In a complaint filed in New York the Plaintiff "Free Software Foundation" and the software engineer who coded "BusyBox" alleged that several big name electronics producers infringed upon the GNU General Public License (GPL) of the BusyBox software. The GPL License Version 2 specifically states.
You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 aboveprovided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2
above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
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 . . . ."
The complaint claims the following products infringed on the Plaintiff's licensing rights:
- BestBuy's Insignia NS-WBRDVD Blu-ray Disc Player
- Samsung's LN52A650 and LA26A450 LCD HDTV's
- Westinghouse's TX-52F480S LCD HDTV; JVC's LT-42P789 LCD HDTV and VN-C20U IP Network Camera;
- Western Digital's WDBABF0000NBK WD TV HD Media Player;
- Bosch's DVR4C Security System DVR;
- Phoebe Micro's Airlink101 AR670W and AR690W wireless routers
- Airlink101 AICAP650W IP Motion Wireless Camera;
- Humax's iCord HD HDTV DVR;
- Comtrend's CT-5621 and NexusLink 5631/ 5631E ADSL2+ bonded modems;
- Dobbs-Stanford's Frame Jazz EyeZone B1080P-2 digital media player;
-
Versa Tech's PS-730 ITS Gateway and VX-BW2250 weatherproof dual
radio outdoor wireless access point; -
ZyXEL's P-663H-51 ADSL 2+ Bonded 4 Port Router;
Astak's CM-818DVR4V security camera system with DVR and CM-04DE and CM-04DEV
security system DVR devices; and, GCI's Cortex HDC-3000 digital music controller.
That's alot of big electronics producers listed! This doesn't necessarilly mean that the products are defective, but that software used within them allegedly breeched the GPL License.
We'll certainly be following this case.