[Leaplist] Opensource court ruling.

[Bryan J. Smith]

I don't remotely understand your question.

At first glance, it sounds like you made the assumption that open source
does not have copyright.  That is wholly incorrect.  No rights change because
someone releases it under an open source license unless explicitly granted
or otherwise given up, as with any other license.

Anything one creates has copyright if one claims it.  And with a copyright,
one is free to license as they wish.  All rights are reserved to the copyright
holder, such as a creator of software.  Others have to license that copyright
material before they can use, distribute, etc... it.

In this case, this copyright holder offered use of the software under the terms
of an open source license.  Another developer decided not to use it under the
terms that license, so that developer had no license.  He was in violation of
the copyright of the holder, use, distribution, etc... without a license.

The latter party went one step further by removing all copyright and ownership
claims from the code.  He attempted everything to hide the original creator and
all copyrights to the code the original developer had.  And that caused him to
violate yet another common law, terms under the DMCA.

Now this article did not pay attention to detail.  I invite you to read the Wikipedia
page on the case, which is linked to by the article:  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer  

Understand, and I am not a lawyer.

But as a developer, I *MUST* default to knowing ...
- Open source is copyrighted
- Open source is licensed
- Open source is *NOT* "public domain" (unless explicitly stated)
- You *MUST* license open source like any other software, commercial or open

Understand open source merely offers terms under license(s) that do not require
another agreement.  If I follow those terms, I can assume I can use, distribute, etc...
the software under those terms without requiring another, negotiated license.

Furthermore:  
- It is an additional violation of the DMCA to remote copyright and ownership
  from open source, just like other software

This last part is really where this guy f'd up.  ;)

________________________________
From: Andy Lino <andylino at hotmail.com>

  http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1294&tag=nl.e101

Help me  out here. So does this mean opensource is not opensource?

or that opensource software can have a copyright notice and untouchable?

The article said that the removal of the copyright was a violation of the 
Digital Millennium Copyright Act…so legal precedent was present.

Andy

The program said "Requires Windows 98 or better to run properly." So I installed Linux.

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