Phil writes: > ... >It could be very interesting indeed. > >What happens if one member of the open source community takes IP from >somewhere and places it into the open source project without informing >the others? > >Classicly anyone using that IP - even without knowing it even WAS >someone else's IP - could be pursued.
IMHO (IANAL) it depends on what protection the IP has. If a patent or copyright is involved there is a legal path - but the person who innocently used it is infringing but usually only gets a "cease and desist" order. There might be some financial penalties if the infringer made money off this - but (improperly) using something labelled as "open source" is probably a good defense. However "trade secrets" are usually only protected as long as they are secret. So once someone spills the beans, there is no problem with other people using the former trade secret. (But there could easily be a suit against the one spilling the beans - which is what I think is the substance of this suit.) >But how reasonable is it to expect everyone involved to follow an audit >trail for every modification ever proposed? Making each contributor >prove that their contributions were untrammeled would throttle the open >source movement. Perhaps the problem is reverse - the owner of IP who says that some open source material infringes, has to bring a complaint. This could take the form of a "cease and desist" letter to the distributors and/or users - and then prove it in court if the use doesn't stop. >Open source isn't named as a defendant in this, but it IS under attack. Yes it is - but only to some extent. The worst effect could be if people worried that systems running Linux might have to be taken down. Remember that Linux was up and running well before IBM contributed anything to Linux (AFAIK) and so this suit provides no basis for thinking that Linux will go away. But I'm sure that someone will use it for that purpose. -- --henry schaffer
