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A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

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11–20 of 233 posts

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#11
> Of course, whether Artifex will actually win the case it’s now allowed to pursue is another question altogether.

It's fairly clear that they will win the case in one fashion or another. I am predicting that the case will quickly be settled out of court for a lump sum plus a running licensing fee. You have a public admission from the defendant that they integrated the plaintiff's Ghostscript software into their own without either: 1) making the resulting Hancom office suite open source, or 2) paying Artifex a licensing fee for the software.

The case against Hancom was solid under copyright infringement, and now has the added sting of breach of contract.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#12
To use Ghostscript for free, Hancom would have to adhere to its open-source license, the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GNU GPL requires that when you use GPL-licensed software to make some other software, the resulting software also has to be open-sourced with the same license if it’s released to the public. That means Hancom would have to open-source its entire suite of apps.

Alternatively, Hancom could pay Artifex a licensing fee. Artifex allows developers of commercial or otherwise closed-source software to forego the strict open-source terms of the GNU GPL if they’re willing to pay for it.

This obligation has been termed "reciprocity," and it lies at the heart of many open source business models.

http://www.rosenlaw.com/pdf-files/Rosen_Ch06.pdf

The more important issue here is reciprocity, not whether an open source license should be considered to be a contract.

AFAIK, the reciprocity provision of any version of the GPL hasn't been tested in any meaningful way within the US. In particular, the specific use cases that trigger reciprocity remain cloudy at best in my mind.

Some companies claim that merely linking to a GPLed library is sufficient to trigger reciprocity. FSF published the LGPL specifically to address this point.

So I believe a ruling on reciprocity would be ground breaking.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#13
post #6

This was a ruling that the contract between the plaintiff and defendant existed, not on the validity of the contract (which is the GNU GPL license). Defendant (Hancom) was trying to say that because they didn't sign anything they didn't have a contract. But Hancom "represented publicly that its use of Ghostscript was licensed under the GNL GPU" Therefore, the Judge ruled that in their own words they publicly acknowle…

The defense argued that the license was not enforceable. In the order, the federal court laid out the reasons the license _is_ enforceable. Here's the order:

https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califo...

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#14
post #6

This was a ruling that the contract between the plaintiff and defendant existed, not on the validity of the contract (which is the GNU GPL license). Defendant (Hancom) was trying to say that because they didn't sign anything they didn't have a contract. But Hancom "represented publicly that its use of Ghostscript was licensed under the GNL GPU" Therefore, the Judge ruled that in their own words they publicly acknowle…

It's a very narrow ruling, conditioned on the fact that the defendant, Hancom, publicly acknowledged they were using Ghostscript under GPL. It does not say much, if anything, but IANAL, about a defendant who would not have acknowledged this, which seems like the more interesting question.

Common law judges are very prudent in their ruling.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#15
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah few more contributions to GPL projects from companies or/and removing GPL code base from some products using GPL without contibuting back.

Fewer contributions? Or fewer companies abusing open-sourced code?

Most probably both. However this is probably for the best.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#16
"Corley denied the motion, and in doing so, set the precedent that licenses like the GNU GPL can be treated like legal contracts, and developers can legitimately sue when those contracts are breached."

The GNU GPL was written on the basis that if someone does not accept its terms, then that without any other license from the copyright holder, redistribution puts that person in violation of copyright law.

Suing for damages on the basis of a breach of copyright law clearly does not require any contract.

So this is more about a technicality of the legal process in this particular case, rather than anything about whether copyleft is legally enforceable or not in general.

Specifically, because the motion denial was based on the defendant's own admission being deemed to be the agreement of a contract, this says nothing about the general enforceability of the GPL (future defendants could simply avoid making such an admission).

Further, since the ruling was in response to a specific motion, it only concerns the claims made in that motion: about whether a contract exists in this particular case. It says nothing about the "copyright violation if you don't accept the license" mechanism of copyleft.

Finally, the article does not provide any evidence that there has been any ruling that determined that the GPL is an enforceable legal contract, contrary to its title. The ruling as quoted just says that the defendant, by its own admission, did accept to enter in to the GPL-defined contract.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#17
post #9

> That happened when Hancom issued a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the company didn’t sign anything, so the license wasn’t a real contract. ... so they admitted to the court that they willfully used the software without a license to do so?

This is what happens when you hire short-sighted attorneys with an unreasonable expectation of success.

What's funny is that Hancom is essentially arguing that shrink-wrap licenses (contracts) are unenforceable. Ghostscript was open sourced under the GNU GPL which states, in shrink-wrap fashion, that use of the software without an explicit commercial license binds the user to the GNU GPL. Integrated the software into their own closed-source software and distributing said closed-source software is unquestionable use.

At the same time, you can guarantee that Hancom would fully enforce their own shrink-wrap licenses - Terms of Use, Terms of Service, etc. - on others.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#18
The GPL has been upheld many times previously, e.g. in BusyBox enforcing its copyright.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits

In one enforcement, the defendant defaulted and the SFLC ended up with a pile of violating televisions!

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100803132055210

The enforceability of the GPL is in no way news. That anyone would continue to try to violate it is the real WTF.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#19
post #17
post #9

> That happened when Hancom issued a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the company didn’t sign anything, so the license wasn’t a real contract. ... so they admitted to the court that they willfully used the software without a license to do so?

This is what happens when you hire short-sighted attorneys with an unreasonable expectation of success. What's funny is that Hancom is essentially arguing that shrink-wrap licenses (contracts) are unenforceable . Ghostscript was open sourced under the GNU GPL which states, in shrink-wrap fashion, that use of the software without an explicit commercial license binds the user to the GNU GPL. Integrated the software int…

> states, in shrink-wrap fashion, that use of the software without an explicit commercial license binds the user to the GNU GPL

Not quite technically!

The way it works is: you have no permission by default under copyright. The only permission you have to copy is the GPL. If you obey it, fine. If not, you're just violating copyright like any other copyright violation.

This can be an important point: it's a license, not a contract.

It may be unfortunate that the judgement uses the word "contract", presumably because that's the word the defendant used.

Re: A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case

#20
post #16

"Corley denied the motion, and in doing so, set the precedent that licenses like the GNU GPL can be treated like legal contracts, and developers can legitimately sue when those contracts are breached." The GNU GPL was written on the basis that if someone does not accept its terms, then that without any other license from the copyright holder, redistribution puts that person in violation of copyright law. Suing for da…

In order to dismiss the motion, the court had to explain why the GNU GPL is an enforceable contract:

https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/califo...

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