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Story: Sarbanes-Oxley may up the ante for GPL violationsTotal Replies: 0
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incinerator

Feb 22, 2006
12:33 AM EDT
The Wasabi whitepaper the article refers to, made its way through the new a couple of weeks ago. I don't know why newsforge and itmanagersjournal.com are picking this up so late.

I'd recommend anyone to read the original Wasabi whitepaper. You'll find it's not very good. It provides some valuable insight into the embedded software industry (according to Wasabi their competitors are nothing more than a bunch of software pirates). However, it contains quite a few misconceptions and misperceptions about Free Software generally and the GPL specifically. It sports one typical symptom of anti-GPL F.U.D.: All risks, dangers, disadvantages are attributed to the GPL only, but a proper comparison to non-free software licenses is missing. Strangely enough, the Sarbanes-Oxley act is valid for all other software licenses out there, as well, be them free or non-free.

One one hand, it's good to make the point that GPL'ed software is just like any other license: If you violate it you could get into trouble. On the other hand, companies might be afraid to adopt free software because articles like this exaggerating the risks and distorting the Big Picture. And we all know itmanangersjournal.com are not the most enthusiastic Free Software advocates, don't we? And don't forget: Wasabi is just a competitor among many, they have certain interests to paint a gloomy picture on how other embedded software companies handle other people's copyrighted works.

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