GPL Violation in TARGA Traveller 826T MT32 Notebook, sold at LIDL sale today

TARGA NOTEBOOK IN LIDL SALE OF 01 JUN 2005 VIOLATES GPL

BERLIN, Germany - Jun. 01, 2005 -- The gpl-violations.org project has uncovered violations by TARGA GmbH, a German Notebook Vendor, of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

According to gpl-violations.org, TARGA GmbH used GPL licensed software in the TARGA Quick Media software that is pre-installed on their Treveller 826T MT32 Notbooks.

Sales of the Targa Traveller 826T MT32 notebook just started earlier today at LIDL, one of Germanys largest nationwide low-budget retail stores.

"While there is nothing wrong with using GPL licensed software in commercial products, it is only permitted under certain obligations, such as passing on the license agreement, and making available the full corresponding source code", says Mr. Harald Welte, Linux Kernel developer and founder of the gpl-violations.org project.

The gpl-violations.org project has recently uncovered similar GPL violations in pre-installed media player software on notebook computers of other vendors such as Medion AG.

Mr Welte continues:

"The Free Software community is very happy to see that notebook vendors actually pre-install Linux onto their devices because they're dissatisfied with the bootup time of the popular Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) operating system. However, Free Software is copyrighted material, much like any other software. Redistribution can only happen according to this license."