[cc-community] Washington Federal Court confirms that free licences are enforceable
Aaron Shaw
adshaw at berkeley.edu
Sat Aug 16 10:40:50 EDT 2008
IANAL, but my understanding is that this is (one of?) the first decisions to
recognize the GPL as a valid license and to recognize the validity of its
terms within the United States.
This means that the GPL is enforceable in the US, which (I don't believe)
had ever been tested in court, leaving some doubt as to the legal rights of
anyone who produced, used, remixed, and distributed GPL'ed works around
these parts.
Wendy Seltzer (who is a lawyer) has written a blog
post<http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/08/15/federal-circuit-confirms-key-free-software-licensing-practice.html>that
offers a clear explanation of the ruling's significance.
-Aaron
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Jim Baker <frstprin at mninter.net> wrote:
> Please add detail. It's not clear to me how this is a victory for the
> open source movement. Say I produce an open source software app that I
> release under GPL. If a commercial publisher picks it up, how are his
> rights changed under this court decision—and what actually are his
> rights and obligations?
> Thanks,
> Jim
>
> On Aug 15, 2008, at 11:39 PM, Carl Antuar wrote:
>
> > Hi, all.
> >
> > Looks like the Federal Appeals Court in Washington has confirmed that
> > a licence can validly be 'free as in speech, not as in beer'. The
> > Association for Computing Machinery included this article in their
> > recent TechNews newsletter:
> >
> >
> > Ruling Is a Victory for Supporters of Free Software
> > New York Times (08/14/08) P. C7; Markoff, John
> >
> > In a major victory for the open source software movement, the federal
> > appeals court in Washington, D.C., has ruled that simply because a
> > software programmer may give his work away for free does not mean that
> > the software cannot be protected. The decision legitimizes the use of
> > commercial contracts for the distribution of computer software and
> > digital artistic works for the public good. The ruling also boosts the
> > open source movement by easing the concerns of large organizations
> > about relying on free software from developers who contributed to the
> > effort without pay. The ruling will also have implications for the
> > Creative Common license, which is used by organizations such as
> > Wikipedia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for
> > distributing courseware and other materials. Creative Commons CEO
> > Joichi Ito says the ambiguity facing open source licensing has been
> > one of the obstacles hindering the movement. The appeals court
> > decision reversed a San
> > Francisco federal court ruling over the misappropriation of a
> > software program by Kam Industries, a company that publishes model
> > train hobbyist software. Kam Industries owner Matthew A. Katzer had
> > sued free software developers for patent infringement while the free
> > software community argued that Katzer failed to disclose earlier
> > technology, or prior art, in his patent filings. In March 2006,
> > University of California, Berkeley professor Robert G. Jacobsen filed
> > a lawsuit against Katzer claiming that his company was distributing a
> > commercial software program that used code from the Java Model
> > Railroad Interface project, and was redistributing the program without
> > the credits required as part of the open source license it was
> > originally distributed under. The lower court ruled that the terms of
> > the open source contract were overly broad.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Win a MacBook Air or iPod touch with Yahoo!7.
> > http://au.docs.yahoo.com/homepageset
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> >
> >
> It takes 20 years of hard work to become an overnight success."
> --Diana Rankin,
> writer and public speaker
>
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