Software firm settles GPL violation lawsuit
The UK subsidiary of security software firm Fortinet has settled an action brought against it because it was allegedly not complying with the terms of the General Public Licence (GPL), which underpins the distribution of most open source software.
Harald Welte, founder of the gpl-violations.org project, announced earlier this month that a German District Court had granted a preliminary injunction against Fortinet UK Ltd after the project sued, alleging that the security software firm had used GPL software in certain products and then used encryption technologies to hide the software.
The GPL is a licence commonly used for many free software projects, including the Linux operating system kernel. The GPL licenses software free of cost but requires any re-distributor to provide the full source code and a copy of the full licence text.
"This violation by Fortinet is especially egregious since the vendor not only violated the GPL, but actively tried to hide that violation," said Welte.
