Delicious Details of Open Source Court Victory 202
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the tooting-his-horn dept.
from the tooting-his-horn dept.
jammag writes "Open source advocate Bruce Perens tells the inside story of the recently concluded Jacobsen v. Katzer court case, in which an open source developer was awarded $100,000. Perens, an expert witness in the case, details the blow by blow, including how developers need to make sure they're using the correct open source license for legal protection. The actual court ruling is almost like some kind of Hollywood movie ending for Open Source, with the judge unequivocally siding with the underfunded open source developer."
A few corrections to the preface here at Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually the appeals court that was sympathetic. Twice. The lower court seems to have had less understanding of the Open Source developer's plight.
Using "the right one": means the right Open Source license. A real key here is getting one that had competent legal help in its drafting. There are a few real duds on the OSI list, including a font license that I swear allows you to convert the font to the public domain. Only the programmers who wrote it don't see it that way.
Sorry about the lack of paragraph breaks. I tend to write too many of them and the editor responded by using too few of them. He might have fixed that and the web cache hasn't been flushed yet.
Re:Believe It or Not (Score:5, Informative)
Re:seems a little inflated (Score:1, Informative)
His employer got notices from the company.
Re:A few corrections to the preface here at Slashd (Score:5, Informative)
It's the SIL font license. This is the problem paragraph:
The problem is, if you embed the font, it explicitly says the license doesn't apply any longer. If you then extract the font, the authors of this license assume that the license magically applies once more. I am far from sure that is the case.
Re:Believe It or Not (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"the correct one"? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The lesson? The Perl Man slips (Score:3, Informative)
These guys deserve support (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the link to their donations page:
http://jmri.sourceforge.net/donations.shtml [sourceforge.net]
I have to admire what these guys are doing and the good it will do for the open source community as a whole (at least in the US). I've seen this case pop up off and on over the years, and it always struck me as a scary plight for an open source developer to be in.
(Not affiliated with the project in any way and nobody asked me to post the link - I just think a slashdot effect is in order here given what they're doing and what he's been up against.)
Re:A victory with a high cost... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Believe It or Not (Score:3, Informative)
The kernel code from Android is crap and very unlikely to be merged as part of the mainstream kernel tree. Google seems to not care, and they wrote it in such a manner that no one else is interested in doing their dirty work for them.
Re:Precedents? (Score:5, Informative)
It went to appeals court twice and the appeals court ruled both times, then handed the case back to the lower court. The main precedents come from the appeals court.
That's the way it always is. Lower court precedents aren't terribly useful because only that court has to follow them. Appeals court precedents are more valuable, and the appeals courts are more respected as expert jurists so that other courts follow them even if they don't have to.
The precedents are that Open Source licenses can be enforced, and with all of the mechanisms that have been put in place to enforce proprietary licenses, including summary judgement. To get that, we had to show that the Open Source developer has an economic interest in his work even though he isn't paid by legitimate licensed users of the work, and is harmed by an infringer even though he isn't paid.
To you and me it seems odd that anyone had a problem with that idea. But we're inside the revolution.
Re:Anoyiing at best. (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the story, rather than the summary, you will find that Jacobsen is of course all over it. The summary is written by an editor who wishes you to read the story based on the credibility of a writer whom you already know, yours truly. And I am, to some extent, telling the story from the perspective of my own involvement.
I am also taking the opportunity to advertise my work as an expert witness, which I get damn little chance to do because every other case I've participated in has sealed and thus I can't show anyone my writing samples!
Sorry if that annoyed you. All of the work on the case was done for free. I get a little money from Datamation, but far from enough to live on.
Re:Believe It or Not (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Believe It or Not (Score:3, Informative)
I am not running the Android kernel project. If I get to run any embedded manufacturer's project, I will try very hard to get the code into the kernel, and I know how to make the technical and economic case for that.
Most cell phones have two processors. The radio modem is in the smaller one, and is awake much of the time, and the PDA in the larger one, and is not awake nearly as often. That's how stand-by can work for so long on such a little battery. The radio uses a real-time OS and the PDA of course has Linux. Often their communication is over the Hayes modem protocol, believe it or not. So, when you want to call 911, Linux sends "+++ATDT911" or something similar.
I have a hard time believing that the Linux kernel is a fundamental problem regarding anything about the call, given the above architecture. I am sure that there are design flaws.
Model Railroading as an "Open" Hobby (Score:5, Informative)
The outcome of this case is beneficial both for Open Source Software community and the Model Railroading hobby.
In general model railroading is a very open and diverse hobby. Some are better with structural engineering and carpentry, others with electronics, model building, methods of railroad operation, et cetera. As a community we work together to share and improve our techniques, both to improve ourselves as modelers and to increase our satisfaction from the hobby. There are many well established venues for sharing our knowledge, from regular conventions (NMRA National, Regionals, and plenty of Special Interest Groups), a large number of printed an online periodicals, online communities, and just general "how did you..." questions at any old time.
Unfortunately our openness attracts thieves and greedy sorts who are more interested in making a quick buck than improving the hobby, and manufacturers and other entities attacking hobbyists is nothing new. I imagine this greedy nature is present in all hobbies and walks of life, but it seems to be more common now than when I entered the hobby 20 years ago.
Hopefully the outcome of this case will make others that prey on innocent hobbyists think twice.
Thanks, Bruce, for your well-written summary of the case. I'd mod your article up +1: Insightful if the Internet gave out mod points.
Re:Anoyiing at best. (Score:3, Informative)
I did read the article. I wasn't criticizing your article in anyway just the summary.
In fact most of my summary came from your article. Including the name of the FOSS author, name of his FOSS project, and the fact that he paid for most of the lawsuit himself.
If you take a look at the front page that summary is the only summary that in anyway reference the author of the original article at all. I thought your article was just fine.
The summary which you didn't write was terrible IMHO. I feel it did you a disservice by making you out to be terrible nihilistic while really dismissing the acts of Jacobsen.
But you didn't write the summary at all so my criticism has nothing to do with your writing.
Re:"someone ... can so completely snow a court" (Score:4, Informative)
FYI, the $100,000 doesn't include legal fees, the agreement specifically includes that Katzer will pay the "reasonable" legal fees of Jacobsen. What this means is that if Katzer thinks the legal fees are too high he can complain to the judge and the judge will review but otherwise Katzer is going to pay the legal fee's separately from the $100,000 he's paying Jacobsen.
Re:A victory with a high cost... (Score:3, Informative)
Everybody wants to receive the BSD license. Of course. Everybody loves a gift, and that's what the BSD license is. But it doesn't always make sense for someone to give it. And since the person giving the license is doing the work, it's their choice.
I'm afraid you sound a bit confused about this. If you apply the GPL to your own code, you certainly do have the right to close it and distribute it. All copyright holders have that right.
Perhaps you mean if you mix your code with someone else's GPL code. In that case, you still have the right to distribute your own code privately, as long as you remove that other person's GPL code from the project.
The person giving you the GPL code is only giving you rights, not taking any away at all, because before they gave you the code you had no rights regarding that code. The problem from your perspective is that they aren't giving you all rights.
Nobody owes you a gift.