“Former Debian developer Bruce Perens announced on this
Technocrat.net website that one of his debugging tools, dubbed
Electric Fence, had been included in the proprietary BeOS C library
in violation of GNU General Public License and was being
distributed in binary form only — i.e., without source code.”
“Perens, who called the switch an “honest mistake,” said he had
been contacted by Be Inc. representatives and had signed a letter
of understanding in which he promised not to sue the company for
infringing on the original GPL license.”
“Still, the two-day episode underlined the growing anxiety
about the GNU General Public License’s legal viability now that
commercial software companies are becoming more cozy with the free
software community.”