by Echostar (NSDQ: DISH)), and was founded by the founders of Dazzle and Emuzed, acquired by SCM Microsystems and Flextronics respectively.
A snarky comment on Slashdot on this issue here. I wonder how many sites are there in India which use modified versions of code licenced under GPL, without publishing modifications.
