http://blog.actonline.org/2008/08/be-careful-what.html
------- August 21, 2008 Be Careful What You Wish For: How the Jacobsen v. Katzer Decision Could Hurt the Free Software Movement Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in Jacobsen v. Katzer, issued a very important decision in a case of first impression relating to the enforcement of software licenses. In particular, it was the first federal appellate court decision to clarify whether failure to follow obligations imposed by an open-source license results in copyright infringement or breach of contract. The distinction is important, as it controls the remedies available for such a failure, and can impact the question of whether lawsuits can be filed in state or federal court. As Larry Lessig says, trust me, this is huge. This may be true in ways that the free software movement did not foresee and ways that the movement may very well regret. [...] Make no mistake this decision strengthens the hand of copyright holders, a large number of which are the types of commercial organizations that insist on being paid for their hard work when their products are successful in the marketplace. By pressing for a short-term victory, the free software movement may have sown the seeds of its own defeat. ------- regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
