The Long-Term Impact of Jacobsen v. Katzer
snydeq writes "Lawyer Jonathan Moskin has called into question the long-term impact last year's Java Model Railroad Interface court ruling will have on open source adoption among corporate entities. For many, the case in question, Jacobsen v. Katzer, has represented a boon for open source, laying down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers. But as Moskin sees it, the ruling 'enables a set of potentially onerous monetary remedies for failures to comply with even modest license terms, and it subjects a potentially larger community of intellectual property users to liability.' In other words, in Moskin's eyes, Jacobsen v. Katzer could make firms wary of using open source software because they fear that someone in the food chain has violated a copyright, thus exposing them to lawsuit. It should be noted that Moskin's firm has represented Microsoft in anti-trust litigation before the European Union."
No corporation wants to use open sores software because they know somewhere along the line the ideas and code were almost certainly stolen from someone else. Lunis Noballs, Richard StillaVirgin and AIDS Perens can go suck a dong.
And to think if only Richard Stallman had been able to get laid while working at MIT he might actually have a wife and family to spend his time with instead of jacking off his 2 inch dick to the Emacs source code every night.