Lawrence Lessig calls for huge and important news reporting that the “Intellectual Property” court in the US has upheld a open source copyright license, while Mark Radcliffe talks about a major victory for open source.
The license discussed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) was the Artistic License, in the Jacobsen vs Katzer case. The CAFC reversed the previous District Court’s decision, finding that Katzer, not respecting Artistic License’s requirements, was liable for copyright infringement.
Open Source Piracy? No thanks! by mrs.reed
Matt Asay, Richard Koman and Savio Rodrigues are doing an excellent job spreading the word about this breaking news, telling how important is for the open source world.
Savio included also me in the discussion, referring to a post of mine claiming that the BSA should also help protect open source products.
Certainty by an important US Court is a good start, but we need help to fight against “open source piracy“. In the BSA there are already enough companies already benefiting from open source, let’s see if any of them will eventually spend a word for the open source cause.
Technorati Tags: Open Source Piracy, Commercial Open Source, software piracy, BSA
While the appeals court decision is certainly an important move for software creators, and one that organizations should review carefully, it should not scare people from using open source within development. More and more companies that are using open source code are doing so in the right way, so that licensing and other obligations are met. Black Duck sees the court decision as more of a wake up call to software development organizations without a proper open source use policy in place, rather than an industry-shifting milestone.
Open source is becoming an increasingly important and strategic component of today’s software development process - enabling faster and more cost effective product evolution. Underscoring its importance, Gartner recently found that 47% of the companies surveyed say they are using code from external sources. A large number of these organizations have well-established policies for open source use and adoption that take into account license obligations. The combination of proprietary and open source software has created a hybrid software development model that definitely requires careful attention to licensing - but can be managed.
Developers and their organizations should have a clear understanding of what’s inside their software components, no matter how seemingly insignificant, in order to avoid legal, financial and business ramifications. Open source code analysis is not about policing developers or prohibiting use, it provides a clear, concise and efficient way to track open source use and license restrictions- a necessity of doing business in a world in which software development is an open field.
-Peter Vescuso, Black Duck Software