Fall2008/Open Source Licensing Part III Additional Material
From OpenSourceSoftwarePractice
Contents |
Licenses
GPL
- License Text
- Quick Guide
- Why to Updgrade
Tested in Court
Wallace vs FSF
On Monday March 20, 2006 US Federal Judge John Daniel Tinder, dismissed the Sherman Act antitrust claims brought against the Free Software Foundation. The claims made by Plaintiff Daniel Wallace included: that the General Public License (GPL) constituted a contract, combination or conspiracy; that it created an unreasonable restraint of trade; and that the FSF conspired with IBM, Red Hat Inc., Novell and other individuals to pool and cross-license their copyrighted intellectual property in a predatory price fixing scheme.
On Monday, a US Federal Court Judge dismissed Daniel Wallace's case saying "[The GPL] acts as a means by which certain software may be copied, modified and redistributed without violating the software's copyright protection. As such, the GPL encourages, rather than discourages, free competition and the distribution of computer operating systems, the benefits of which directly pass to consumers. These benefits include lower prices, better access and more innovation."
netfilter/iptables vs Sitecom Germany
Sitecom sells a wireless access router product which uses software developed by the netfilter project. Under the terms of the GPL, this is OK - so long as Sitecom, as redistributor, makes the full source code available too. netfilter says the company has not only failed to do this, but has also neglected to include the terms of the GPL with its products.
Harald Welte, chairman of the netfilter core team, said the court action should not be interpreted as a move against the commercial use of free and open source software, and sought to reassure vendors that there was no legal risk in using GPL-licensed software in products: "But vendors have to comply with the license terms, just like they would have to with any other, even proprietary software license agreement."
Sitecom has been ordered to stop distributing its product until it complies with all terms of the GNU GPL.
Schoenenberger said that all terms, conditions and requirements have now been dealt with. "Sitecom now conforms to the GNU General Public License and are now awaiting their official approval," he confirmed.
DLink
BERLIN, Germany - September 22, 2006 -- The gpl-violations.org project prevails in court litigation against D-Link Germany GmbH regarding D-Link's alleged inappropriate and copyright infringing use of parts of the Linux Operating System Kernel.
Following-up a legal warning notice, D-Link signed a declaration to cease and desist and agreed to refrain from further distributing the product, but refused to reimburse gpl-violations.org for expenses incurred in connection with the test purchase, re-engineering and legal advice and representation. In the court proceedings, D-Link claimed that the GPL is not legally binding. A quote from the German letter of the D-Link lawyers to gpl-violations.org, dated Feb 24, 2006 can be translated as:
"Regardless of the repeatedly-quoted judgement of the district court of Munich I, we do not consider the GPL as legally binding."
Since gpl-violations.org has been continuously revealing GPL violations by D-Link since September 2004, it filed a civil case with the district court of Frankfurt (Germany) in March 2006, seeking the court to issue a judgement in support of its copyright claims based on the GPL, and seeking the court to order D-Link to reimburse gpl-violations.org for the expenses of the out-of-court enforcement.
On September 6, 2006 the district court issued its judgement, confirming the claims by gpl-violations.org, specifically its rights on the subject-matter source code, the violation of the GNU GPL by D-Link, the validity of the GPL under German law, and D-Links obligation to reimburse gpl-violations.org for legal expenses, test purchase and cost of re-engineering. Only the amount of the legal expenses was considered too high by some insignificant amount of 300 EUR. Therefore, this decision marks a clear-cut victory for gpl-violations.org. D-Link may file an appeal against the judgement.
Tom Tom
In an amicable agreement with TomTom B.V. (http://www.tomtom.com/), a Dutch vendor of Navigation Systems, the gpl-violations.org project was able to bring the TomTom GO product into GPL compliance.
The source code for the Linux Operating System Kernel, including TomTom's own modifications, is now made available at http://www.tomtom.com/gpl. Furthermore, other obligations of the GPL such as reproduction of the full license terms will be fulfilled by TomTom B.V.
As part of the agreement, TomTom will show it's appreciation of the Free Software and technology enthusiast movement by making a significant donation to the Chaos Computer Club (http://www.ccc.de/).
Music
Slice The Pie
ccMixter
Kompoz
CD Baby
OpenSourceMusic
- God and the FBI
- Public Domain 4U
