After the filing of the Verizon / BusyBox suit, and after reading about any number of other, similar incidents where a company showed what could only be seen as flagrant disregard for the GPL, I had to ask myself: Why do people do this? Are companies really that naive about the GPL, or do they just think they can get away with anything?
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Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanSince the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselI read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
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kiba
4 years 17 weeks 4 days 18 hours ago
They're scared of the GPL or
They're scared of the GPL or otherwise they would go to court thinking that they will win.
Also you have to recognize that some of them are very big. I doubt the executives are aware of everything that goes on in their company.
Don't assume malice when ignorance can be easily substituted.
motters
4 years 17 weeks 3 days 23 hours ago
Another possibility
There's also another possibility - that the company and its employees are well aware of GPL and what it means, but are taking a calculated risk that the original authors will not bring the case to court. A completely cynical company director might figure that the typical lifetime of a piece of software is around five years, and that if it takes that long (or longer) for a court case to be brought then even if they're sued at the end of it they may still have made a profit.
I can imagine a situation where I find that some big company has turned my GPL'd software into backspaceware (i.e. deleted the license and author and inserted their own). Although I might be annoyed it's unlikely that I'd have the financial resources to fight a prolonged case in court.
kiba
4 years 17 weeks 3 days 22 hours ago
You can count on the
You can count on the software freedom law center to fight your case for you pro bono.