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Court Ruling Clouds Open Source Licensing

Posted by kdawson on from the artistic-license-only dept.

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."

6 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Artistic License is janky anyway. by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 4, Informative

    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).

    --
    -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    1. Re:Artistic License is janky anyway. by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a matter of perception and how arguments are presented. If the Artistic License is successfully bundled in a category of licenses that include the GNU license in a legal argument, then it's possible this ruling could have an effect.

      I don't think that's a terribly large risk. Unlike your average model train hobbyist or even programmer, lawyers and judges have quite a bit of legal training. You might be able to confuse them with technical details, but you're not going to get very far with "I know these two licenses have completely different terms, but they're really the same. These precedents from license A apply - you don't even need to read B.".

      In this case, the reason for the ruling that the JRMI guys don't like is the lack of a termination clause in the Artistic license. They claim that this other guy violated the license terms (From Term 1: Copyright notices must be preserved), but even if that is true there still isn't a copyright violation - just a violation of a license term. If this were the GPL, any such violation would mean a license termination and therefore a copyright violation. With the Artistic License, all they get is a license dispute - which apparently doesn't get you immediate drastic court orders.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    2. Re:Artistic License is janky anyway. by Mjec · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They claim that this other guy violated the license terms (From Term 1: Copyright notices must be preserved), but even if that is true there still isn't a copyright violation - just a violation of a license term.

      And thus the essence of the case.

      JRMI claimed that the preservation of the copyright notice was a condition of the license such that there would be no license unless the notice was preserved. This means that any copying without the notice was outside the license and therefore was unlicensed reproduction, therefore copyright infringement. The judge held that in fact the copying was within the license but in breach of it - a breach of contract. Although it seems as though "the bad guys" did something wrong in each case, there is a difference in remedy.

      If you are in breach of a contract the court will generally only grant damages - that is, the person has to pay you for the breach. If you are a copyright violator then the court will grant an injunction (specifically there is a presumption that an injunction is an appropriate remedy for copyright violation, whereas the presumption for contract is that an injunction is inappropriate). An injunction means you can tell the violator to stop what they're doing (or otherwise impose a legal requirement to act in a certain way or to not act in a certain way).

      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. This ruling seems inconsistent with the Sun case where anything denoted as a "condition" it was considered would be sufficient to cause the behaviour to fall outside the license.

      IANAL; I'm an Australian law student. The summary at Law & Life: Silicon Valley is excellent.

      --
      "But everyone should know everything." -markab
    3. Re:Artistic License is janky anyway. by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
  2. Looking at all this legal mumbo-jumbo by waferhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looking at all this legal mumbo-jumbo (going through the chronology etc) makes me realize there was actually some sort of upside to just having it out with knives...

    1. Re:Looking at all this legal mumbo-jumbo by bladesjester · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's another upside to having it out with knives - people realize that there are actual consequences involved.

      --
      Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.