Re: Time to put up or shut up!

[Hyman Rosen]

On 4/15/2010 3:57 PM, RJack wrote:
> Undisputed fact 1) There has never been a link to "BusyBox v. 0.60.3"
> published by any BusyBox defendant in an SFLC suit -- ever.

No one is obligated to distribute the source to BusyBox v. 0.60.3
unless they are distributing that version of the binary. They are
obligated to distribute the source used to build the binary version
of BusyBox which they are copying and distributing. After each case
brought by the SFLC has ended, they have in fact done this.

> Undisputed fact 2) No court has ever granted *any* relief requested by
> any BusyBox plaintiff -- ever.

This is because the defendants agree to comply with the GPL,
and therefore there is no further matter for the court to
decide. This is exactly how the GPL is designed to work.
Compliance is trivially easy, and there is no reason for a
legitimate company to fail to do so. The companies being
sued by the SFLC have failed to comply with the GPL out of
laziness or neglect.

> Undisputed fact 3) No settlement agreement concerning a BusyBox suit has
> been published -- ever.

Settlement agreements are often kept private. However, compliance
with the GPL has so far been public, and in every case where a suit
brought by the SFLC ended, the defendants have come into compliance
with the GPL, publicly, as evidenced by the ability to download
GPL-compliant sources from their web sites.

> Who are we to believe? A Marxist GPL crackpot who claims a copyright
> license is not a contract or our own lyin' eyes?

There is nothing to believe except your own eyes, because the
GPL-compliant sources are made publicly available by the former
defendants.