The Software Freedom Law Center has filed a second set of lawsuits against companies it claims are in violation of the GNU General Public License open source software agreement.
The group said yesterday it has sued Xterasys and High-Gain Antennas for copyright infringement over their alleged use of embedded Unix tools licensed under the GPL by its client, BusyBox.
The two companies are numbers two and three to be sued over BusyBox’s GPL claims by the SFLC. The first was Monsoon Multimedia, which was sued in September and settled out of court last month.
The GPL requires that any derivative code should also be released as source code. BusyBox’s developers claim these companies use their GPL work in the products without following this rule.
Given the Monsoon settlement, the GPL’s enforceability still has not been tested in a US court. If either defendant in the two new suits does not settle, the license may have its day in court yet.
