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GPL Guardians Publish Guide to Not Getting Sued

Aug 22, 2008  By Justin Ryan

The Software Freedom Law Center — champions of all things Open Source — has become a legend within the Open Source community over the past year through the nearly a dozen lawsuits filed on behalf of the developers of BusyBox against a laundry list of companies that refused to comply with the GPL. Now, they're taking the fight out of the courtroom and into the boardroom with a new guide aimed at educating managers about the requirements inherent in using Open Source software. Co-written by SFLC team members Bradley Kuhn, Aaron Williamson, and Karen Sandler, the guide offers advice for executives on the obligatiosn imposed by the GPL, as well as practices companies can put in place to prevent violations in the first place.

The guide is available from the SFLC's website as HTML, PDF, and Postscript, and is freely available for (verbatim) copying. (It is presumably also available under the CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0 license indicated at the bottom of every page on the SFLC site.) Most of all, companies should remember the number one piece of GPL-compliance advice: If the SFLC calls, listen.

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Justin Ryan is a Contributing Editor for Linux Journal.

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Gregor's picture
Submitted by Gregor (not verified) on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 11:49.

Well i am not so into all this liceces, but from what i know GPL is not much different then commercial licecne?

This is not confirmed info but rather a plot keep that in mind when reading further ... and don't flame me :)

I read that when selling PHP MySQL software one has to buy MySQL licence in order to sell his software legal, i am curious if that is true?

If it is, then about 90% of developers are selling their software illegal.

On the other hand there is a note that one do not have to accept this licence because he did not signed it, but i guess if tou do not accept it then you cannot use the software.

Hmmm, whos gone crazy here?

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