Advise needed: someone is using my GPL'ed code

[Harald Welte]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 10:17:10PM +0100, Filip Onkelinx wrote:
> Hi all,

Hi Filip!

> and even started some of my own. Two weeks ago I came across a rather
> well-known name in the PDA business that is distributing a PDA program
> for which I have good indications that it contains code I wrote and
> released under the GNU GPL. 

Could you elaborate on what those indications are?

> I'm looking at mainly two things:
> 1. Someone to verify my 'case': I'm willing to mail the details I
> submitted to the VP to someone else who agrees to keep this confidential
> for the time being.

I would be willing to do that, but expect some 3 or four days delay
after you send me all the details.

> 2. All advice/help in how I should approach this issue (mail, fax or
> registered letter; what text to put in / avoid, ...).  Bassically an
> 'HowTo for tackling GPL violations'

Well, first of all you really need to be very sure about any kind of
violation, before making any claims.  If you already have contact with
the VP of that particular company, than it should be easy to continue
from that point on.

If he is interested to learn more about the GPL, you can point him to
the FAQ's on the gpl-violations.org homeapge and the FSF's own GPL FAQ.

Also, it's good to advise him to give a copy of the GPL to their legal
department and/or legal counsel, so he can confirm their obligations
from an 'independent' third party.

If they deny that they were using your code, things get a bit more
complicated - but as of now this doesn't seem to have happened in your
case.

-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at netfilter.org>                 http://netfilter.org/
============================================================================
  "Fragmentation is like classful addressing -- an interesting early
   architectural error that shows how much experimentation was going
   on while IP was being designed."                    -- Paul Vixie
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