The Software Freedom Law Center, representing Erik Anderson and Rob Landley, has filed a suit against Moonsoon Multimedia for violating the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which they released BusyBox 1.00, a embedded Linux executable that provides minimalist versions of common UNIX utilities for resource-constrained systems. This is the first case filed in the United States for allegedly infringing the General Public License version 2.

Moonsoon Multimedia has allegedly built a consumer DVR (digital video recorder) with remote multimedia file serving capabilities, named Hava, which uses the BusyBox tool. The Hava runs an embedded Linux operating system. These DVRs come in three versions, priced from $130 to $250, with different capabilities.

BusyBox is extremely customizable, fast and flexible, and is believed to be used in countless products sold by more than 100 manufacturers all over the world, including IBM, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, and Siemens, the filing alleges. Erik Anderson and Rob Landley have distributed BusyBox since November 1999 in source code form under the GNU General Public License (GPL). If a licensee redistributes a version of BusyBox or any other software bound by the GPL, it may do so only under the terms of the same License, which include the mandatory requirement to provide source code.

Specifically, Erik Anderson and Rob Landley found that their BusyBox is embedded in the device's firmware (the compiled software code which directly runs a hardware device). Their firmware is also available for download. However, Moonsoon Multimedia does not want to make source code available and refused to do so even after it was informed of its infringement, according to the lawsuit.

"We licensed BusyBox under the GPL to give users the freedom to access and modify its source code," said Erik Andersen. "If companies will not abide by the fair terms of our license, then we have no choice but to ask our attorneys to go to court to force them to do so."

Since about January 2006, Moonsoon has distributed to the public copies of the Hava firmware inside its DVR products and via its website without providing source code to BusyBox, as bound by the GNU General Public License.

The plaintiffs requested that the Court issue injunctive relief against Moonsoon and restrain it from copying, modifying, distributing or making any other infringing use of the BusyBoxs software, and order the company to pay damages and litigation expenses.

"Free software licenses such as the GPL exist to protect the freedom of computer users. If we don't ensure that these licenses are respected, then they will not be able to achieve their goal," said Eben Moglen, Founding Director of SFLC, in an official statement on their website. "Our goal is simply to ensure that Monsoon Multimedia complies with the terms of the GPL."