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about the GPL
- usual stuff
about gpl-violations.org
- 100+ cases so far
- most of them settled out of court
- four preliminary injunctions halting sales (Sitecom, Siemens, Fortinet, ...)
- one appeals case against preliminary injunction won (Sitecom)
- one regular civil court case (against D-Link, just one month ago)
- not a single case was lost at any time
what happens if you violate the GPL
- copyright infringement is a crime, criminal charges could be brought
- copyright infringement causes civil liabilities
- sale of your products can be immediately halted by preliminary injunction
- legal proceedings can be filed against you and your downstream sales chain
- you can be sued for damages
- you will have to reimburse all legal fees (your/their lawyers, court fees)
- you will have to alter all products that are already produced and in stock
(include a copy of the license text, source code or written offer thereof)
- is it really worth all those risks?
- if you are selling branded OEM/ODM devices or software and don't have the
technical resources for compliance checks in-house: for a couple of hundred
euros (could be more, depending on complexity) you can have somebody check
the product for GPL license compliance before it enters the market.
how to avoid GPL licensing problems
- think about licensing during product development
- if you sell any OEM device provided by an upstream vendor, check it!
- make sure you provide the source code always at the same time as object code
- make sure GPL compliance happens for physical prodcut and website
- release full corresponding source for each and every firmware update
- do consider emails/letters about license compliance _SERIOUS_
- set up a contact address that people can write to in case there think there
are license compliance issues
- if you get caught
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