[Biobiz] open source licenses - legal issues?

[Tania Broveak Hide]

Sorry for responding so late to this post....

My understanding is that the bigger risk comes when folks who do not have
the explicit right to participate in open source projects do so.  For
example, when employees of organisations that claim full ownership of that
employee's intellectual property make contributions to open source projects
(which are within the course and/or scope of their work with their
employer).   The employer could claim that the employee did not have the
right to make the contribution.

I believe this is one of the issues raised when Steven Brenner suggested the
common open source friendly employment contract.  By having your employer
acknowledge your participation directly.  I am not aware of any particular
case law but in Steven's presentation from ORA Bio conference he states two:
  * UC Berkeley threatening to sue makers of open source software who were
acting nefariously
  * State of Georgia bringing criminal proceedings ($415K damages and up to
15 y in jail) against David McOwen for installing distributed.net's RC5
challenge
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/presentations/bio2002/5

I found an interesting site on the web, but haven't had a chance to dig into
much detail:
http://www.denniskennedy.com/opensourcelaw.htm
There is also a page on bioinformatics law, BTW.

So, nothing concrete, but hope it helps in any case!

Tania



----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Dalke" <dalke at dalkescientific.com>
To: "Commercial aspects of open source life science code"
<biobiz at open-bio.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 11:49 AM
Subject: Re: [Biobiz] open source licenses - legal issues?


> Ann Loraine:
> > I'm interested in finding out how the various open source licenses
> > have held up in court.
> >
> > Does anyone have any thoughts on this topic?  If yes, I would be very
> > interested in hearing them!
>
> As far as I'm aware, there have been very few cases where an open
> source license
> went to court.  Here's an essay about the GPL from the FSF's lawyer:
>    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html
>
>  > Despite the FUD, as a copyright license the GPL is absolutely solid.
> That's why
>  > I've been able to enforce it dozens of times over nearly ten years,
> without ever
>  > going to court.
>
> There was a lawsuit related to GPL and MySQL last here.  Here's one
> mention from
> http://www.politechbot.com/p-03196.html ; Declan McCullagh runs a great
> site.
>
>  > One interesting point: it did not appear that anyone was arguing that
> the
>  > GPL did not apply or was not a valid license. It sounded as though
> the GPL
>  > was treated as any other license would be in a software context.
>
> In a broader sense, very few software licenses have gone to court.  It's
> still not certain if various shrink-wrap licenses, which cannot be
> reviewed
> before purchasing, violate the Uniform Commercial Code.  That's what
> various software vendors have pushed the UCITA, the Uniform Computer
> Information Transactions Act, to make it legal.
>
> Beyond that, normal commercial licenses prohibit reverse-engineering,
> prohibit
> publishing critical reviews, and authorize vendor audits, all under the
> theory that the software isn't owned by the buyer, only 'rented' -
> licensed
> through a civil contract.  And as far as I know, this hasn't been well
> tested
> in court either.  Instead, there's a push to make software laws more
> and more
> stringent, without actually knowing if there's a problem or if the laws
> fix
> the problems, and to convince people that their fair use rights are
> non-existent.
>
> So I don't worry about the legal standing of open source licenses in
> court.
> If there's a problem with them, there will be a problem with
> proprietary licenses.
>
> Andrew
> dalke at dalkescientific.com
>
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