A couple of weeks ago, this page appeared on the elinux.org wiki. It's written by an engineer at Sony, and it's calling for contributions to rewriting Busybox. This would be entirely reasonable if it were for technical reasons, but it's not - it's explicitly stated that companies are afraid that Busybox copyright holders may force them to comply with the licenses of software they ship. If you ship this Busybox replacement instead of the original Busybox you'll be safe from the SFC. You'll be able to violate licenses with impunity.
This actually infuriates me.
These companies seem to not understand how copyright law works. By default, they aren't allowed to distribute BusyBox in their products. However, the authors of BusyBox have offered the fruits of their hard labor at no charge along with a license that grants companies the rights to distribute and modify BusyBox. The primary condition of the license is simply that anyone who modifies the software must also release the fruits of their (significantly less) hard labor. The end result of course is that companies are forced to return a favor and to treat their customers with respect. I find this more than fair for everyone, and any company that doesn't agree should instead spend at least twice the cost of hardware on copies of a proprietary program that they can't improve.
The alternative is a strangely ironic world where Sony are simultaneously funding lobbying for copyright enforcement against individuals and tools to help large corporations infringe at will. I'm not enthusiastic about that.
I'm reminded of Sony's XCP rootkit (an infringement of free software copyrights designed to fight infringement of Sony BMG copyrights) and the MPAA's infringing use of Ubuntu GNU/Linux to fight copyright infringement in universities.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Date: 2012-01-31 05:30 am (UTC)This actually infuriates me.
These companies seem to not understand how copyright law works. By default, they aren't allowed to distribute BusyBox in their products. However, the authors of BusyBox have offered the fruits of their hard labor at no charge along with a license that grants companies the rights to distribute and modify BusyBox. The primary condition of the license is simply that anyone who modifies the software must also release the fruits of their (significantly less) hard labor. The end result of course is that companies are forced to return a favor and to treat their customers with respect. I find this more than fair for everyone, and any company that doesn't agree should instead spend at least twice the cost of hardware on copies of a proprietary program that they can't improve.
I'm reminded of Sony's XCP rootkit (an infringement of free software copyrights designed to fight infringement of Sony BMG copyrights) and the MPAA's infringing use of Ubuntu GNU/Linux to fight copyright infringement in universities.