[SGVLUG] Open Source wins a notable court case

[matti]

very interesting, thanks

btw from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer

[..]
Robert Jacobsen manages an open source software project on Sourceforge.net called the Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI).[1] The JMRI software is licensed under the Artistic License, ..
Matthew Katzer and Kamind Associates, Inc. develop commercial software products for the model train industry and hobbyists. Jacobson claimed Katzer copied portions of the JMRI software and incorporated them into Kamind's commercial software without complying fully with the Artistic License's conditions and sought a preliminary injunction..
[..]




--- On Sun, 10/5/08, Joel Witherspoon <joel.witherspoon at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Joel Witherspoon <joel.witherspoon at gmail.com>
> Subject: [SGVLUG] Open Source wins a notable court case
> To: "SGVLUG Discussion List." <sgvlug at sgvlug.net>
> Date: Sunday, October 5, 2008, 11:34 AM
> This is an article by Bruce Perens regard OS licensing and
> its validity.
> 
> Of note from the article is the Federal Circuit Court
> appeal ruling:
> 
> *The judge's decision was appealed in the Federal
> Circuit Court. A large
> number of Open Source projects and their attorneys, working
> for free, filed
> a "friend of the court" brief. What the appeals
> court found was,
> essentially, that the Free Software license was a license,
> rather than a
> contract, that it does not require that both parties agree
> before it can be
> binding, that its terms can be enforced, that if you
> violate the license
> you're a copyright infringer, and that violation of an
> Open Source license
> causes real economic damage to the copyright holder even
> though the
> copyright holder doesn't charge money for his
> software.*
> 
> Here's the article:
> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3775446_2