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GPL supported by JMRI case | 197 comments | Create New Account
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GPL supported by JMRI case
Authored by: tiger99 on Friday, September 14 2012 @ 05:46 PM EDT
I think that was the most important defeat of violators of a FOSS license so far, in the US. It did not involve the GPL, but it would be rather difficult to see that as more than a mere technicality, as a FOSS license was successfully upheld and there is not a lot of difference in principle. Look at it as violating the only licence that was available to allow copying, and thus falling foul of simple copyright law, and it seems to me (IANAL) that it scarcely matters what the licence was, the problem was that they breached its terms, resulting in a simple case of copying with no valid license to do so.

Even a very weak license like BSD would stand up to that, I think. And, there are ways of violating the BSD license, such as failing to include the licence on the copy you distribute. Every license has conditions that you can violate, if you are sufficiently stupid, or just plain criminal.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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