The Software Freedom Law Center, an organization focused on protecting open-source
and free software, has filed copyright lawsuits against two U.S. companies,
alleging that they are redistributing software in violation of the GNU GPL (General
Public License).

The SFLC filed lawsuits Monday on behalf of the developers of BusyBox against
High-Gain Antennas of Parker, Colorado, and Xterasys of City of Industry, California.
The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New
York, allege that the companies are distributing BusyBox illegally, without
meeting the GPL requirement of providing access to the source code of their
implementation.

BusyBox, available since November 1999, is a lightweight set of standard Unix
utilities commonly used in embedded systems licensed under GPL version 2. The
two companies are distributing "BusyBox, or a modified version of BusyBox
that is substantially similar to BusyBox," the lawsuits allege. The lawsuits
ask the court to give the BusyBox developers the profits from that software,
plus other damages.

But Richard Bruckner, CEO of High-Gain Antennas, said the SFLC is mistaken
about the GPL violation. The company, which makes wireless broadband antennas
and related products, uses firmware from a company called Edimax, not BusyBox,
and makes the source code available, at the request of customers, he said.

Bruckner said he tried to explain the situation in a conference call with SFLC
officials but was hung up on. During that first conversation SFLC was "already
asking for money," he said. "What they need to do is get their act
together and read the source code."

If the SFLC doesn't end its threats, High-Gain Antennas may file a countersuit,
Bruckner added.

But Dan Ravicher, SFLC's legal director, said the organization has tried to
work with both companies and has not gotten adequate responses. The two sides
may still be able to settle the lawsuits out of court, he said.

"There is a hope, but since neither defendant wanted to resolve the matter
privately previously, we'll have to see if they want to do so now," he
said. "In the end, we can hope to settle all we want, but if the defendants
don't want to do so, we can't force them to. All we can do is ask the court
to force the defendants to comply with the law."

Ravicher also said he's confident in the lawsuits. "The evidence we collected
during our investigation was sufficient for us to form a basis for our belief
that they are distributing BusyBox and are not doing so in compliance with the
GPL," he said.

If either case filed is heard before a judge, it would be the first time that
a GPL infringement lawsuit has gone to trial in the U.S.

Officials from Xterasys weren't available to comment on the lawsuit against
their company.

These are the second and third lawsuits the SFLC has filed on behalf of BusyBox
developers Erik Andersen and Rob Landley. The first lawsuit, against Monsoon
Multimedia, was settled out of court Oct. 30, with Monsoon agreeing to fix the
violation and pay Andersen and Landley an undisclosed sum.

"We let companies do what they like with BusyBox on their hardware, and
what we asked in return was that they let us reproduce what they've done with
BusyBox on our hardware," Landley said in a statement. "That's the
deal embodied in the GPL."

The SFLC assists nonprofit open-source and free software projects. Its chairman
is Eben Moglen, long-time general counsel to the Free Software Foundation.

IDG News Service

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