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The Lawyers are coming
A law firm called Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP has announced that it is available to help companies deal with their "open source issues." "For example, businesses that
modify Open Source code for internal use may be surprised that seemingly
innocuous actions may initiate distribution requirements, which could force
them to give away their customized software for free, or at a modest cost, to
their competitors." This company also runs OSLawBlog, claimed to be a weblog on open source legal issues; many visitors may be more struck by its obnoxious advertisements than the legal reasoning to be found there, though.
There will be more where these folks came from. (Log in to post comments)
The Lawyers are coming Posted Nov 23, 2004 15:52 UTC (Tue) by juanjux (guest, #11652) [Link] For example, businesses that modify Open Source code for internal use may be surprised that seemingly innocuous actions may initiate distribution requirements, which could force them to give away their customized software for free, or at a modest cost, to their competitorsI wouldn't hire them because they don't seem to have the slightless clue on the matter.
The Lawyers are coming Posted Nov 23, 2004 16:16 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] You are probably not their target audience; they will be after clueless managers who can be scared easily. Will they find many of them? Now that would be an interesting point.
The Lawyers are coming Posted Nov 27, 2004 20:41 UTC (Sat) by Xman (guest, #10620) [Link] They aren't entirely wrong. For example, the Sleepycat License has this kind of gotcha in it.
What we don't need Posted Nov 23, 2004 17:21 UTC (Tue) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link] What if some friends of Microsoft collaborated on a lawsuit bringing bogus charges of copyright abuse toward an unknowing company. The company hires a Microsoft funded legal firm which in turn mis-represents the GPL, looses the case thus setting legal precedent. The judgement is that the company can stop using or bundling the offending software and walk away free and clear. The company being as weak in the head as they are the wallet cut their losses.
I wouldn't be surprised if during contract negotiations one of the questions from Microsoft isn't "Who are your 3 closest competitors?", and then to find out six months after you've signed a seven figure renewal contract that a competitor that's been driving you under because they switched to Linux a few years back is having legal difficulty.
What we don't need Posted Nov 23, 2004 19:05 UTC (Tue) by ajkessel (subscriber, #25721) [Link] Under the scenario you present, future litigants could challenge the earlier litigation as "sham litigation." This kind of thing used to happen in the era of neighborhood racially-restrictive covenants: in order to establish the validity of a racially-restrictive covenant, one neighbor would claim that it intended to sell its house to someone of another race in order to provoke a lawsuit. But in fact that neighbor had no intent to sell the property and just wanted to preclude future claims. See, e.g., http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1984/S... (Hansberry v. Lee).
In any case, it's important not to overstate the effect of a "precedent" making decision on the GPL. Although courts are likely to look to other court decisions interpreting the same document, future litigants are not going to be bound by a judgment to which they were not a party.
Forking the licensing Posted Nov 23, 2004 18:22 UTC (Tue) by jcollardx01 (guest, #13784) [Link] In years past, Microsoft gained control due, in part, to the forking of Unix. Today, they may maintain control because of the forked licensing of OSS. There is no possible united front as long as lawyers can scare many non-OSS away from all OSS due to some obscure license that applies on only a few OSS based packages.
Forking the licensing Posted Nov 24, 2004 8:41 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] Who cares about "obscure licences". As an end user, the ONLY thing I care about is whether the licence fits the OSD or DFSG. If it does, as an *end* *user*, I can ignore the licence in complete and total safety.
Cheers,
The Lawyers are coming Posted Nov 23, 2004 22:51 UTC (Tue) by jedward (guest, #26210) [Link] You want to know what innocuous actions can be. IBM lawyers gave IBM engineers explicit instructions in 1999 on how to make a presentation to Linus on how linux runs on s390 ---- inside a ibm law, inside a ibm premise and make sure linus himself don't take anything out the door.
The Lawyers are coming Posted Nov 23, 2004 22:56 UTC (Tue) by jedward (guest, #26210) [Link] I meant inside IBM lab.
The Lawyers are coming Posted Nov 24, 2004 17:19 UTC (Wed) by j_heald (guest, #15398) [Link] See also Black Duck software compliance, of Waltham, Massachusetts:
http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=puttinglawyer...
Ok, everyone's missing the fundamental point again: Posted Nov 30, 2004 20:46 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] "For example, businesses that modify Open Source code for internal use may be surprised that seemingly innocuous actions may initiate distribution requirements, which could force them to give away their customized software for free, or at a modest cost, to their competitors."Ok, and that would ... be? Software which the company in question has based on GPL'd other code which they did not have to invest the money to create? Everyone who has this argument seems always to miss that fundamental point: you receive value from GPL'd code you use: you don't have to pay to create it. That is why you're enjoined to treat that code and it's deerivative works in the fashion the license requires: if you don't, you are *stealing* something of demonstrative value. After all, if it *didn't* have that demonstrative value *to you*, you wouldn't use it in the first place, right? (I make, personally, a kindred argument about movie producers who steal a title and author for a movie that has little or nothing to do with the book (like, oh, "Starship Troopers"?): clearly this is fradulent, because the audience *who liked the book* are your target audience for the movie; if they weren't, you wouldn't have bothered spending the license money, right?) But, of course, this may all be Just Me. So many things are Just Me.
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