The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro bono legal services to protect and advance free and open source software (FOSS), today announced the formation of Moglen Ravicher LLC, a law firm which will represent select for-profit clients that support FOSS but are not eligible to receive SFLC's pro bono services.
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GNU General Public License considered very strong, still not challenged in court
You sometimes hear people trying to dismiss the GNU General Public License, the most popular of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) licenses, as being unenforceable. While there is a long list of companies that have been alleged to infringe the license, none of these companies seem to agree this license is unenforceable and opt to settle out of court rather than challenge the license.
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BusyBox Developers Agree To End GPL Lawsuit Against Verizon
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that agreements have been reached to dismiss the GPL enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC against Verizon Communications Inc. on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox. Verizon distributes BusyBox to its FiOS customers in devices that are provided to Verizon by Actiontec Electronics, Inc.
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Ending Software Patents
"Last week, the Free Software Foundation announced an important new initiative called End Software Patents whose goals are pretty evident from the project's name. So far, the initiative is backed by the FSF, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center [...] ESP can reach out farther than the FSF alone and build a coalition that can destroy software patents for the good of much more than the free software community..."
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Inside the SFLC's guide to legal management of FOSS projects
To help reduce the confusion for those managing software projects, the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has released a freely distributable guide entitled "A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects." Although only 45 pages long -- shorter if you don't count the front matter -- the primer still manages to provide a highly structured introduction to these issues that carefully outlines options and is full of practical advice.
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End Software Patents (ESP) Project Formed to Eliminate Software Patents
"End Software Patents, a project working toward the elimination of software patents, was launched today. The ESP project will initially focus on two approaches: 1) assisting corporations that choose to challenge software patents in the courts and at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on the basis that patents for software and designs with no physically innovative step have no legal validity, and 2) public education aimed at passing laws to protect software from patent law. [...] In a separate announcement today, ESP released its first report on the current state of software and business method patents. The report covers the economic impact of software patents, including the $11.4 billion that U.S. businesses waste each year on software patent litigation.
Read more »A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects
Our intended audience for this Primer is any person interested in a basic understanding of the legal issues that impact FOSS development and distribution.
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Software Freedom Law Center Publishes Legal Guide on Free Software
"... «By publishing this guide, we hope to share our knowledge, just as free software developers do when they share their creations with the world» said James Vasile, Counsel at SFLC. «I take great pride in this work put together by my colleagues, and I expect that it will be especially useful to developers of free software.» ..."
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SFLC Provides Ongoing GPLv3 Legal Support to FSF
"Earlier this week, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) released a document that explains and clarifies the meaning of the term “Program” in the GNU General Public License, version 3 (GPLv3). This document is an outcome of an ongoing collaboration between SFLC and the FSF..."
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McAfee Issues Warning Over 'Ambiguous' [Free Software] Licenses
"McAfee warned that license terms governing [Free Software] 'may result in unanticipated obligations regarding our products.' ..."
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Eben Moglen, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Eben Moglen is a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center, whose client list includes numerous pro bono clients, such as the Free Software Foundation..."
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A Conversation with Eben Moglen on Second Life
"...Moglen and Levine explore, in depth, the problem of defining digital public space and issues of privacy on the internet, offering many suggestions on how to implement online privacy enhancing technologies and insights as to how we could design the next generation of these technologies in responsible ways...."
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Open-source Samba gets inside look at Microsoft specs
A complicated third-party arrangement means that the open-source Samba project will be able to make use of proprietary documents describing Microsoft file-sharing software.
Samba, governed by the General Public License (GPL), lets Unix or Linux servers behave like Windows machines used to share files over a network and control networked printers. But the effort has been difficult: Microsoft doesn't go out of its way to share the details of the protocols; patent infringement concerns also have appeared more than once.
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BusyBox Developers File GPL Infringement Lawsuit Against Verizon Communications
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications, Inc. on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL). BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under GPL version 2.
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Open-source backer: Software a 'renewable' resource
As a lawyer, law professor and software programmer, Eben Moglen is passionate about technology, software and user freedom. A former board member of the Free Software Foundation and the founder, president and executive director of the Software Freedom Law Center in New York since 2005, Moglen has worked to protect and advance open source and free software.
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