Funnily enough, this may be the next wave of violations following on from that post by Bradley Kuhn. That is smart phones intentionally or inadvertently capturing free software into their usually closed eco systems.
According to Slashdot, the suit is over Palm’s integration of a PDF rendering engine, muPDF, made by Artifex. In the Techworld piece to which Slashdot links, Palm’s documentation makes direct reference to muPDF so it is likely the software was used and it is also likely that the integration work is significant enough to trigger the copy left clause of the GPL.
In all likelihood, Palm will work with Artifex to reach a settlement and become compliant. Artifex, like Ghostscript, offers a commercial license, basically paying to not have to license modifications under copy left. I do not know if Palm could pursue that option retroactively. I’d imagine even if they did there would have to be some consideration of that initial bad act for a settlement to be agreeable to Artifex.
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