June 11th, 2008
Embedded market keeping SFLC busy as in BusyBox
Those of you who remember our classic piece from yesterday about the BusyBox lawsuits should know that almost as soon as we posted it, word came from the Software Freedom Law Center that they’ve filed two more.
This time the defendants are Bell Microproducts, Inc. and Super Micro Computer, Inc. Both act as distributors, not just manufacturers.
The suit against Bell is actually against a unit called Hammer Storage, which sells its products through popular retail channels like Fry’s.
(Note. The Hammer Storage MyShare, shown above, lets you share files over a home network or the Internet. Shouldn’t we share its software, if some of it came from BusyBox?)
As in the previous suits, the defendants ignored attempts by the SFLC to settle the problems privately. Previous suits settled soon after being filed.
The suits were technically filed on behalf of the BusyBox developers, Eric Andersen and Rob Landley. BusyBox likes to call itself the Swiss Army Knife of embedded Linux. Others may prefer to call them the plaintiffs.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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