Court Ruling Clouds Open Source Licensing

JosefAssad writes "In a decision centering around a question of a violation of the Artistic License, a San Francisco court has denied an injunction against Matthew Katzer in the favor of Robert Jacobsen of the JMRI project. Importantly, the decision makes the point that the Artistic License is a contract, an interpretation that the Free Software Foundation has been keen to avoid as a legal stance. The JMRI project has a page up with the legal background and developments."

Re:Looking at all this legal mumbo-jumbo

[bladesjester]

There's another upside to having it out with knives - people realize that there are actual consequences involved.

Re:Artistic License is janky anyway.

[Chandon Seldon]

It's a matter of perception and how arguments are presented. If the Artistic License is successfully bundled in a category of licenses that include the GNU license in a legal argument, then it's possible this ruling could have an effect.

I don't think that's a terribly large risk. Unlike your average model train hobbyist or even programmer, lawyers and judges have quite a bit of legal training. You might be able to confuse them with technical details, but you're not going to get very far with "I know these two licenses have completely different terms, but they're really the same. These precedents from license A apply - you don't even need to read B.".

In this case, the reason for the ruling that the JRMI guys don't like is the lack of a termination clause in the Artistic license. They claim that this other guy violated the license terms (From Term 1: Copyright notices must be preserved), but even if that is true there still isn't a copyright violation - just a violation of a license term. If this were the GPL, any such violation would mean a license termination and therefore a copyright violation. With the Artistic License, all they get is a license dispute - which apparently doesn't get you immediate drastic court orders.

Re:Use it or lose it...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

First of all, as another posted pointed out, the GPL hasn't been tested in a US court; more generally. it is not a magic bullet that guarantees your software will be Henceforth And Forever Free, and it would be nice if people would stop assuming it is. Second, not everyone wants their software to be "Free" in the way RMS does -- the Artistic License is a nice middle ground between the GPL and the BSD, it's the license under which one of the most popular pieces of software ever written (Perl) is released, and it certainly should be possible for authors to use it without being afraid that an ill-informed court will undercut their rights.

Re:Use it or lose it...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it doesnt need to be to be completely vaild, which too many people here just dont understand.

The GPL is based on copyright law. That is, the GPL allows you to copy under certain circumstances. Copyright law is very well tested and understandable - if you dont agree to the GPL, you dont have the right to copy. Simple, aint it?

That's why the GPL does not need to be tested by itself and while it's a copyright licence it will never need testing.

GPL seems clear enough.

[twitter]

What's suddenly very unclear here is the difference between a 'license' and a 'contract'.

The terminology is meaningless.

You can call it anything you want, but that does not change what the GPL or any other license says and what that's based on. These things are based on copyright, where the author alone has the right to publish works. That power must be absolute to be worth anything. Copyleft licenses generously give people that right as long as they agree to a few simple conditions. People who refuse to obey those conditions lose their right to distribute.

The fact that copyleft authors are not collecting money should not be held against them because they are doing what copyright law was designed to encourage. In every other copyright violation case, the authors are allowed an injunction because the rogue publication does the author real financial harm. That harm, for a limited time, is held greater than the good done by extra publication. In the copyleft case, harm is also done to the author and the public. The author is deprived of control of work and potential revenue, which should not be ignored any more than the revenue from a previously unpublished work. The public is also deprived of their freedom. That freedom has motivated publication of lots of high quality software. If the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation and distribution of public works, software freedom must be protected and preserved.

If these jokers managed to weaken copyright, they will undo the power that also protects most non free software. You can't weaken control of free work without weakening that of non free work and because non free publishers depend on so much more control, that weakening will be more important to them.

Re:EULA != Contract

[EvanED]

Being that it is always necessary to make a copy of a program (at least in RAM) in order to use it, a EULA of some sort is always required.

No offense, but you're full of crap. That sort of copying is not infringing. 17 USC 117:

(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.-- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner...

Copying the program into ram is an essential step in the use of the program, thus that step is not infringing.

(Besides, if it were, you couldn't load the installation program into RAM in order to read the EULA.)

Re:Artistic License is janky anyway.

[Ohreally_factor]

Sure, they want to limit fair use so as to make more profit. Sure, they're another scummy media company (We call their studios "Mouscwitz" here in L.A.) But it doesn't follow that they're against OSS or even CC, and I haven't seen any proof of such. However, I'm not saying not to be suspicious of them, please do. I just wondered if you had any actual dirt. The worst I can say about them from personal experience is that they're very slow to pay independent contractors in some cases.

Re:Nuts. What does this do to other "contracts"?

[init100]

The fact that people actually take time to post such lengthy chunks of junk really have me baffled. Don't they have anything else to do?