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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."
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?
It's more of a victory for you and me, because we have the benefit of Bob's court precedents. Katzer had previously intimidated at least one other person with patent threats, and Bob felt that the team could not go on with their project with this hanging over their heads. But I agree that the Open Source developer really paid, paid big, to get this. I've taken tons of s**t for what I attempt to do for the community too. You'd better believe in what you're doing, because there isn't always a thank-you.
If you read the second appeal, I don't think DMCA is a big deal in it. But if we're going to have dumb law, let's at least make it work for us. IMO worse than DMCA is the entire concept that cases like this can bankrupt someone before they have a chance to win. How can there be justice if that's the case?
Bruce Perens.
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!"
Most companies doesn't care about the best technical solution for a problem. They also take in account availability of workforce to use that particular solution, suppliers interested in working and giving support and a some other factors, like cost. Take the example you mention, the LAMP stack. PHP programmers with knowledge of MySQL are a dime a dozen, and you can filter through them to pick and choose the real competent ones. Most hosting providers already have an already optimized and time tested stack that supports these technologies, so companies can filter through them to choose the cheaper and more reliable. It gets the job done so other potential better solutions gets overlooked. Technical merit is not the only factor when choosing the right tool for the job.
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.
Well, it says a number of things to FOSS developers. One is that your license choice matters. This case was much longer than it should have been, and was almost lost, because of the license. Second, it says the patent system still sucks and we're not fighting hard enough. And we still need tort reform.
But it has some significant value in deterrence, for the subclass of sane aggressors. Nothing deters the other ones, the only thing you can do is to make sure your own legal execution (your license, how you accept contributions, how you identify your developers) in order so that the court doesn't make things worse.
Bruce Perens.
Lying on your patent application is perjury. It hasn't been prosecuted since 1974, when USPTO discontinued their enforcement division.
I have so far had little success in evangelizing that it should be prosecuted again. If you know an organization that would like to sponsor work on that, I could use some help. I rarely can put food on the table through evangelism, and thus can't do it as much as I'd like.
Bruce Perens.
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.