With consumer electronics adopting so many elements and components from the PC industry, a mistake like this was bound to happen sooner or later: 14 consumer electronics vendors have been accused of distributing GPL software while not adhering to the terms of the license.
If you use GPL licensed software, it’s a good idea to make sure that you’re compliant with the license terms.
In a lawsuit filed today, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is taking aim at alleged GPL license violation by 14 consumers electronics vendors including retail giant Best Buy.
The violations are related to the GPL licensed BusyBox collection of utilities which are found in products sold by Best Buy and included by multiple consumer electronics vendors including Samsung, Westinghouse, and JVC. BusyBox is a collection of Unix utilities that have been optimized for size and are most commonly used in embedded environments such as TV sets and DVD players.