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:If only PJ was still running groklaw!

[greg1104]

Groklaw folded mainly due to e-mail privacy concerns. PJ wanting more of her personal time back was a factor, as she'd tried to back away from the site a few times already. But it wasn't the main stated reason for the shutdown. I could understand that some people feel e-mail privacy was a silly reason to fold the site, even if I don't agree myself.

AWESOME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Versata is essentially a "vulture" company that buys software companies that are down to life-support levels to extract the last bits of value (continuing support contracts, etc.). If you ever see them knocking on your door, find another job ASAP because your company (and your job) is a gonner. Interestingly, one thing that companies do as part of the due diligence when acquiring other companies is determine if there is any open source in the products in order to identify potential liabilities. Btw, companies looking for a buyout often go through a phase to clear out potential open source infringements, so that's a sign if it wasn't clearly spelt out..

I'm guessing that in this case Infosys, a contractor for Ameriprise, probably got paid to develop some software and made it in the form of a library to be used in other contracts. Having outsourced to India before, I was pretty sure that was going on (that and liberal use of open source). After all, rapid development doesn't happen magically.

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.

Re:Does GPLv2 Grant a Patent license

[TheRaven64]

Well, sort of. Clause 7 could be interpreted as a patent license, in that if you knowingly distribute code that violates your patents then you are violating the license if you don't also include a patent grant. In v3 it's more explicit precisely because it was ambiguous in v2. It's up to the court to decide whether this ambiguous license is a license.

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

[bill_mcgonigle]

So asking the creators of the GPL in this instance will get you nowhere because their opinion on the matter lacks any weight, its what the actual wording says which determines what you are beholden to.

Most prose can be interpreted in multiple ways and not every interpretation occurs to every human at every time. Courts are well aware of this, which is why they will only ever offer an Opinion about what things mean - never claiming to offer the Truth. Even SCOTUS only offers opinions.

Now, those courts will also issue orders to men with a violent streak to enforce their opinions, so effectively they are Law. But never Truth, which is why subsequent cases can overturn previous ones. This also means that Law is never Truth, only the prevailing view of the status quo of a given time.