Court Ruling Clouds Open Source Licensing

JosefAssad writes "In a decision centering around a question of a violation of the Artistic License, a San Francisco court has denied an injunction against Matthew Katzer in the favor of Robert Jacobsen of the JMRI project. Importantly, the decision makes the point that the Artistic License is a contract, an interpretation that the Free Software Foundation has been keen to avoid as a legal stance. The JMRI project has a page up with the legal background and developments."

Comments

Artistic License is janky anyway.

[Chandon Seldon]

People have been complaining about the clarity of the Artistic License for years. I don't see this having any significant effect on any other Free Software licenses, especially not the GPL (since the GPL is explicitly designed as a copyright license rather than as a contract).

Re:Artistic License is janky anyway.

[Chandon Seldon]

The reason this case is thought of as a bad thing is it seems to imply that any copying of anything released under a free software license (the distinctions between the GPL and the Artistic License are unimportant for this point) is ipso facto not copyright infringement though it may be a violation of the license.

As far as I can tell, this is why the GPL has a termination clause - to turn license violations into copyright infringements. Since the Artistic License has no such clause, it would seem to me that this case implies nothing about a similar case with the GPL.