On 10/12/2010 10:59 AM, RJack wrote:
On 10/12/2010 10:20 AM, Hyman Rosen wrote:
The GPL is a straightforward copyright license. Each time a
court has had an opportunity to read it, they regarded it as
such.
To which federal courts are you referring?
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals:
<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3689055814945636124> the
GPL ... is a cooperative agreement that facilitates production of new
derivative works
The Massachusetts District Court:
<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13584730711160488510>
With respect to the General Public License ("GPL"), MYSQL has not
demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits or
irreparable harm. Affidavits submitted by the parties' experts raise
a factual dispute concerning whether the Gemini program is a
derivative or an independent and separate work under GPL ¶ 2. After
hearing, MySQL seems to have the better argument here, but the matter
is one of fair dispute. Moreover, I am not persuaded based on this
record that the release of the Gemini source code in July 2001 didn't
cure the breach.
The N.D. Illinois District Court:
<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10652472992569528848>
The output of that program (the parser source code), however, is not
subject to the restrictions of the GPL — it is the creation of
plaintiff. FSF explicitly allowed for such commercial use of the
output by adopting the following exception to the GPL:
/* As a special exception, when this file is copied by Bison into a
Bison output file, you may use that output file without restriction.
This special exception was added by the Free Software Foundation in
version 1.24 of Bison */
There is no indication that Mackowiak, or any other Platinum or CA
employee, used a version of Bison older than 1.24. Therefore, even
though the output lines contain some of the utility source code, CA
is free to use the output files without restriction, as allowed by
the exception to the GPL.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals:
<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6365166943909134489>
That the Software had been distributed pursuant to a GNU General
Public License does not defeat trademark ownership, nor does this in
any way compel a finding that Darrah abandoned his rights in
trademark. Appellants misconstrue the function of a GNU General
Public License. Software distributed pursuant to such a license is
not necessarily ceded to the public domain and the licensor purports
to retain ownership rights, which may or may not include rights to a
mark.