GPL in Court - Good or Bad?

Irvu asks: "The Register has a lengthy opinion piece today about IBM's lawsuit, and the GPL. Barring a settlement this case will see the first test of the GPL in a court of law. Previously the GPL has functioned as a social contract with the implicit (albeit untested) force of law behind it. Any ruling now could radically alter the free-software/open-source landscape for good or ill. Andrew Orlowski dwells on these possible ills in his piece. What does Slashdot think? Is this test a good or bad thing? Do you have faith in the justice system (or IBM's Lawyers) to draw the right conclusions? And, how do you see any outcome affecting you?"

Comments

GPL is stronger than other software "licenses"

[echo]

Read this article to understand why.

http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-12. html

Re:Isn't a Copyright a Contract?

[HiKarma]

Copyright law does essentially one thing. It gives the copyright holder exclusive right to make copies, and thus to get a court to punish and stop those who make copies of something without permission.

The punishments are specific. Injunctions (stop copying!) Actual damages (pay me for what I lost because you copied it.) Statutory damages.

In extreme cases (wilful infringement that really pissed off the court) statutory damages can be up to $150,000 per copy. That's a lot of leverage which can get you to make people obey the GPL.

But copyright itself does not list among remedies, "Make them release their code under the GPL."

For what its worth

[rssrss]

IAAL, but I am not a copyright guru. I think that there are some misconceptions floating around that I should comment on.

No court conducts a general review and commentary on any document (law, contract, what have you) that is part of a case before it. The court will review those portions of the document that are relevant to the case in front of it and will neither review nor comment on other portions that are not at issue in that case.

In this case the issue that IBM raised is whether SCO lost its right to prevent third parties from copying, distributing, modifying, or running Linux by releasing Linux under the GPL. The court can and will answer this question without worrying about whether any other clause of the GPL, say the limitation of damages clause, is valid in another context.

Now I do not know if every clause of the GPL is valid or if it will work in the way that St. Stallman wants it to work in every conceivable situation. But, if software licenses mean anything, then at the very least IBM's claim (if I have correctly understood and described it above) ought to be sustained. Other portions of the GPL may not work, but I do not think that they at issue in this case.