Actually, it's slightly more subtle than that. You can always sue
anyone in this great United States of America. After this decision
though, if the bad guys appropriate your OSS and don't live up to the
license, they're automatically copyright violators.<br>
<br>
The alternative theory was that the license was some kind of
'contract', and so in order to win your case you'd have to not only
prove the violation, but also convince the court of a bunch of other
unrelated stuff about the GPL and your rights over your creation. And
then ( IF you won), the court would get to set the amount of
money you got pretty much by whim. This development makes it a whole
lot more likely that you can sue and win, and that once you've won
you'll actually recover some reasonable sum.<br>
<br>
Groklaw has much more detailed coverage ( <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008081313212422">http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008081313212422</a> ).<br>
<br>
-- CHS<br>
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/15/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jeff Lightner</b> <<a href="mailto:jlightner@water.com">jlightner@water.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<div>
<p dir="ltr"><span lang="en-us"></span><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080815/ap_on_hi_te/tec_free_software_lawsuit;_ylt=AoNx14B697XQlfeJF73IC6BI2ocA" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><span lang="en-us"></span><span lang="en-us"><u><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080815/ap_on_hi_te/tec_free_software_lawsuit;_ylt=AoNx14B697XQlfeJF73IC6BI2ocA</font></u></span><span lang="en-us"></span></a><span lang="en-us"></span><span lang="en-us"></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">Basically says if a commercial company appropriates OSS but doesn</font></span><span lang="en-us"></span><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">'</font></span><span lang="en-us"></span><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial" size="2">t make what they offer OSS they can be sued.</font></span><span lang="en-us"></span><span lang="en-us"></span></p>
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