On Behalf of BusyBox Developers, SFLC Files First Ever U.S. GPL Violation Lawsuit | Linux Today

On Behalf of BusyBox Developers, SFLC Files First Ever U.S. GPL Violation Lawsuit

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Sep 20, 2007

“The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it
has filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based
on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of
its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, against Monsoon
Multimedia, Inc. BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix
utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source
software licensed under GPL version 2.

“One of the conditions of the GPL is that re-distributors of
BusyBox are required to ensure that each downstream recipient is
provided access to the source code of the program. On the company’s
own Web site, Monsoon Multimedia has publicly acknowledged that its
products and firmware contain BusyBox. However, it has not provided
any recipients with access to the underlying source code, as is
required by the GPL…”

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.