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Just a reminder, these posts are not legal advice. This site is the personal blog of Mark Radcliffe and the opinions expressed are those of Mark Radcliffe and not those of his clients, DLA Piper or the clients of DLA Piper.

About Me:

Mark Radcliffe

I have been practicing law in Silicon Valley for over thirty years assisting startups and global companies develop and market innovative products and services. I have participated in multiple business cyles in Silicon Valley from hardware to software to internet to cloud. My projects have included developing the dual licensing business model for open source startup, developing the original domain dispute resolution policy for NSI and assisting Sun in open sourcing the Solaris operating system. Recently, I served on the US Japan Innovation and Entrepreneurship Council (one of ten members) to develop a plan to encourage the innovation in Japan and the United States. I have been working with the same attorneys since 1986 although we have merged with other law firms several times. I am now a partner at DLA Piper, a (relatively) new global law firm formed in 2005 from the merger of three law firms. The firm now has 4200 lawyers in 31 countries and 77 cities. My experience in corporate securities (particularly venture capital) and intellectual property enables me to assist companies structure the financing and intellectual property strategy for developing ane exploiting a new product or service. I and my team work with fifty startups at one time as well as Global Fortune 100. I have been fortunate enough to work with companies in software, cloud computing, semiconductor, health care IT and Web 2.0.

Android: Understanding and Managing Complexity

16/05/11

The recent Android Builder’s Summit in San Francisco demonstrated the breadth of products using Android and the dynamic nature of the operating system. In her keynote, Christy Wyatt of Motorola described the challenges of managing the launch of 700 products based on Android in countries around the world.  She was followed by Mark Charlebois (Director of Open Source Strategy at Qualcomm Innovation Center) and he predicted that their Android releases would grow from 241 in 2010 to more than 365 in 2011. 

Karim Yaghmour of Opersys provided a great overview of Android and its critical subsystems http://www.opersys.com/blog/abs-march2011. However, his presentation brought home the challenges of managing Android: he mentioned in passing that he was unhappy with the performance of the Android Toolbox, the component which Google substituted for BusyBox for Toolbox. He regularly substitutes BusyBox for Toolbox (one Android site had more than 25,000 downloads of BusyBox). BusyBox is described as follows;           

a software application that provides many standard Unix tools, much like the larger (but more capable) GNU Core Utilities. BusyBox is designed to be a small executable for use with the Linux kernel, which makes it ideal for use with embedded devices. It has been self-dubbed “The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux”. 

According to Black Duck, Android Toolbox is a collection of 66 files, 52 are under the Apache 2.0 license and 14 are under BSD.  Both the Apache 2.0 and BSD licenses are very permissive. However, BusyBox is licensed under the GPLv2, a copyleft license,  which has very different and  much more significant obligations, particularly the obligation to make the source code available either with the object code or through a written promise. More importantly, the license to BusyBox is the most actively enforced license in open source. The Software Freedom Conservancy and the Software Freedom Law Center have filed at least seven lawsuits (with many other disputes settled with ligitation) to enforce the GPLv2 license on BusyBox. Last year, they won $90,000 in damages from Best Buy.  

Thus, a reasonable technical decision can dramatically change the obligations of the distributor. Since the GPLv2 is a “conditional” license, the failure to comply with these terms means that the license terminates automatically without a cure period. Thus, the distributor would be a copyright infringer.  Since products including Android are frequently mass market products, the consequences could be significant liability arising from millions of unlicensed units. This reality demonstrates once again the need for careful management of the use of Android and clear communication between the developers and the relevant counsel.

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