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Delicious Details of Open Source Court Victory
jammag writes "Open source advocate Bruce Perens tells the inside story of the recently concluded Jacobsen v. Katzer court case, in which an open source developer was awarded $100,000. Perens, an expert witness in the case, details the blow by blow, including how developers need to make sure they're using the correct open source license for legal protection. The actual court ruling is almost like some kind of Hollywood movie ending for Open Source, with the judge unequivocally siding with the underfunded open source developer."
Sometimes the good guy doesn't finish last.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Thaaaaaaat's my problem! I've been using zeros this whole time.
There were a few people that smart at Pixar when I worked there, but there seem to be tons of them in the Open Source world.
Believe it or not, your two categories are not mutually exclusive. I discover more and more that the brilliant people I am paid to work with have made improvements to open source projects. Both through work and in their free time.
... when I can attest that both are possible at once. Just be mindful of what you signed when you were hired by your employer. Some companies have terrible "everything you do even outside of work is ours" clauses. Wish the employers would realize that it's a benefit for you to experience contributing and learning from open source.
I think something the open source community could use is an adjustment of this attitude that you're either gainfully employed or working for free
My work here is dung.
Isn't it just an abuse of the patent system being corrected for?
It's actually the appeals court that was sympathetic. Twice. The lower court seems to have had less understanding of the Open Source developer's plight.
Using "the right one": means the right Open Source license. A real key here is getting one that had competent legal help in its drafting. There are a few real duds on the OSI list, including a font license that I swear allows you to convert the font to the public domain. Only the programmers who wrote it don't see it that way.
Sorry about the lack of paragraph breaks. I tend to write too many of them and the editor responded by using too few of them. He might have fixed that and the web cache hasn't been flushed yet.
Bruce Perens.
Look, we all want to know if this has something to do with open source, or if it is just an abuse of the patent system being corrected, but that information simply does not exist. There is no way we could, for example, click on a link and just read about it. We're all in the same no-clue-having boat as you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The correct three. Yes.
At the start, the open source developer got hit with a large SLAPP fine (urgh), and finally got the judgement reversed and was awarded damages, but the article notes that: "This doesn't fully compensate Jacobsen for all of his time and expense over 5 years, but it was the best he could get." So, by not using the right OSI license, the developer opened himself to years of legal hassles and woes.
Also, one wonders if by proactively suing, he ended up being worse off than by not waiting and then countersuing. Finally, it is noteworthy that since the DMCA was used on behalf of the open source developer, this may not be seen by opponents of that law as a victory at all, as it provides validation (if weak) of it's existence.
If this is victory for the little guy, I'd really hate to see what defeat is like.
Heh. His lack of composition skills is apparent but I doubt it has much to do with where he went to college. Is Hope College that awful?
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Over 5 years, Bob Jacobsen put in thousands of hours of work on this case. He was threatened with loss of his employment, and with all of the money and property that he had. The $100,000 he eventually received doesn't compensate him for this. But I'm sure that the feeling of achievement does.
If you count being tied up in court for five years, getting lots and lots of pro bono lawyer time and still not breaking even. I call this "How to snuff out a potential upstart for $100,000" even though he probably wasn't competition in the first place.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
including a font license that I swear allows you to convert the font to the public domain.
Which one is that? IANAL, but I wanna play "spot the contract bug", too.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Over 5 years, Bob Jacobsen put in thousands of hours of work on this case. He was threatened with loss of his employment, and with all of the money and property that he had. The $100,000 he eventually received doesn't compensate him for this. But I'm sure that the feeling of achievement does.
Uhhh...thousands of hours? A full-time job is generally around 1800 hours a YEAR; we're expected to believe this guy spent more time than his lawyers should have? Doing what? And how exactly was his employment threatened?
are like lawyers writing code -- attempting to go beyond their field of expertise. division of labour rocks. It's one reason our modern world is so productive. This isn't to say that an individual programmer might have legal training, or that an individual lawyer might not also know how to program. But it means that you'll get better results by doing what you are good at and enlisting the help of others who are good at what they do.
I Hope it is, otherwise one can only imagine the reasons behind his disability.
Alright, it's time for Open Source to take one for the team :-)
When I heard about this ruling last week, I was shocked that this apparently open and shut case had taken so long to conclude. If I recall the details I read about years ago when this all started, it seems that Jacobsen was really being taken advantage of badly. IANAL or a judge but I would have thought this case would have taken all of 45 minutes to decide, not years.
There's something really wrong when someone like Katzer (or SCO) can so completely snow a court. The crux of both cases come down to code ownership/authorship. Is that something that just goes "Whoosh" to all judges?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
It's the SIL font license. This is the problem paragraph:
The problem is, if you embed the font, it explicitly says the license doesn't apply any longer. If you then extract the font, the authors of this license assume that the license magically applies once more. I am far from sure that is the case.
Bruce Perens.
We are talking about $100.000, my precious.
i think you mean the correct one.
So, when will this case be made into a major motion picture, with Julia Roberts playing the part of Victoria Hall?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Larry Wall's Artistic License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_License) got ripped to shreds under court scrutiny.
Understand when to use the LGPL or the GPL: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
use them.
Not a lawyer here, but I would imagine that their intent was that if you embed the font you are no longer licensed to use it at all. Your license is revoked. So now you can't distribute your document to anyone because you would be breaking their copyright on the font. Now, I am NOT saying that their license SAYS that - but I would guess it is what they meant.
Actually, this is a symptom of a broader problem with font licensing. Legally, any document created using any font does not attract the copyright of the font used. Period. Yes, it was stupid to state it explicitly, because it will make it impossible for the license to benefit from future clarification of the law, but they just stated what is basically the case already.
Of course, currently distributing any font you extract from a document (whether you OCR, or extract an embedded font) is illegal, but you can get around that easily by not distributing and doing the extraction yourself, which would require a police state to check.
No, they told me that they meant that if you embed the font in a document, you can distribute the document under any license that you desire to use. But you can't sell the font separately, or convert it to another license.
That's what they meant, anyway. What it says, however, can be parsed about four different ways. So, we have to get a judge and let him/her pick one.
Good license writers make them clear enough that there aren't ambiguities in the license itself to litigate.
Bruce Perens.
The article says that the $100.000 Jacobsen was awarded doesn't compensate him for going through the procedure.
If this is true and projects to future cases, then developers still won't have incentive to fight their case in the court (even if they have a decent chance to win), and infringing companies will have reason to think that they are not going to be brought to court, which rather increases the chance of indulging in infringement. The deterrence factor is low.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
As someone who has occasionally been a critic of some of your bloggings, I must say Good Job !! It was always clear to me that the first cases in this area MUST be won, else we have unfortunate precedents.
The license grants you rights. If the license doesn't apply that means you don't have these rights anymore. Without a license granting you the rights you are not left with public domain but with standard copyright law, which isn't very much.
What important precedents where set by this case. It seems like it was settled out of court, which would usually mean that a judge didn't rule, and therefore didn't set an precedents. The appeals court did rule that an attribution clause is legally binding, which is good. Was there anything else established?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Here's the link to their donations page:
http://jmri.sourceforge.net/donations.shtml
I have to admire what these guys are doing and the good it will do for the open source community as a whole (at least in the US). I've seen this case pop up off and on over the years, and it always struck me as a scary plight for an open source developer to be in.
(Not affiliated with the project in any way and nobody asked me to post the link - I just think a slashdot effect is in order here given what they're doing and what he's been up against.)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I think the font "program" can be copyrighted but the actual outline of the font can't. Currently. Here. It's different in other countries. I am mostly concerned with machine extraction of the font, which is really trivial in the latest generation of document files that are actually archives of a directory full of files.
Bruce Perens.
Nice writeup.
While it may be a win of sort for Jacobsen, I don't find it an encouraging precedent for OS people.
Threats and harrassment, five years of hassle, outright fraud (copyright infringement), all that resulted in measley 100k settlement over 18 months (minus 30k Jacobsen had to fork out previously?) after several trips up and down the appeal lanes, all with probono attorney service and even some prominent OS advocates' help.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Here's the link to their donations page:
http://jmri.sourceforge.net/donations.shtml
I have to admire what these guys are doing and the good it will do for the open source community as a whole (at least in the US). I've seen this case pop up off and on over the years, and it always struck me as a scary plight for an open source developer to be in.
(Not affiliated with the project in any way and nobody asked me to post the link - I just think a slashdot effect is in order here given what they're doing and what he's been up against.)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
...not all open source is that GPL...but...not many companies are going to bother making the distinction and the new policy will be "no open source at all".
So, by your own words, the companies that don't bother reading the open source licenses—that just rip off other peoples' code, in other words—will be at a disadvantage? Am I supposed to feel bad?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Why the heck is Bruce Perens' name all over this and in the summary TWICE while Bob Jacobsen's name is only listed in the summary in case name?
It was Bob Jacobsen that paid for this case, risked his job, and wrote the software while Bruce Perens' did even go on the stand!
Here is a much better summery.
"Open source programmer Bob Jacobsen wins an historic case establishing the legal validity of Open Source Licenses ,
The court awarded Mr. Jacobsen $100,000 after years of appeals and many thousands of dollors of personal expenses.
The actual court ruling is almost like some kind of Hollywood movie ending for Open Source, with the judge so unequivocally siding with the underfunded open source developer.
Here is a link to Mr. Jacobsen's project JMRI http://jmri.sourceforge.net/ where you can read about his software and contribute to his project to show your support and gratitude for the legal fight Mr. Jacobsen fought for all of our benefit."
"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...and I can tell ya, it is not yet up to the standard of excellent OSS.
However, Cyanogen is barely part of the android community. He's clever, aggressive, and actually willing to work within the constraints, but he's also a bee in Google's bonnet. He does what they won't do, cause he caters to a smaller population of smarter users. To implement much of Cyanogen's stuff in OTA relases would require more testing, and of course trusting users like me with root. Some of us would be fine. Others would be calling their carrier and complaining about something they deleted. Well, they probably do that anyways, but for modded ROM users, we pretty much talk amongst ourselves and take the arrows.
Android is moving so fast it will take a while to settle down and get excellent. And then something else will come and take its place on the bleeding edge.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Aww, such a cute little troll. Yes you are. Yes you are! Does my little Trolly need attention?
Property is theft.
The win here is that the case remains public so that it can be used as a precedent in the future. A sealed case would be all for naught for the OSS community.
Sigs are for losers
Common sense comes in to play here, and even in court.
Its rather common for allowing a font to be embedded in a document under a different license.
You'll find roughly the same phrase in fonts used by Adobe.
Of course Adobe products like to claim Adobe copyright on documents they create. Illustrator will throw in a 'Copyright Adobe Systems, 2010' for any SVG exported from it.
In both cases, the intent is understood by everyone in the industry that the copyright only applies to the font itself, and that reselling it by itself is not acceptable.
Font licenses are retarded anyway, I feel no sympathy for 'font designers' or the companies they work with.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Well correct me if im wrong here, but why is a so called 'settled case' a victory ? Doesn't this simply mean that there will be no precedent ? Why is that a victory ?
.. And fucked up big time ... :(
My code is horrible. I wouldn't ever go to court to defend ownership of it. If someone else wants to claim my crappy work as their own, fine.
Is there an open source license for this? "If you plan on stealing, please let us know" Public License?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You, sir, are a douche.
Did you even bother to read the article or Bruce's testimony?
"Understood by everyone in the industry" is my job. I tell the judge if that's the case or not. As does an expert on the other side. Obviously, we often contradict each other. And then the judge has to decide which of us he trusts. So, what the industry understands is only unreliably communicated to the courts.
Bruce Perens.
Hey, idiot: Bruce didn't write the summary. Way to go, Ox.
I am continually and repetitively dumbfounded by the mere existence of people like Katzer. I cannot fathom how they would hope to profit and succeed in this way. I acknowledge that it has happened, is happening still and will continue to happen. But the concept and notion is hard for me to understand. I cannot identify with it in the slightest. That people like this even walk the streets masquerading as humans at all is disturbing to me.
When someone engages is these sorts of activities, there should be more than civil penalties. There should be criminal penalties as well. It is simply unbelievable.
You know, I'm usually on the side of "GPL/FSF is a bit too fundamentalist" myself... But I find your obvious troll to be laughably ridiculous.
You're saying a court case that says "You can't use Open Source software in violation of said software's license" will cause companies to not use Open Source software? Then these are probably the companies we DON'T want using it in the first place! How is that not obvious to everyone?
Someone using your code in violation of the license you picked for it is not a "win" for you. If all a developer cared about was having as many people as possible use his or her code, then it would be released in the public domain. A developer of Open Source software obviously has different goals in mind.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
"Common sense comes in to play here, and even in court."
Wow, what court is that? I've seen way too many U.S. court cases where common sense was chucked out the window in part or in whole, to believe that's the case in the U.S.
The JMRI sourceforge page acccepts donations, a proper slashdotting could make make up the difference between expenses and $100k pretty quickly!
(I'd like to deeply, deeply apologize to Perens, Jacobsen and all the other People of Virtue who worked on this case for the wet blanket I'm about to throw. God knows you all deserve better.
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, and here goes...)
You should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.
But no Court is this stupid. At some point you have to concede the problem is corruption.
Katzer's outright theft is painfully obvious. It took $30,000 up front and five years of legal wrangling. WORLD CLASS MINDS had to engage on the side of the good guys. Look at the outcome.
$100,000 over 18 months and future disputes are sent to arbitration.
$100,000 does not even begin to cover the legal costs of the angels here. If the good guy attorneys hadn't been working pro bono, our Hero would still be in ruinous debt. If not for the amazing charity in this case, Jacobsen's victory would be declaring bankruptcy. $100,000 probably doesn't even put a chip in the profits Katzer made by his theft. $100,000 isn't even $100,000 since it's being paid over time, which means the real net present value is less.
Worse, "Both parties have agreed to ... arbitration." Do some googling on modern arbitration. It's so blatantly rigged you can't even properly call it a fraud. Corporate interest prevail over the little guys in something like 98% of all cases, and the remaining two percent get such token amounts you can't legitimately call it a "win." Katzer is free to pull some heinous new stunt tomorrow -- like filing entirely new patents claiming ownership of Jacobsen's work -- and he can remain comfortable in the knowledge that he has a 98% chance of getting away with it.
"Aw, shut the Hell up, man. We got the precedent and that's what really counts."
Really? A precedent that costs $30,000 up front to try to use?
"Dude, seriously, STFU. We're making incremental progress towards a larger victory here. FOSS is gaining legitimacy in the legal world, and that's what really matters."
I know. I've been hearing that for 20 years now. After twenty years of gaining legitimacy, it still only takes five years, two appeals and a team of pro bono attorneys to recover a token amount of somewhat less than $100K and a decision that all future disputes will be resolved in the favor of the bad guys. We're making wonderful progress. A few more such victories and we'll be lost.
"Frackin' Hell, man, what the frack is your problem?!"
My problem is that I want everyone else to come to the same excruciating conclusion I have. The System has a horrible bias in favor of the rich and powerful. The System will go out of its way to screw the weak and defenseless. That by Bruce's own admission, the System will take a tool like SLAPP, expressly designed to level the playing field, and use it to deny justice to those not rich enough to afford it. If Jacobsen hadn't had an extra $30,000 laying around, this case would have been over before it began.
Justice is no longer blindly weighing merits, but is instead whoring herself out to the highest bidder. I want to change that, and we can change that when enough of my fellow citizens begin to understand just how corrupt things have become.
But wearing rose-colored lenses and seeing this as a "victory" doesn't help us. Jacobsen and company had to wage a heroic, epic battle for a very. very tepid victory. The real costs of his case weren't covered, he hasn't been made whole for the time he lost, Katzer kept his profits and is still out there free to start stealing again tomorrow.
We shouldn't be celebrating this outcome. It doesn't vindicate the Courts.
It indicts them.
(And again, my sincerest apologies and deepest thanks to the wonderful people who fought this fight.)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The problem is that someone could try to take your home, car, and savings for using their patent in your crappy code. And unfortunately even if you put the whole darned thing in the public domain you can't get away from it. Maybe you should leave it by the roadside anonymously like an abandoned baby. Don't count on many people running it, though.
Bruce Perens.
"If you steal this code, then I insist you credit it to Alan Smithee."
The best technical solution is often the best solution from a financial and business perspective, too.
These PHP "programmers" who "know" MySQL are by far the worst people that a company can hire. There's a reason they're a "dime a dozen", as you say. It's because they're literally worth a fraction of a cent. The software they produce is pure shit. Not only does it not work most of the time, but the crap they put together is generally full of security holes, as well.
It's too bad we have so many technically-inept financial folks in industry calling the shots. Hopefully that changes within the next couple of decades. Then they'll realize that it's cheaper to hire a small number of talented and costly professionals who just do the job right the first time, rather than a large group of cheap PHP "developers" who fuck it up time and time again, only to have to call in those expensive professionals in the end anyway.
Can you suggest an alternative to the SIL font license? I guess GPLv3 with a specific font exception would work, since it would remain compatible with other GPLv3 stuff, but the specific language of such an exception is what I'm looking for.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
"This code is free to redistribute, so long as no mention of the author is made. Leaving the credits attached will revoke the license."
Developer-cheap, CPU-expensive web application technologies are fine until you have an unanticipated surge in user base, and your Ruby goes off the rails. It happened to Twitter.
There is a Japanese font license submitted by a government project there that is legally solid but the provisions don't match the needs of the average developer. I think that there is still a need for someone to get a good lawyer to draft one and have it reviewed online by more good lawyers. If you don't want to do that I think the font exception from FSF is the best we have right now.
Bruce Perens.
The license grants you rights. If the license doesn't apply that means you don't have these rights anymore.
I think you're wrong, and apparently Bruce does, too. Re-read that:
In other words, the requirement to use that particular license is contingent on the font not being embedded in another document. In that case, the license explicitly revokes the prohibition against distributing the font under a different license of your choosing.
In other words, I can't re-license the font using, say, the GPL, unless I embed it first in a document. At that point, I am allowed to distribute it under the terms of the GPL from then on.
I think that's the interpretation that Bruce was exploring, and I think that's a perfectly legitimate way of reading the license - even if that's not what the license's authors originally intended.
Contracts can be a lot like code: it does what you say, not necessarily what you mean. Ambiguity is a bug in either case.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think the font "program" can be copyrighted but the actual outline of the font can't. Currently. Here. It's different in other countries.
I always thought exclusive rights in typefaces as such were considered "design patents", which like other patents must be registered and have a relatively short term, rather than "copyright", which is automatic and next to perpetual.
I am mostly concerned with machine extraction of the font
Any unpatented font can be extracted with autotrace:
The outcome of this case is beneficial both for Open Source Software community and the Model Railroading hobby.
In general model railroading is a very open and diverse hobby. Some are better with structural engineering and carpentry, others with electronics, model building, methods of railroad operation, et cetera. As a community we work together to share and improve our techniques, both to improve ourselves as modelers and to increase our satisfaction from the hobby. There are many well established venues for sharing our knowledge, from regular conventions (NMRA National, Regionals, and plenty of Special Interest Groups), a large number of printed an online periodicals, online communities, and just general "how did you..." questions at any old time.
Unfortunately our openness attracts thieves and greedy sorts who are more interested in making a quick buck than improving the hobby, and manufacturers and other entities attacking hobbyists is nothing new. I imagine this greedy nature is present in all hobbies and walks of life, but it seems to be more common now than when I entered the hobby 20 years ago.
Hopefully the outcome of this case will make others that prey on innocent hobbyists think twice.
Thanks, Bruce, for your well-written summary of the case. I'd mod your article up +1: Insightful if the Internet gave out mod points.
I dti'r na ndall is ri' fear na leathshu'ile.
With respect, I'm not a cynical college kid who just discovered nihilism, Bruce. I have children, so I fear for the future. I speak. I write. I vote. I'm up for anything short of flying a plane into a building. You got a hill you wanna take, General Perens, I'll be there.
I began my life as a homeless kid. I've had a miraculous outcome, built a life against all reasonable expectation; college, wife, kids. But as good as my life is -- and it is good -- I am embattled on all sides. I am fighting the good fight -- and I will proudly go down fighting the good fight -- but I can see the battlefield.
I paid for my own education. I went into a lucrative, practical, growing field. I have watched salaries and opportunities plummet. I know that chances are good I'll be declared too old to hire before my hair even goes grey. Looking back, I would have been better off skipping college and becoming a plumber.
There is a medical issue that has wiped out my family's finances. I have insurance. Insurance has been worse than useless. There are databases filled with other families in the exact same trap. We make a lot of noise, but we're not making much progress.
I'm lucky. My kids' school is filled with idealistic teachers doing all they can. The problem is they're doing all they can with the proceeds of a can recycling drive. They're gonna go down fighting the good fight too, and gallows humor pervades the place.
For the first time ever last year, I saw a financial analysis that argued college was not worth it, especially if you had to pay for it yourself. Worse still, I couldn't refute it. What path do I offer my children when even education is a losing proposition?
I've traveled. I've seen the Third World. I know where we're heading. I'm desperately hoping my fellow citizens can quit hitting the Fox News crack pipe long enough to notice our city bus just went off a cliff.
What am I doing about it, Bruce? I'm standing on the walls of the Alamo, firing steady and sharpening my Bowie knife. I'm hoping in the future fat tourists in cotton shorts come to gawk at my heroic remains. I'm hoping my stand here gives General Houston time to run. Gregory Bloody Peck better play me in the movie.
But I'm pretty sure I know how this chapter's gonna end. And like I said, I'm a man with kids. So I'm OK with that.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Nice to see OSS win but I wish the physics had been written up just a little more correctly. The 2008 Nobel prize was awarded for the theory of how a matter-antimatter asymmetry can arise in meson decays which was thought up a long time before Babar even existed and was first tested in Kaon decay experiments (one of which I worked on as a grad student). It was awarded to theorists who were not working on Babar - and since they were Japanese were more probably closely associated to Babar's rival, Belle. So it was hardly his "colleague" - unless you can call any particle physicist a "colleague" in which case we have all been colleagues to a lot of Nobel prize winners. Secondly this DOES NOT explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe - the effect is far, far too small. We don't know how this arose. Possible candidates are "strong CP" or a similar CP violation term in the neutrino mixing sector of the Standard Model (or something else). So while this effect might be a clue as to what is going on it is definitely not he full picture.
In fact, the FSF lists the Artistic License as non-free "because it is so vague you cannot determine what rights you have".
The article is quite an interesting look into the arcane details of American jurisprudence or the lack thereof. However, it leaves a question posed unanswered.
In the article the author points out the problems with the use of the "Walls Open Source License" and goes on to state that other GLP licenses would have been a more prudent choice.
Given the twists and turns in argumentation, the question is what others GLP licenses would have been better? There's a lot of nuance and experience here to suggest that certain wording in licenses would have offered the developer and the community better protection. However, its not at all clear what the wording is and under what legal circumstances would different GLP licenses be superior.
Seems like a summary of this following on the heels of this interesting article would be helpful.
Glad to hear it. Thank Heaven for small favors.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I fondly referrer to him as da'Bomber. And picture the outcome as collateral damage inflicted upon nearby innocents.
Wow, what court is that? I've seen way too many U.S. court cases where common sense was chucked out the window in part or in whole, to believe that's the case in the U.S.
Did you attend the case in all its sections? Did you read all of the related motions and other documents pertaining to the case? Did you read copies of the testimony of every witness? Did you read copies of all statements by both parties and the judge? Did you read the ruling and opinion of the court as well referenced cases?
It really takes all that information to understand a case. Without looking at the case with that level of detail you can not make any informed decision on if the ruling was justified. Remember the judge only gets to apply a law to a case and he only gets to act on information presented to him (or her) by the interested parties.
I don't always agree with a ruling, but I have never once not understood why a judge ruled a certain way after looking at what information was presented to him.
>The summary is written by an editor who wishes you to read the story based on the credibility of a writer whom you already know, yours truly.
And in doing so, he has lowered your credibility, since it used your position to advertise your work.
Reading through the story, it appears that the culprit was patents not copyright. In other words no copyright license was violated. This is a much different kettle of fish than one would assume from the blurb. I've got no problem with pushing back against patents, but I am completely opposed to people using "free" software licenses as offensive legal weapons. That's what the proprietary goons do.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
So Slashdot is in favor of copyright licenses today? Just checking, since in piracy articles, they seem to be vehemently against them.
Actually that has nothing to do with this case. In this case both sides claimed and tried to use copyright, only one was successful.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I need to know which One, while the gettin's good.
The copyright laws are a tool that can be used to different ends.
Think a hammer. When you use it to build a house, that's good. When you use it to bash somebody's head in, that's bad.
Similarly with copyright. When you use it to help spread knowledge, it's good. When you use it to stiffle expression, that's bad.
Hope this helps.
Mr. Bruce Perens,
I just want to say that I think it's very much appreciated that you spend time to not only be an expert witness in these cases pro bono, but also to discuss this at length here and elsewhere and pointing out such things as flaws in certain licences.
I'm not sure if you will read this, but I've learned that especially in the more technical professions, we do not often enough give compliments when they are appropriate.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Sure there are rights being restricted. If you use GPL code you can not close your own code and still distribute it.
I'm afraid you sound a bit confused about this. If you apply the GPL to your own code, you certainly do have the right to close it and distribute it. All copyright holders have that right.
I'm not confused at all. If I modify BSDed code then distribute it I can close my code but I can not close my own code and distribute it when I modify GPL code. From GNU: "Using the GNU GPL will require that all the released improved versions be free software. This means you can avoid the risk of having to compete with a proprietary modified version of your own work. However, in some special situations it can be better to use a more permissive license." In other words if I make improvements, or modifications, I have to release my code. To make it even more clear:
"I want to distribute an extended version of a GPL-covered program in binary form. Is it enough to distribute the source for the original version?"
"No, you must supply the source code that corresponds to the binary. Corresponding source means the source from which users can rebuild the same binary."
However BSD licenses "allows proprietary use, and for the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary products. Works based on the material may be released under a proprietary license or as closed source software. This is the reason for widespread use of the BSD code in proprietary products, ranging from Juniper Networks routers to Mac OS X."
You are right in saying I was wrong about rights, "Sure there are rights being restricted", though. However as I said before BSD licenses offers freedom for programmers while the GPL offers freedom for users.
The problem from your perspective is that they aren't giving you all rights.
Nobody owes you a gift.
The BSD doesn't give any all the rights either. And I did not ask for a gift. Just as with the GPL the original programmer of BSDed software decides what rights other programmers and users have. If BSD code is open the programmer has given other programmers the right to close their own code modifications.
Related in a sense is dual licensing. Another thread on /. was about the effects MySQL had on the GPL using dual licensing, the GPL and closed source licensing. Especially now that Oracle now owns the former MySQL AB business.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That's the part that need to be fixed in open source, and society in general. Rewarding efforts needs to be more linked to the benefits produced for society, not on the ability to wring, extract, or corner rewards from society. Don't know how the details of that should work, it's not too easy, but it is where debate has to go I think.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
But they settled, right? That means there is nothing to use as a legal precedent really I believe. But they can use it as a precedent or sorts in public sentiment, and lawyers will know how things work a little better etc. IANAL
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
Ah... I guess not.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/