The court did not heed the complaints of Skype on the brutality of the GPL
The litigation of the German GPL and Skype activists lasted more than a year. As a result, the process ended a few days ago with a complete and final victory for the GPL. Skype has dropped its appeals. Now, merchants will be required to print the full text of the GPL license and put it in a box with each Linux phone , as well as distribute the source of the firmware along with the phone, and no web links are acceptable here.
It all began in February last year, when Harald Welt, the founder of the gpl-violations.org website, filed a lawsuit against Skype in the Munich District Court. A few months later, the court announced the verdict that the license and source should really be invested in the box.
However, Skype did not reconcile with this outcome and filed an appeal to a higher court, citing a strange argument that the GPL "violates Germany’s antitrust laws." Of course, this ridiculous argument had no effect on the verdict of the court, so the result was the same. Skype really has to comply with the requirements of the GPL license, no matter how strange they may be. Plaintiff Harald Welt says that during the trial, the judge cited the Skype lawyer as an example: if the copyright holder of a book wants his work to appear in a dust jacket, this may seem strange to the publisher, but he has no right to publish the book without this dust jacket. . In other words, the GPL code cannot be used if you are not able to fulfill the license requirements.
This is not the first time that developers complain about the cruelty of the GPL, are inclined to favor the more liberal LGPL, or develop their own licenses at all. According to statistics from the largest archives of free software Sourceforge.net and Freshmeat.net, in recent years, the share of the GPL has decreased by several percent.
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via LinuxDevices
It all began in February last year, when Harald Welt, the founder of the gpl-violations.org website, filed a lawsuit against Skype in the Munich District Court. A few months later, the court announced the verdict that the license and source should really be invested in the box.
However, Skype did not reconcile with this outcome and filed an appeal to a higher court, citing a strange argument that the GPL "violates Germany’s antitrust laws." Of course, this ridiculous argument had no effect on the verdict of the court, so the result was the same. Skype really has to comply with the requirements of the GPL license, no matter how strange they may be. Plaintiff Harald Welt says that during the trial, the judge cited the Skype lawyer as an example: if the copyright holder of a book wants his work to appear in a dust jacket, this may seem strange to the publisher, but he has no right to publish the book without this dust jacket. . In other words, the GPL code cannot be used if you are not able to fulfill the license requirements.
This is not the first time that developers complain about the cruelty of the GPL, are inclined to favor the more liberal LGPL, or develop their own licenses at all. According to statistics from the largest archives of free software Sourceforge.net and Freshmeat.net, in recent years, the share of the GPL has decreased by several percent.
')
via LinuxDevices
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/25209/
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