Bruce Perens Explains That 'GPL Is A Contract' Court Case (perens.com)

Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3,872. Bruce Perens writes: There's been a lot of confusion about the recent Artifex v. Hancomcase, in which the court found that the GPL was an enforceable contract. I'm going to try to explain the whole thing in clear terms for the legal layman.
Two key quotes:

• "What has changed now is that for the purposes of the court, the GPL is both a license, which can be enforced through a claim of copyright infringement, and a contract, which can be enforced through a claim of breach of contract. You can allege both in your court claim in a single case, and fall back on one if you can't prove the other. Thus, the potential to enforce the GPL in court is somewhat stronger than before this finding, and you have a case to cite rather than spending time in court arguing whether the GPL is a contract or not..."
• "Another interesting point in the case is that the court found Artifex's claim of damages to be admissible because of their use of dual-licensing. An economic structure for remuneration of the developer by users who did not wish to comply with the GPL terms, and thus acquired a commercial license, was clearly present."

Comments

Re:So... dual license even if we don't mean it?

[__aanljs7351]

I am currently working on getting my A+ certification - that's the goal for this year anyway. I don't really have the capacity to do much more - I tried college, didn't work out. I went to recruiting events - many, but all I could get hired for was a software tester for video games. We don't all have money to fall back on, and my family was shit. What is it you expect someone to do? I know I should have studied in school and made something of myself. When you're young and in a very bad family environment, you are not smart enough to push yourself yet or know what's out there. And then it's too late and you have to pay the bills. I think considering all things, I have not done bad - maybe not as good as you, but I've had it harder than you from othe very very early start. I'm not exactly contributing brilliant things here, but I've been on the site since '98, and there are some much, much dumber idiots here than me. I'm also going to guess I'm not the only one with the lard problem.

Re:I love OSS but GPL is for assholes

[lordlod]

Often you will see GPL projects that "allow" a corporate license.

The unwritten detail that you aren't seeing is that a GPL project that dual licences is almost exclusively developed by one company. It isn't a collaboration, because contributors provide their code under the GPL and that can't be included in the commercial product. This means that the GPL code is a gift by the company to the wider world with conditions which allow the company to continue to profit, they typically don't request significant contributions such as donations. The difference with a purely closed source company like Microsoft is that you, as the consumer, have a choice you otherwise wouldn't. For example you can use the GPL version for early development work and switch to the commercial license when you are sure you want to use the library and distribute a final product. The library development process closely mimics a standard closed source company.

Collaborative GPL products work very differently and are never dual licensed. The GPL provides a guarantee for each company contributing that every other company must also contribute. This allows direct competitors to cooperate on a product knowing that they aren't putting themselves at a disadvantage. These projects work very differently to the dual licensed ones, the development process is open to allow communication across multiple companies. They also take code contributions and sometimes financial contributions, often to maintain infrastructure.

I regularly have my company donate to many open source projects. These donations are pretty good (1-5k each) but we all fully agree that never in a million years would we donate to a GPL project or any over arching project ever.

Companies I have worked for have supported projects vital to our work. The license influences libraries we use and the way way we use them. If you are adamantly opposed to the GPL and don't rely on their work then it would make perfect sense not to direct your money or time there.

Not supporting a collaborative GPL project because of a few non-collaborative GPL projects just shows off your ignorance.