Paul Krill
Editor at Large

GPL lawsuit settled

news
Dec 17, 20071 min

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) said Monday it has settled a lawsuit filed against Xterasys pertaining to an alleged violation of the GNU General Public License.

The lawsuit was filed alleging that networking products maker Xterasys used BusyBox Unix utilities offered via the GPL but did not provide source code, as required under the GPL. SFLC filed the lawsuit on behalf of BusyBox developers Erik Andersen and Rob Landley.

Xterasys has agreed to cease all binary distribution of BusyBox until SFLC confirmation that complete corresponding source code has been s published, SFLC said. Once this is done, Xterasys’s rights to distribute BusyBox under GPL will be reinstated.

Xterasys also has agreed to appoint an internal open source compliance officer to monitor GPL compliance and notify previous recipients of BusyBox from Xterasys of their rights to the software under the GPL, said SFLC. Xterasys also will pay an undisclosed amount of financial consideration to the plaintiffs, SFLC said.

A representative at Xterasys acknowledged Monday that the lawsuit had been settled. The lawsuit was filed in November.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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