Monday, September 25, 2006

GPL Win In Germany

One of the most consistent criticisms of the free software movement has been about the license. The license is too vague - the license hasn't been tested in court. This last point seems quite strange to me. Most software license agreements are not "tested in court." In fact if you are going to court to enforce your licensing terms - you on one level have already failed. However in Germany, D-Link has lost a case concerning the use of a GPLed code in a NAS device.

Link Germany GmbH, a subsidiary of D-Link Corporation, Taiwan R.O.C., distributed DSM-G600, a network attached storage (NAS) device which uses linux-based Operating System. However, this distribution was incompliant with the GNU General Public License (GPL) which covers the Linux Kernel and many other software programs used in the product.