BluefishWireless Responds to Our Copyright Dispute With Them
We have been “warned” by Bluefish not to contact their customers and ask for the sources for their version of an application based on our Plucker source code, covered under the GPL. The response from them was to advise us to:
“…get legal advice from a US attorney before making any more statements to any of our customers or potential customers…”
That sounds like fear to me.
I will be emailing Eben at the FSF in the morning with a full rundown of everything said and done to date, at Tridge’s suggestion.
They have had the sources requested from them by myself on the telephone, and in several emails from community members (incuding myself), and they have refused to provide those sources, both verbally, and in written requests.
They also contend that since their use of Plucker is part of a larger “education vertical”, and that their customers have nothing to do with the licensing of the “Bluefish solution”. I contend that they do have everything to do with it, based on Section 6 of the GPL, which states:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
By not providing the sources to their customers and partners, they are imposing more restrictions, and further, by not alerting their customers as to the licensing involved with the “Bluefish solution” (which uses Plucker, a fully GPL’d application), they are hiding the fact that it is using GPL’d code, which they have not followed the license to according to the terms of that license, including re-distribution.