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German Court Says GPL is Valid
Axel Metzger writes "The Munich District Court has ruled on May 19, 2004 that the main clauses of the GNU General Public License are valid under German copyright and contract law. This seems to be the first judgment worldwide proofing the validity of the most popular free software license. The ruling is a confirmation of the preliminary injunction of April 2, 2004. The new judgment gives on 20 pages the reasons for the ruling. It states explicitly that the terms of section 2, 3 and 4 of the GPL are valid under German copyright and contract law. Here is the German text of the judgment; an English translation will be available soon. The judgment comes at the right time to fight those (SCO and others) who challenge the legal validity of the GPL in Europe and elsewhere. The lawyer of the plaintiffs, Till Jaeger from Munich should be granted the Free Software Award."
I encountered yet another example just this week: D-Link refuses to publish the source code for the firmware inside its DFL-80 firewall router -- even though it clearly has GPLed code inside. (The log messages betray this.) Why do many companies do this? Because they recognize that the GPL's enforceability is questionable. And they are, quite likely, right.
Umm. You were saying Brett?
But the GPL is 'viral'... Anything distributed with it on the same CD must be accompanied under the same license. How can their logos, etc avoid this clause of the GPL?