A federal appeals court has overruled a lower court ruling that, if sustained, would have severely hampered the enforceability of free software licenses. The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement. The difference matters because copyright law affords much stronger remedies against infringement than does contract law. If allowed to stand, the decision could have neutered popular copyleft licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The district court decision was overturned on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2007-07-13
I had the opportunity of listening to Richard Stallman talk twice yesterday (he doesn't often come to New Zealand so we have to make the most of it). I think that he would view the upholding of copyright as a win for all software users.
If you read the article you will see the ruling also appears to support proprietary software developers as well (provided they write original code and don't try and misappropriate free- and open-source software).
I would be very hesitant to say the lower court's ruling was due to incompetance. Usually you find that they made the most rational decision given the current laws, evidence given, and (especially) the arguments presented by the legal parties. Perhaps it took the appeal for the argument to be pitched in a way better understood by the court.
Member since:2005-11-02
It revolves around the interpretation of the clauses of the license as clauses of a contract instead of conditions of a copyright notice. This can be a subtle difference, but in this case it was not: the artistic license clearly states that the conditions are copyright conditions.
I believe this was probably a case of a good lawyer on the part of the defendant being effective in his arguments. Fortunately the next judge to get it was more careful, so no harm done.
Member since:
2005-07-06
The lower court decision was obviously wrong, and I doubt whether they fully understood what was happening. I don't know how they arrived at this being a breach of contract.