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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

Fun related tidbit: Fuhu beat PortableApps.com out on a software deal to distribute a package of portable Windows software on millions of flash drives despite having no apparent experience in that area. The software package that wound up bundled on the drives included software I wrote for PortableApps.com distributed in violation of the GPL with my name and copyright stripped off the binaries, documentation, and (reluctantly-provided) code.

I found it especially ironic when Fuhu later sued Toys R Us for launching a competing tablet in 2012: http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-fuhu-maker-of-the-kids-tabl...

Relevant ironic section:

Mitchell said he decided to go ahead with a lawsuit in part because of what his two young daughters said after they found out about the Tabeo launch.

"They said, 'Dad, they're copying you. Isn't that wrong?' And I said, 'Yes, I do think they are copying me,'" he said. "We just felt we had to take a stand on this."

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Just curious, why didn't you sue for the GPL violation? Seems like a slam dunk.

Law doesn't really work for the little guy, sadly. It's next to impossible to get a lawyer to take on a case like that when you don't have a ton of money to pay them up front (like if you were bootstrapping a big open source project yourself and trying to make a commercial go of it). I know, I asked a bunch of them. There's a reason the vast majority of GPL violations go unpunished.

As a thought, since it sounds like you had fairly solid evidence of their shenanigans... maybe a blog posting on PortableApps detailing the problem + evidence might have been enough to get them to change their ways.

The PortableApps website + Community has decent reach after all. :)

Timeline-wise, was their legal dispute with Toys "R" Us over by then? If not, it may have been useful to let Toys "R" Us counsel know... ;)

At the time, I was under an NDA regarding negotiations of a possible deal with the very large memory vendor that ultimately picked Fuhu so they could have used that as a venue to sue me. Even now that the NDA has expired, I only shared a small portion of the situation. Sadly, if you can't afford to defend yourself in a lawsuit, you can't afford to speak truth to power.

For GPL software? You just ask the EFF or FSF.

They like to destroy idiotic companies.

The FSF only goes after folks that violate software they own the copyright on. The EFF and SFLC only help non-profits and only in very specific circumstances.

FSF will ask you to assign copyright to them in those cases.

I believe the FSF only sues over code the FSF itself owns the copyright to, rather than acting as a general GPL-enforcement agency, since their lawyers feel themselves on more solid footing in that situation.

I'm sorry to hear about this. How do lawyer's think about this situation (up front vs potential earnings) for something that seems like it could be a sure thing?

Are there any legal financing options available to manage the fact that cash is needed up front?

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