The SFLC is running around suing over how well some user of BusyBox becomes yet another repository for the source. It seems to me that anyone who wants to use it can find it anyway, so making Verizon or anyone else post it is just redundant and gets the community nowhere. Meanwhile, the silly suits just irritate those who do use it and give some credence to Ballmer's idea that the GPL is a cancer. Verizon's CEO's likely response, if he had heard of the matter, would probably have been to ban anyone's use of GPL within the company, as has happened effectively at mine.

BTW, the case was not "settled", it was dismissed, with predjudice, by the SFLC when Verizon served notice that they were going to oppose the suit. The SFLC found a face-saving maneuver by getting a third party to agree to post the source, but it was all a sham that is obvious to anyone who knows much about these things.

"Meanwhile, the silly suits just irritate those who do use it and give some credence to Ballmer's idea that the GPL is a cancer."

No, the suits let companies know that if they want to save money by using GPL code, they have to follow the terms of the license. The GPL is not exactly difficult to comply with. What would Ballmer have done if Verizon had put Microsoft's code on these devices without obeying a license? Who's the "cancer"? If Microsoft was cracking down on someone for license violations, you wouldn't call it a "silly suit".

"BTW, the case was not "settled", it was dismissed, with predjudice, by the SFLC when Verizon served notice that they were going to oppose the suit. The SFLC found a face-saving maneuver by getting a third party to agree to post the source, but it was all a sham that is obvious to anyone who knows much about these things."

This is a misleading characterization of the events. The "third party" (Actiontec) was the company that actually used BusyBox on the routers and supplied the devices to Verizon. Both Actiontec and Verizon were defendents. Actiontec agreed to settle, and the SFLC accepted this as a resolution of the matter, even though they believed that Verizon had also been in violation by passing the violating routers on to customers. The SFLC agreed to let them off because the problem was caused by Verizon's supplier, not Verizon itself.

This sounds to me like a typical CEO. Most really don't seem to have any idea what is really going on inside their own companies. Sometimes I wonder if the company would do as well or better without the executive team. Supposedly, the CEO and his executive team are there to keep the business going in the right direction, but when they don't know what is going on, how can they know if anything needs to be fixed?

I am not advocating a micromanaging CEO either. I have worked for them too, and that is just as bad, or maybe worse than the ignorant CEO.

The ignorant CEO can't guide the business.
The micromanaging CEO can't benefit from the skills and knowledge of others.

What is desperately needed is an intelligent and aware CEO who knows how to give his employees the room to do what needs to be done, but also who pays attention to what they are doing so that he can give them direction before situations get desperate.

"No, the suits let companies know that if they want to save money by using GPL code, they have to follow the terms of the license."

The lifeblood of OSS and the only reasonable use of the GPL is to foster continued development of the OSS source. The GPL demands that anyone making changes to source publish the changes. By default, those who use it in a product and do not make any changes are also obligated to publish the source, but that is of trivial significance. Anyone capable of such development doubtless knows where to get the source anyway.

This parade of lawsuits to force the simple replication of unmodified source is a waste of time and money and serves no purpose.

"This is a misleading characterization of the events. The "third party" (Actiontec) was the company that actually used BusyBox on the routers and supplied the devices to Verizon. Both Actiontec and Verizon were defendents."

Read the suit. Actiontec was never a party to the suit. Verizon was. The SFLC did a quick draw and shot their toe off.

Given that Google Android -- arguably destined to be one of the more revolutionary platforms in the wireless world -- is also completely open-sourced, you would have thought the guy would have a least heard the term.

But, then, if you spend most of your time and money on lobbyists (versus innovation), perhaps this isn't much of a surprise.