Copyright Protection Problems For OSS Project

An anonymous reader writes "There's a federal case in the Northern District of California where copyright for open source is being challenged. The free software project JMRI discovered that a commercial company was using some of their files in a product, in violation of the license. They added a copyright claim to an ongoing legal action about cybersquatting, software patent abuse, etc. The patent case was covered on Slashdot back in June but the copyright part is new. The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'"

Comments

Re:Hate to break it to them

[orcrist]

Yay!! My first troll mod. Let's go for offtopic! I have karma to BURN baby.

Re:Karma doesn't burn, idiot

[orcrist]

Ah, you kids these days. Maybe that's true of the newfangled flimsy karma they introduced to save on transportation costs when Slashdot got bigger, but way back in the beginning Slashdot still used all natural karma made from completley organic materials; much more solid and robust and burns with a nice hickory smell ;-)

Re:Distinguishment:

[badzilla]

I'm following the GPL, so you're estopped from suing me.

Hello... 1999 just called the cluephone... it's not cool to make new words by putting e- in front of things anymore.