GPL passes acid test in German court
In a landmark victory for the GPL license, a civil court in Germany has ruled against D-Link Germany GmbH for violating the terms of the most popular free software license. The lawsuit was filed by Harald Welte, a respected Linux hacker who tracks and eliminates illegal use of software protected by the GPL through his gpl-violations.org project. In a brief email exchange, Welte explains the nature of the violation and how he went about collecting evidence.
"It was a very straight-forward case," says Welte, describing how D-Link used the Linux kernel and other (L)GPL licensed software in their D-GSM600 NAS product without including a copy of the license text, the full corresponding source code or a written offer on how to obtain it. In the last 2.5 years, Welte has discovered over 100 instances of such violations.
This wasn't the first D-Link GPL violation. "Previously, D-Link signed a declaration to cease and desist and paid my expenses for legal fees, test purchase and reverse engineering," explains Welte. This time, however, D-Link refused to reimburse his expenses and sent a letter indicating that they didn't think the GPL was legally binding on them. "This is obviously not acceptable," says Welte, who runs the project out of his own pocket.
"Furthermore, even in those previous cases, D-Link had a lot of problems and caused delays when it came to providing the "full corresponding source code" as mandated by the GPL," Welte notes.
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