Open Source Software Licensing Stands Legal In Court
For the first time, court lays down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers. This means now all open source licenses are enforceable. From the article:
An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux. The man who prompted that decision could be described as the worst enemy a Free Software project could have. This is the story of how our community was able to benefit from that enemy.
For a decade there'd been questions: Are Open Source licenses enforceable at all? Are their terms, calling for a patent detente or disclosure of source code, legal?
=> Bruce Perens: A Big Change for Open Source (via ./)
You may find Software Freedom Law Center web site useful. It provide legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The Center now represents many of the most important and well-established free software and open source projects.
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Tags: appeals court, free software project, gnu, legal foundation, Linux, open source developers, open source licenses, open source software, patent, software licensing, source code, wikipedia
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