Yet another Broadcom 63xx manufacturer potentially violating GPL

[Matthew Flaschen]

IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but I was around for one of these discussions 
(Freebox, I think).  If I recall, their defense was not that they had to 
protect their network.  Rather, they claimed they maintained ownership 
of the boxes, and were only placing them at the client sites.  This 
seemed dubious to me, because IIRC they were not charging rental fees, 
but rather just the ordinary setup costs.

Anyway, "protecting your network infrastructure" alone is certainly not 
enough reason to fail to distribute source along with GPL code.  As the 
GPL puts it "If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously 
your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, 
then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."

Matt Flaschen

Florian Fainelli wrote:
 > So that
> we cannot expect from Neuf/Cegetel access to the sources since they have to 
> protect their network infrastructure by not giving access to the software 
> sources.