[Solar-general] Fw: Fw: Companies accused of violating the GPL

[Daniel Olivera]

articulo original:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39191532,00.htm

Companies accused of violating the GPL
Ingrid Marson
ZDNet UK
March 16, 2005, 16:45 GMT

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Thirteen companies, including Motorola and Acer, have been handed
letters claiming they
have failed to comply with the GNU General Public License




A number of major IT vendors have been accused of misusing software
licensed under the GNU
General Public License (GPL).

Harald Welte, a Linux kernel developer who runs gpl-violations.org,
personally handed over
warning letters to 13 technology companies at CeBIT this week,
including telecoms giant
Motorola and PC manufacturer Acer.

Welte claimed that the binary code of the companies' products appears
to have used GPL
code, but that they have not made source code available as required by
the GPL. The
letter warned companies that this might be the case, but did not mark
the start of legal
action, according to Welte.

"While the free and open source community is very happy to see more and
more vendors adopt
Linux and other GPL-licensed software, it is of great importance that
those vendors
comply with the respective liceDefender of the Linux faithnce
conditions, just like with
any other software," said Welte in a statement. "The warning notice
gives them a chance
to fix their products before they get into legal trouble."

Other companies that received a warning letter from Welte included
Buffalo Technology,
X-Micro Technology, Micronet, Trendware, Level One, Minitar and
Ovislink.

Motorola, Acer, Buffalo and Trendware were unable to comment in time
for this article.

Welte told ZDNet UK that he had already received a good response from
Taiwanese company
X-Micro, which was apparently not aware of the requirements of the GPL.

"When I went to the X-Micro booth, I met the vice-president of X-Micro
and we sat down and
discussed the issue," said Welte. "What he said confirmed my impression
of what's going
on in Taiwan — people there are not aware of their obligations as they
don't have a
tradition of copyright in Taiwan."

ZDNet UK recently spoke to Welte about his methods and the motivation
behind
gpl-violations.org. You can read the full interview here.


Daniel
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-- 
  ,= ,-_-. =.  |Mate.Cosido (..aun fuera de la ley)
 ((_/)o o(\_)) |
  `-'(. .)`-'  |UTUTO XS GNU System with Linux
      \_/      |Linux 2.6.7-HR4 / GCC 3.4.3.1
---------------------------------------------------
Mi BLOG: http://daniel.ututo.org.ar
Celular / Cell Phone (SMS): (+5411) 5707-5013
SipPhone      : 1-747-600-6721 en proxy01.sipphone.com
ICQ: 8368437  / Jabber: dolivera en jabber.org

Estudien mucho para poder dominar la tecnica que
permite dominar la naturaleza. CHE
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