[License-discuss] Linking question

[Lawrence Rosen]

Bruce Perens wrote:
> Despite the fact that Larry and those law review folks are sure about
> the linking question, every party who would benefit from a case going
> according to Larry's interpretation has settled their case with the GPL
> licensor rather than invest what is necessary for a court to make a
> determination.

This is misleading. AFAIK, every case that has been brought about the GPL to-date has alleged the simple failure to include a copy of the GPL license and the source code of the GPL software with the distribution. NOBODY has ever alleged in court that merely linking to a GPL program creates a derivative work requiring the disclosure of the linking code. NOBODY has ever settled such a case such that their code must be released.

Pure FUD.

/Larry




> -----Original Message-----
> From: license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org [mailto:license-discuss-
> bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Perens
> Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2012 9:44 PM
> To: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0
> from OSI process
> 
> On 03/01/2012 09:09 PM, Chris Travers wrote:
> > You seem to say "do not link" and thus repeat more or less what the
> > FSF says (and what Rosen spends a good time arguing against in his
> > book, and he is by no means alone--- at least in any law review
> > articles I have been able to find and read the overall trend is
> > overwhelmingly against seeing linking as having much to do with
> > derivation).
> My goal isn't to help my customers win after they're sued, it's to
> prevent them from ever being in a lawsuit at all. And you do that by
> staying away from some issues.
> 
> Despite the fact that Larry and those law review folks are sure about
> the linking question, every party who would benefit from a case going
> according to Larry's interpretation has settled their case with the GPL
> licensor rather than invest what is necessary for a court to make a
> determination.
> 
> So, what do you do? You stay away from that issue and arrive at an
> engineering solution that avoids it.
> > which seems to be a fools errand: giving an engineering answer to a
> > legal question.
> Only a fool's errand if the engineer doesn't have good legal support,
> or if the lawyer isn't able to work with engineers. I address that a
> little differently, by acting as a consulting engineer who works for
> the attorney and has experience in this particular sort of case.
> > My sense (as a non-lawyer) is that communications from a project are
> > very much likely to affect the scope of the license, and that
> > downstream developers are likely to be able to reasonably rely on
> > communications from a project that some practices are safe in their
> eyes.
> About the worst thing engineers can do is attempt to make legal
> determinations without proper counsel and the necessary training. They
> invariably get it wrong and they can be made to look really stupid in
> court by a competent expert witness. Relying on what they say about
> legal issues of their own projects would be ill-advised. Instead, learn
> how to engineer around the gray areas.
> 
>      Thanks
> 
>      Bruce