Will we Ever Have a GPL Test Case?
Submitted by srlinuxx on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 12:15.
The GNU General Public License is nearly 20 years old (version 1 came out in 1989). In that time there have been at least 100 million lawsuits filed in the US (and that's a conservative estimate). Amazingly enough, not one of those millions of court cases has actually tested the GPL's validity. How can that be - and is it a problem for the open source software movement?
In recent years, the Software Freedom Law Center has brought legal action on behalf of developers using the GPL for their products a number of times. They've sued on behalf of the developers of BusyBox, whose use as an embedded shell seems to make it particularly attractive to those who would ignore the license terms.
The most recent of these cases, against telecommunications giant Verizon was settled (as we reported) out of court.
FUD
I keep seeing this FUD, also in 451 Group Blog recently.
The GPL has already won.
Not in the US. Planet Earth != USA.