[Solar-general] Otra victoria en la corte de la GPL

[Sebastian Bassi]

En pocas palabras: Si no estas de acuerdo con la GPL, nouses el codigo
que viene con esa licencia.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080508212535665

The GPL Wins Again - Welte vs. Skype Technologies SA (Germany)
Thursday, May 08 2008 @ 09:46 PM EDT

Today was the hearing in Skype's appeal of an earlier judgment against
it for a GPL violation. Harald Welte, as part of the
gpl-violations.org project, brought the matter to court in Germany
back in February of 2007, seeking to enforce the GPL against Skype.
The case is Welte vs. Skype Technologies SA, and he won an injunction
in the lower court. But Skype wanted to appeal to the higher court in
Munich, alleging ... hahahaha ... well, something about antitrust, à
la Dan Wallace, I gather. You'll recall the Wallace v. FSF appeals
court ruled on that theory in the US already:

    The GPL encourages, rather than discourages, free competition and
the distribution of computer operating systems, the benefits of which
directly pass to consumers. These benefits include lower prices,
better access and more innovation.

Just in case Skype is thinking deep second thoughts tonight.

Well, today was the hearing, and Welte reports that one of the judges
told Skype's lawyer that if a copyright owner wants a publisher to
publish his book in a "green envelope" (dust jacket), it might seem
odd to the publisher, but he can't publish without the green envelope.
In short, don't touch the GPL code if you don't follow the
requirements of the license.

Like it or lump it. I think that's how one would translate into
English the judge's mindset.

At that, after a break, Skype decided to accept the lower court
decision and skip the appeal. And so the GPL wins again.

To all those who don't like the license: you don't have to use it.
Just write your own code. But if you want to use GPL code, the license
comes with it. It's a package deal. Thanks.

Here's what Welte reports:

    The court hearing in the "Welte vs. Skype Technologies SA" case
went pretty well. Initially the court again suggested that the two
parties might reach some form of amicable agreement. We indicated that
this has been discussed before and we're not interested in settling
for anything less than full GPL compliance.

    The various arguments by Skype supporting their claim that the GPL
is violating German anti-trust legislation as well as further claims
aiming at the GPL being invalid or incompatible with German
legislation were not further analyzed by the court. The court stated
that there was not enough arguments and material brought forward by
Skype to support such a claim. And even if there was some truth to
that, then Skype would not be able to still claim usage rights under
that very same license.

    The lawyer representing Skype still continued to argue for a bit
into that direction, which resulted one of the judges making up an
interesting analogy of something like: "If a publisher wants to
publish a book of an author that wants his book only to be published
in a green envelope, then that might seem odd to you, but still you
will have to do it as long as you want to publish the book and have no
other agreement in place".

    In the end, the court hinted twice that if it was to judge about
the case, Skype would not have very high chances. After a short break,
Skype decided to revoke their appeals case and accept the previous
judgement of the lower court (Landgericht Muenchen I, the decision was
in my favor) as the final judgement. This means that the previous
court decision is legally binding to Skype, and we have successfully
won what has probably been the most lengthy and time consuming case so
far.


-- 
Sebastián Bassi (セバスティアン). Diplomado en Ciencia y Tecnología.
Curso Biologia molecular para programadores: http://tinyurl.com/2vv8w6
Mostrá tu código: http://www.pastecode.com.ar
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