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The Biggest Legal Danger For Open Source?
itwbennett writes "Brian Proffitt is blogging about the undercurrent of legal issues troubling the open source world these days and offers up this question: Are patents or copyright a bigger threat to the open source community? Patents are the obvious choice, with inflicting fear being the 'obvious intention of those who have instigated the various legal troubles on open source practitioners.' But the issue of copyright and copyright assignments is no less troublesome, argues Proffitt. And copyright assignment can be confusingly Machievllian, even in open source land."
Because copyright can only cover a specific implementation but patents can now cover an idea in such a way that there is no alternative way to implement it. Not only that but all copyleft open source licenses actually rely on copyrights in order to make the mandates of the license enforceable.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Here's a better joke using the same material.
Threats to open source:
1. Patents
2. Copyrights
3. ???
4. Proffitt!
5. Other bloggers.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
......maayy suufferr frromm aa sttuuckk kkeyyboaardd annd//orr mminddssett.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Yes! His resume is here. Major career highlights include getting mentioned in Slashdot summaries, and getting mentioned in Slashdot summaries.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
A) Unless they are the sole copyright holders (not feasible for any decent scale project unless you ask for assignment of copyright like the FSF does) then they can't change the license.
B) It's generally understood that the GPL is non-revocable for that existing codebase and any forks but AFAIK that assumption has never been tested in court because sole rights holders are so rare for anything that matters.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Who knows! Personally I'd like to think it was the base appeal to memes, and perhaps my half-hearted attempt at acting like I had some kind of textbook answer.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Suppose Larry decides
Larry who?
Suppose Larry decides he's not happy with just changing the license on one of the dozens of open source products he's acquired and decides to actually start demanding payment for use of earlier versions of the software.
Since me, as a licensee, acquired the rights under certain conditions (a set of mutual obligations between parts, obligations protected by the copyright laws [1]), the other part of the contract cannot unilaterally modify the contract in her/his benefit. Which, if happens, would creates another agreement between us.
[1] GPLv2 point 5: You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
Does a copyright owner have the legal right to retract an issued license?
No, unless the original license specifies this is possible and the two parts (licensor/licensee) agree with it before engaging in the contract. E.g. a "variable mortgage rate" - yes, the rate can change in the future, but this is specifically stated in the loan contract before signing it.
Does that right apply to the GPL?
No, it doesn't, because this right does not exist!
Don't make a confusion with releasing a software under two or more different licenses though. If-and-only-if you have the full ownership of the copyrighted work, you are allowed to release the work under a non-GPL license as well. Potentially, you can stop releasing future versions under GPL, but you cannot change the licensing conditions of whatever release that was distributed under GPL.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Larry who?
Get off my lawn.
How we know is more important than what we know.
DRM and signed hardware is the biggest legal threat beside patents.
If we liberate the PC, only to find that people are doing their computing on handheld computers (such as phones) and games consoles which won't boot if the software's not approved, then we'll be shafted.
The answer is (as it always was) that we have to educate people about what sovereignty/liberty/independence means for computing, and that having freedom is valuable. That takes years (ask RMS), but it's the only way to win successive battles. There's no point in defeating some current problem if the same attack will succeed later under a different guise.
After DRM and patents, the big problem is centralised social networking, where people do their computing on remote servers which they have no control over.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
With copyrights, you can write around the infringing part et voila, you no longer infringe. You can do this a lot easier than writing around a patented algorithm which may lay at the core of your software.
SCO brought up many busted hypotheses why Linux infringed on SCO IP, up to and including "negative knowledge" - i.e., "don't do it that way". None of it stuck. "Similarity" is not enough. Header files are not enough. Some evidence of word-for-word copying in the source code must be there for the accusation of copyright infringement to stick at all. And even then, it's proportional to the amount of infringement. And *even then* courts want you to hammer it out privately before ever going to trial. Courts frown upon plaintiffs going to court without letting the defendant try to mitigate what might be wrong.
And to this day, they have still not shown any copied code from Unix in Linux, on their path to their "utter destruction" as Darl McBride so succinctly put it. And Linux has come out only stronger because of the ordeal while SCO's entire market cap is 2.1 million on the pink sheets.
http://www.smallcapdirectory.com/Listing.aspx?CompanyId=21987&Mode=Profile
Apple sued Microsoft over UI for "copyright" and lost - just because it looks similar doesn't mean it's the *same*.
Patents are more difficult to defend against. Because these days, patents cover ideas and general mock-ups (design patents) with no regard for prior art or obviousness in the eyes of someone skilled in the art. That last bit has especially been removed from the "obviousness" test. It seems like patent examiners lowered the bar to "Dumb and Dumberer" for obviousness.
--
BMO
First off you are going to get a lot of "no" below. That's not true, the actual answer is sort of. For example there is a notion of "fundamental breach" which would allow them to get rid of the license. For example if you were issued a license under the GPL and you proceded to not honor it by distributing a binary without source they could declare you in fundamental breach and revoke the entire license.
Alternately you could get software under the GPL and the author could declare "anticipatory repudiation" which requires you to take mitigating actions. For example if they came to believe their software was covered under a valid patent and they notify you of that, arguably you can't blindly redistribute under the GPL.
How so?