On Mar 20, 1:30 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> GNU General Public License considered very strong, still not challenged in
> court
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | You sometimes hear people trying to dismiss the GNU General Public License,
> | the most popular of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) licenses,
> | as being unenforceable. While there is a long list of companies that have
> | been alleged to infringe the license, none of these companies seem to agree
> | this license is unenforceable and opt to settle out of court rather than
> | challenge the license.
> |
> | [...]
> |
> | Please remember this fact when you hear people trying to dismiss the GPL as
> | unenforceable. Some very large and successful companies have been accused of
> | infringing the GPL, and they have all opted to comply with the license rather
> | than challenge it. I believe they companies understand how enforceable the
> | GPL is, and recognize they could not win against it in court.
> `----
Those who try and argue that the GPL is unenforceable are in effect
trying to argue that copyright law is unenforceable. No court will
'buy' that proposition.
There are two steps in any copyright infringement case:
1. Is the work subject to copyright? Most GNU / Linux stuff is
except for some very old 'open' code. The GPL does not even come into
the equation at that point.
2. Is there a copyright infringement? Yes, unless the defendant can
wave around the GPL to show that he has not infringed copyright. If
the GPL was unenforceable, it would be useless as a defence against
copyright infringement claims.
|
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