[Biobiz] open source licenses - legal issues?

[Andrew Dalke]

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