It's no secret that a lot of consumer electronics devices, including TiVo and Monsoon Multimedia's Hava place-shifting device are built using Linux and open source software. It's powerful, stable, and most importantly, available. The open source community has developed a wealth of code that developers can draw from in order to build robust consumer oriented products.

But while the software is often free, meaning you can use it without paying, it's also free as in speech. In other words, once you incorporate code that has been published under the General Public License, you have to allow others to see the source code for your device. And that's not something a lot of companies like to do. You know, trade secrets and all.

So when the folks that developed the open source BusyBox software, which is used in the Hava, asked Monsoon Multimedia for a peek at the company's source code and Monsoon failed to comply, two open source developers filed suit against the company.

This is apparently the first time anyone has filed a copyright infringement suit in the US involving an alleged violation of the General Public License. It should be interesting to see if the case goes to court where it could set precedent, or if Monsoon Multimedia decides to settle out of court.

[via CNet]

In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, TiVo has warned that a new open source license could cause big trouble for the company.

TiVo is based on Linux, an open source operating system. And for the most part, TiVo's turned a blind eye to hardware hackers, allowing users to put larger hard drives in their boxes or enable networking.

But when it comes to software, that's another story. TiVo has always walked a fine line with content owners, and has included copyright protection that limits what you can do with television recordings. To that end, TiVo includes software that cripples the machine if you try to manipulate the source code.