Submitted by The license behind Linux and other open source projects has never faced a determined legal attack, and although it purports to give real teeth to developers’ wishes, there’s been fear that a committed enemy may one day attempt to challenge its legal footing. Recently, the Software Freedom Law Center sued Verizon for copyright infringement related to a GPL violation. This week, Verizon opted to settle out of court. This victory gives the GPL some needed legal momentum that may fend off future challenges.
Ever heard of GPL-Violations.org?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl-violations.org
According to this Wikipedia entry, the GPL has been successfully tested in court in 2005 against Fortinet, and then again in 2006 against D-Link.
You are, of course, correct. Let me modify the original post to clarify.
GNU (L)GPL v2 has been tested in court in various countries around the world.
Use your favorite web search engine to retrieve dozends of related results.
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8734215139.html … clearly labels GPL v2, so the headline is just plain wrong.
It is of course one of the “Biggest legal victory ever for GPL” as http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2614635569.html uses for the article headline.
This is not a legal victory.
A legal victory would be winning an injunction against Verzion, or in some way being correctly compensated for Verzion’s /actions/.
An out of court settlement is a deferment – not a victory.
This has no precedent on GPL violations anywhere else.
*fessa-russah-fessin*
I was going to say this as well. On its own, this doesn’t really validate the GPL in any way, all it really says is VZW decided that the cost of pursuing it in court would be greater than the cost of settling instead. This is relatively common, regardless of whether or not the legal claims in fact have any teeth.
That’s why I said “legal momentum” instead of “precedent.” Perhaps victory is too strong a word, which should be reserved for an actual judgement by the court. But the GPL certainly prevailed in this case. And Verizon settling is going to make other GPL violators more likely to settle too.
I really do not know how you can come to this conclusion. The GPL didn’t ‘win’. Another ‘determined’ entity in the future may in fact decide to go through the full legal process, at which point the GPL will be tested (again).
Some entities simply couldn’t be bothered and want to put things like this behind them. That doesn’t mean they were wrong, not even close.
Edited 2008-03-20 20:28 UTC
You miss the point. The GPL isn’t what is violated, it is copyright law that is violated when someone distributes GPL code as binary only (without also giving access to source code for anyone who asks for it).
Unless a party is going to try to go to court to bring down copyright law … there is no point in attacking the GPL per se. Abiding by the terms of the GPL is your only chance of getting the permission to distribute you needed for the GPL’d code that you used. Since the code was GPL anyway, and hence already public, you may as well just go with compliance with the terms of the GPL yourself. Where is the downside?
Edited 2008-03-20 23:05 UTC
Well, if you call establishing a 100% fulfillment of one’s demands as “not winning”, then the GPL – side did “not win”.
As far as I can see, they got correctly compensated, because the modified code now is free, and they got an undisclosed amount of money.
I think in this case an out of court settlement is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. The Verizon lawyers obviously told the Verizon execs, that winning this lawsuit was next to impossible, and the execs did the only rational thing – they fulfilled the demands.
When one side has the law overwhelmingly on its side, the other side caves and settles. This has happened repeatedly in the case of the GPL: Eben Moglen has forced hundreds of violators to back down and pay damages, both when he just worked for the FSF, and now in his new role at the SFLC.
You only see a case go to court if both sides think they can win. Corporate attorneys would be sure to advise Verizon, or anyone else, that copyright is copyright, and you can’t violate it. It doesn’t even do you any good if you could show that the GPL is invalid, as the GPL grants you permissions, it doesn’t take any away. Without a valid license, you can’t copy or modify a copyrighted work at all without explicit permission of the copyright owner.
Actually, what happens the vast majority of the time is the corporation being sued looks at the cost of litigation vs. the cost of settlement, and goes with whatever they deem to be the less expensive option. It has nothing to do with the merits of the case.
Of course, the plaintiff may choose to reject the settlement offer, as they may feel they can do better by going to trial.
It’s a virus like they say…
How is it like a virus?
Before this case, busybox code was GPL code. After this case, busybox code is still GPL code. Virus-like behaviour is … where exactly?
There are companies that have policies against GPL software. I know one, it is a big telecom provider. A friend of mine, a developer, included some LGPL code in his product. He had hard time explaining that LGPL is not GPL, because the company has strict policy against GPL. Not a single piece of GPLed software can be used.
This is not strictly on topic, but some people might find it interesting.