What I don't understand is why isn't the ACLU helping out the defendants because if Novak (somehow) wins this lawsuit, it'd open up a pandora box for those who want to keep people shut up but cannot because of the First Amendment (Does the Church of Scientology rings a bell?). I'm more surprised by the fact that the judges haven't thrown out this lawsuit yet on the basis of the First Amendment.
I'm a computer science student and I'm concerned about the future of coding, especially since many snippets of code is reused. This causes me to be curious with the fact that this case being the first of its kind, where do you think future cases against open-source code will lead the industry in the future?
Also what effect does the GPL have on this kind of thing and what would be the enforcement of this decision if this is somehow upheld in appeals?
It'd be nice to see M$ go open sourcing without any legal junk - but they're being such babies over something that has been open-sourced for a very long time (and I'm a student at MIT!). Me
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This lawywer blogged about this case yesterday at http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2005 /08/more-news-coverage-of-elektra-v.html
What I don't understand is why isn't the ACLU helping out the defendants because if Novak (somehow) wins this lawsuit, it'd open up a pandora box for those who want to keep people shut up but cannot because of the First Amendment (Does the Church of Scientology rings a bell?). I'm more surprised by the fact that the judges haven't thrown out this lawsuit yet on the basis of the First Amendment.
I'm a computer science student and I'm concerned about the future of coding, especially since many snippets of code is reused. This causes me to be curious with the fact that this case being the first of its kind, where do you think future cases against open-source code will lead the industry in the future?
Also what effect does the GPL have on this kind of thing and what would be the enforcement of this decision if this is somehow upheld in appeals?
It'd be nice to see M$ go open sourcing without any legal junk - but they're being such babies over something that has been open-sourced for a very long time (and I'm a student at MIT!). Me