First U.S. suit filed over alleged violation of public software license

An open-source software group could force the first test of a prominent public copyright license with a lawsuit filed Thursday.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC)is suing Monsoon Media on behalf of the developers of BusyBox, a small application whose source code is made freely available for others to modify.

The suit alleges Monsoonused BusyBox in its software,but did not provide access to its underlying code to others, as required by version 2 of the GNU general public license (GPL).

Developers who usetheGPL agree to keep the software open and shareable, allowing others the right to use, read, add or modify it.

"We licensed BusyBox under the GPL to give users the freedom to access and modify its source code," said Erik Andersen, a developer of BusyBox and a named plaintiff in the lawsuit filed yesterday in Manhattan Federal District Court.

"If companies will not abide by the fair terms of our license, then we have no choice but to ask our attorneys to go to court to force them to do so."

Open-source software such as the Linux operating systems encourages people to use, read, add or modify the code without fear of legal repercussions, as long as they abide by conditions of a public license.

The SFLC said the lawsuit is the first in the U.S. to involve a copyright infringement of the GPL. Most disputes involving the GPL are resolved without litigation.

The case, should it go to court, will be watched closely by open-source software advocates and could amount to a test-case of the effectiveness of the GPL.

Open-source software is increasingly playing a larger role in the software industry in relation to proprietary source software, where the underlying computer code is hidden, restricted and guarded by patent, copyright and other intellectual property protections.

Experts predict that by 2011 at least 80 per cent of commercial software will contain open-source code.