Sunday, September 24, 2006

GPL upheld in Germany. Again.

Groklaw has the story of yet another court victory for the GPL in Germany. This is the second such court ruling in Germany, which I find ironic as I was once involved in a heated argument with a German law professor who assured me that open source licensing in general, and the GPL in particular, were invalid under German law.

GPL violations brought the suit in Frankfurt against wireless device manufacturer D-Link, who apparently had been infringing parts of the Linux kernel, which is licensed under the GPL.

Yet another victory for open source, and further erosion of the old FUD "the GPL hasn't been tested in court".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andres, yo entendia que el primer caso en Alemania no tocaba exactamente el problema de validez de la GNU GPL, en estricto sentido eso haria que este fuera el primero.... no???

Andres Guadamuz said...

Hola Carolina,

Según tengo entendido, el primer caso trató la validez de ciertas cláusulas de la GPL, precisamente las secciones 2, 3 y 4. La corte también declaró que la GPL es un contrato válido de acuerdo al Código Civil Alemán.