gpl violation?

[Janez Pers]

rck at sonnenkinder.org wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> I don't know if a company is violating the gpl or not.

> Now they have released several version of their firmware as
> binary-only and as far as I have checked, the only modifications
> since 0.1 deal with their own proprietary code. So no changes in the
> gpl-covered stuff.

This is a bit weird wording. How exactly they "used" the GPL
code? If they copied source code to their project verbatim, then all of 
their firmware is bound by GPL license, and subsequent versions
are covered by GPL as well. No matter which part of the code
they changed in the next version, whole of the code is GPLed now.

If they statically linked their code with GPL code, exactly the same
applies.

If they dynamically linked their code with GPL code, again exactly the
same interpretation, unless the code in question is LGPL, not GPL.

If, on other hand their firmware contains GPL utilities (e.g. busybox) 
and their own utilities in the same package, but essentially their
code does not use GPLed code, then their code is not bound by
GPL and they can do whatever they want (and was their good will
to release it in V0.1, or they perhaps misinterpreted GPL license).

You need to have in mind the following: GPL protects the user, so
that he has access to the newest versions of GPL code. If user can
achieve that with their code releases, then they probably did not
violate anything. E.g. including busybox in their firmware, along
with their proprietary utility AcmeToolExecutable does not prevent
you to take the binary AcmeToolExecutable and complement it with
the new version of BusyBox - of course, if they did not used any GPL 
code in their AcmeToolExecutable.

standard disclaimer: I am not a layer and this is only an opinion.