[Sussex] Big Legal News Regarding FLOSS Licences

[Steve Dobson]

Nico

On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 08:57 +0100, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> Geoffrey Teale wrote:
> > On 14 Aug 2008, at 14:50, Steve Dobson wrote:
> > > Just saw this on Groklaw and it is *big*.
> > >  http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008081313212422
> > Interesting . in the US at least this gives the F/L/OSS licenses  
> > parity with proprietary licenses (As I understand it).    The sensible  
> > question you should all be asking is, "why wouldn't they have parity  
> > in the first place?"  ... and the answer is complex but involves the  
> > following:
> >
> >    - the difference between statute and precedent (and the lack of  
> > either to cover F/L/OSS licenses)
> >   
> This doesn't seem correct. Many of the open source licenses were based 
> on clear standards and precedent from older, closed source licenses and 
> educational licenses, and several of the open source licenses have had 
> fascinating legal challenges to set precedent. The NetGear/GPL license 
> problem is an example where the existing statutes were deemed quite clear.

But not all legal councils are equal, some are more equal than others.
Maybe the legal experts here thought that the precedent argument was a
winning strategy.  Maybe this was the best defence they could come up
with given that their client wanted to fight this to the bitter end.

After all this precedent argument did succeed in a lower court first.
This was an overruling judgement, so there was (is) at least one judge
that saw it the defendants way.

Steve
-- 
Steve Dobson

The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain
disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help
feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is
their father.
-- H. L. Mencken

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