“Last week I read about an Android licensing issue that I wasn’t previously aware of,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “It’s a pretty serious one, and it’s not that hard to understand.”
The short version is that:
• rampant non-compliance with the source code disclosure requirement of the GPLv2 (the license under which Linux is published) — especially but not only in connection with Honeycomb — has technically resulted in a loss of most vendors’ right to distribute Linux;
• this loss of the distribution license is irremediable except through a new license from each and every contributor to the Linux kernel, without which Android can’t run; and
• as a result, there are thousands of people out there who could legally shake down Android device makers, threatening to obtain Apple-style injunctions unless their demands for a new license grant are met.
Mueller reports, “At first sight it may appear unthinkable that things could go so wrong with the distribution license for the very foundation Android was built upon. But I did my research and the above conclusions are just consistent with legal positions taken recently by two of the most renowned Free Software organizations — the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) — in another context involving GPLv2 (and software embedded in devices), the so-called BusyBox lawsuit (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, case no. 1:09-cv-10155).”
Much more in the full article here.
