Who has the rights to claim GPL copyright infringement of linux ??

[Craig Whitmore]

On Wed, 2009-07-22 at 07:11 -0400, Thomas Charron wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 4:12 AM, Craig Whitmore<lennon at orcon.net.nz> wrote:
> > A question is who has the rights to claim copyright infrigement of
> > someone using a device which uses a bit of hardware which runs the linux
> > kernel which doesn't follow the GPL rules?
> > As the linux kernel includes input/code from 10000's of people can
> > anyone one of them take someone else to court for copyright infrigement
> > (as the hardware manufactuer using the linux kernel didn't follow the
> > GPL Copyright Licence?)
> 
>   IANAL, and it's kind of hazy, however..  Anyone could argue that if
> they have 1 line of code running on the box, their being infringed
> upon if they are not complying with the GPL.  However, the example of
> the kernel itself is murky because there's a whole lotta derived work
> going on in there.
> 
>   This is why the FSF recommends that you grant them the code, so THEY
> can do it.
> 

I have checked the code of the version of the linux kernel they are
using on the device which uses linux and they don't follow the GPL
Licence (no source code or supplied GPL Licence with the box and they
are refusing to give the source code for the GPL part of it)

This is my code I could find in this kernel which is very identifable.

/* reported working by "Craig Whitmore <lennon at igrin.co.nz> */
/*4*/   { "Quadrant Buster",
          3, 3, T, F, T, T, 0x7F, 0x80, { SVHS(1), TUNER(2), 3 }, { 1,
2, 3 } },

I supplied that information for that card to work (and it did work) so I
guess I can "sue them" them for using the kernel on their box without
following copyright (the GPL kernel)

As you said the linux kernel is "copyrighted" by lots of people but the
linux kernel comes under the GPL license.


Thanks