The GPLv2 Goes To Court

Jason Baker writes Despite its importance, the GPLv2 has been the subject of very few court decisions, and virtually all of the most important terms of the GPLv2 have not been interpreted by courts. This lack of court decisions is about to change due to the five interrelated cases arising from a dispute between Versata Software, Inc. and Ameriprise Financial, Inc.. These cases are dealing with four important terms in the GPLv2: 1) What are the remedies for breach of the terms of the GPLv2? 2) What is a "distribution" under the GPLv2 that triggers the obligations under the GPLv2? 3) Does the GPLv2 include a patent license? 4) What type of integration between proprietary code and GPLv2 licensed code will result in creating a "derivative work" and subject such proprietary code to the terms of the GPLv2?

Comments

If only PJ was still running groklaw!

[Chirs]

This would have been the perfect story to get covered there....

Re:If only PJ was still running groklaw!

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Actually she tried to turn it over to someone else for a while. But the other person did not have her clarity in explaning the court document that PJ had and it was mostly her anyway.

Yes it was taking alot of her time and she did it on her spare time. So I understand why she did not had time to continue to update it.

There is a new site trying to do what PJ did - but missing her brilliance it's a very small site which not many visit:

http://grokthelaw.freeforums.net/ but anyone who wants to, is welcome to help.

Re:Why not ask the authors of the GPL Ver.2?

[Richard_at_work]

No, the creators will tell you what it was intended to do, the court will tell you what it actually does. Potentially huge difference there.