[LINK] Monsoon settles with SFLC (was: Software Freedom Law Center files first US GPL infringement suit)

[Glen Turner]

And an open letter posted to Linux Weekly News after much discussion
(including by copyright holders of other software used in HAVA) about
the delayed release of the Busybox source code.

That discussion shows that copyright owners' attitudes to non-compliance
with the obligations of the GPL license is hardening. The new attitude
very much seems anger that firms are willing to jump through 
ridiculously tough terms for commercial software (eg, audits) but can't
be bothered to meet the comparatively minor terms of the GPL (ie,
publishing source code).



Dear members of the free software community:

Monsoon Multimedia manufactures and sells through various channels a
product known generically as “HAVA”, a video time and place shifting
device. The hardware box itself runs the Linux operating system, the
licensing of which is governed by the GNU Public License (GPL).

Monsoon Multimedia is a small company, whose employees work hard to
develop new products, develop new functionality for and fix issues in
existing products to help satisfy our paying customers and corporate
stakeholders. Along the way, we have unwittingly neglected to honor
the terms of the GPL which requires us to obtain permission from the
copyright holders of any software component for which we have modified
the code in order to deliver our product. Additionally, we are
obligated to publish the GPL code we have used and modified so that
all others can benefit from our efforts, and up to now we have failed
to do so.

We wish at this point to apologize for this oversight, both to the
copyright holders of the code which we have used and modified, and to
the free software community in general. We take full responsibility
for these actions. We fully endorse the concepts of free software. We
are now working closely with the copyright holders to make sure that
our obligations under the GPL are met in full measure.

Regarding claims of "stonewalling", etc. all I can say is that we're
going through the list of everything we have (it's not just Busybox),
figuring out where it came from, what was modified, etc. etc. and we
wish to do this correctly to avoid further controversy. I am
personally very sorry it is dragging on because I'd like to get back
to helping customers and being a general pain in the neck to the
developers.

Here's our official press release:

http://myhava.com/press_releases_monsoon_open_source.html

With 20/20 hindsight,

Gary Worsham
Senior Director of Program Management
Monsoon Multimedia