The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has brought a copyright lawsuit against 14 consumer electronics companies for allegedly violating GNU General Public License (GPL) in the use of GPL-licensed software in their products. Among those named in the suit are Best Buy, JVC, Western Digital Technologies and Westinghouse.

Microsoft yesterday re-released a Windows 7 installation tool that it admitted included open-source code, and has posted the utility's source code to its own open-source site.

Artifex Software is suing Palm over the PDF (Portable Document Format) viewer in Palm's Pre smartphone, it said on Thursday.

Microsoft Friday acknowledged that its Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool does indeed include open source code. To correct the error, the company next week will make the source code and binaries for the tool available under terms of the GPL v2 license.

Microsoft has yanked a tool it touted as a way for netbook owners to install Windows 7 without a DVD drive after a prominent blogger accused the company of using open-source code without acknowledging where it originated.

Code that Microsoft released Monday for the Linux kernel under the General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) was in violation of that license before Microsoft made it available, according to an open-source network engineer.

Microsoft has made its second release under the General Public License in two days with software for the open-source online learning system Moodle.

Microsoft Corp.'s move to release three of its drivers to Linux, however technically modest it may be, could put pressure on other closed-source vendors to follow suit.

Jeff Haynie reached a crossroads last summer. Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator, a firm that develops open source cross-platform application development software, made a decision filled with implications for his company's future. That decision: to toss away his upcoming product's Gnu General Public License (GPL), the best-known and most popular free software license, in favor of what he viewed as a more business-friendly alternative. "We initially started the product with a GPLv3 license and we decided last summer to move the license to Apache," Haynie says.

Under the glare of Microsoft's historic Linux kernel code submission this week is the fact that the software giant on many levels still lives in a community of one much more so than a community at large.

Microsoft Monday made an historic move by submitting device drivers to the Linux kernel under a GPLv2 license. Microsoft has had a checkered past with both Linux and its open source GPL licensing structure, so the move was a jaw dropper. Here is a look at some of the milestones since Microsoft internal memos leaked in 1998 that attacked the open source Linux operating system as it began to pick up steam as an alternative to Windows.