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The GNU General Public License is nearly 20 years old (version 1 came out in 1989). In that time there have been at least 100 million lawsuits filed in the US (and that's a conservative estimate). Amazingly enough, not one of those millions of court cases has actually tested the GPL's validity. How can that be - and is it a problem for the open source software movement?

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Created by peacemaker 13 years 52 weeks ago
Category: Legal   Tags:
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aboutblank

13 years 52 weeks 5 hours 15 min ago

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We Don't Need a Test Case

It's very easy to understand why there is little activity about GPL violations (up to 2006, the year of Tivoisation and the Ms/Novell deal). The GPL is a licence to distribute/convey an authorship that is specifically intended for computer programs (though it is not limited to computer programs). If the GPLs were somehow invalidated, then there would be no right for a licensee to convey a copyrighted work; they would be infringing copyright law if they distributed a copyright work without permission given to them by the GPL. The penalties for infringing copyright is far higher than the requirements of complying with the GPL thus, it would clearly be in everyone's best interest to either comply with the licences or avoid becoming subject to that licence by rejecting all GPLd code.

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