The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), defender of the GPL's honor, said Monday that Xterasys Corporation, one of the companies it sued in November for not providing users with the source code to the GPL 2-protected Busybox Unix utilities as the license requires, has settled out of court.

That makes two renegades brought to justice. Monsoon Multimedia, the first company SFLC sued on behalf of Busybox' creators, also settled.

And a few days ago SFLC sued Verizon Communications, the phone company, for patent infringement because it's not publishing the source code for the Busybox widgetry embedded in the Actiontec router it distributes connecting customers to the Internet, TV and phone. Verizon has maybe nine million FiOS customers.

Anyway, SFLC apparently got pretty much the same concessions out of Xterasys that it got out of Monsoon.

According to an SFLC statement, "Xterasys has agreed to cease all binary distribution of Busybox until SFLC confirms it has published complete corresponding source code on its web site." Once SFLC is satisfied that's done Xterasys gets its right to distribute Busybox back.

However, it also has to appoint an open source compliance officer to monitor and ensure GPL compliance, notify its customers of their right to the software under the GPL and pay the Busybox complaints, developers Erik Anderson and Rob Landley, for its defiance.

SFLC doesn't say how much Xterasys paid, but the Busybox web site calling out GPL violators says damages can run to $150,000 per work plus legal fees and SFLC says "many Xterasys networking products include Busybox" so the pile of presents under the Anderson-Landley Christmas tree may have gotten bigger.