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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Although the first version of the GNU GPL was released by Richard Stallman back in 1989, and version 3 was issued in 2007, there have been surprisingly few court cases examining it and other open source licenses, and whether they are legally watertight.
A key case is Jacobsen v. Katzer from 2008. As a detailed Groklaw post at the time explained, the US appeals court held that open source license conditions are enforceable as a copyright condition. Now we have another important judgment, Artifex v. Hancom, that clarifies further the legal basis of open source licenses. It concerns the well-known Ghostscript interpreter for the PostScript language, written originally by L. Peter Deutsch, and sold by the company he founded, Artifex Software. Artifex was a pioneer in adopting a dual-licensing approach for Ghostscript. That is, you could either use the software under the GNU GPL, or you could avoid copyleft's redistribution requirements by taking out a conventional proprietary license.
Hancom is a South Korean company that produces Hangul, word-processing software that is primarily used in South Korea as an alternative to Microsoft Word. Artifex says that Hancom incorporated Ghostscript into its Hangul software, but neither sought a proprietary license, nor complied with the terms of the GPL by releasing the source code for the application that incorporated Ghostscript. As a result, Artifex took legal action, alleging copyright infringement and breach of contract. Hancom asked the court to dismiss Artifex's complaint on several grounds, but they were all denied. The most significant ruling is on Hancom's claim that the GNU GPL was not a contract. In her order, embedded below, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley wrote:
The GNU GPL, which is attached to the complaint, provides that the Ghostscript user agrees to its terms if the user does not obtain a commercial license. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant used Ghostscript, did not obtain a commercial license, and represented publicly that its use of Ghostscript was licensed under the GNU GPL. These allegations sufficiently plead the existence of a contract.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @10:25PM (4 children)
Poor legal reporting at its finest. The court has not ruled on anything of substance. They have certainly not ruled on the existence of any contract involving the GPL. The court has merely denied a motion to dismiss by the defendant, which basically means that the plaintiff's allegations are actually a valid reason to sue someone.
A motion to dismiss is basically an argument by the defendant that says "So what if I did?". The court does not evaluate the merits of the case, and the court does not consider any evidence. In a motion to dismiss, the court is asked to determine "If the plaintiff were to successfully prove all their allegations, does the law actually provide for any restitution?" If the answer is "No", then there is no point in a trial. If the answer is "Yes", then the trial can proceed.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:46AM (2 children)
They focused on the wrong thing. I don't care for the GPL, GNU or their original authors anymore. But should be noted that this in itself is a victory for the GPL. Not too long ago it was unknown if it would be accepted in court at all.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 20 2017, @02:23AM
"Not too long ago it was unknown if it would be accepted in court at all."
This ^ There have been a number of serious discussions whether the courts would recognize copyleft. Courts do weird shit sometimes, and it was entirely within the realm of possibility that some judge would rule copyleft invalid for some crazy reason. West Texas has it's Troll court, after all - what if that crazy bastard had ruled on copyleft?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @02:29AM
I don't know if this is as big of a victory as people think. This was (as far as I can tell) a 12(b)(6) motion. The standard of which is that all the well-pleaded facts, when taken as true and in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, allow a reasonable inference of liability. This is such a weak finding, that it doesn't bind the defense in terms of affirmative defenses against the plaintiff, nor does a finding for the defendant create estoppel of future claims by the plaintiff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:43AM
MOD PARENT UP
this is the same old almost non-story we ran earlier https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/05/05/226211 [soylentnews.org]