Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project in 1983 so that people could use computers using only free software, allowing further modification of programs initially written by others. He established a non-profit organization, the Free Software Foundation, in 1985, to more formally organize the project. Stallman also invented copyleft, a legal mechanism to maintain the free status of a work on modified versions and implemented this through the GNU General Public License (GPL). This license has since been revised twice, known as the GPL Version 2^[1] and Version 3.^[2] The courts, mainly in the United States, have since grappled with the copyright, contractual and patent issues resulting from questions of legal validity of the GPL and other such off-shooting open source licenses.

This page includes significant open source license litigation to illustrate the courts past and current views on different licences and legal issues.

Open source license copyright litigation[edit]

Jacobsen v Katzer (2008)^[3][edit]

This was a lawsuit in the United States Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, considering the ability of a copyright holder to control the future distribution and modification of their work where they allow it to be free for public use.

Dec 09, 2014 So no, you have not obtain ‘commercial license’ from Artifex to use Ghostscript in your app. But if are not going to provide these four freedoms to your users, then yes, you’d better contact Artifex and ask them a price. By the way, Artifex is not pioneer of that practice of copyleft/proprietary bi-licensing, it is well-known for years. A non-commercial license is requested from CDP Studio. Select Help - License Manager and follow the instructions and a license key will be sent by e-mail. Applications you create with CDP Studio requires a runtime license if the application is required to run for more than 1 hour. Versions of Ghostscript between version 4.03 and 8.54 were also distributed under a more restrictive license disallowing commercial redistribution entirely. These versions were labelled 'AFPL Ghostsript' or just 'Ghostscript', and were governed by the Aladdin Free Public License. The Ghostscript fonts were developed in the PostScript Type 1 format but have been converted into the TrueType format, 31 30 usable by most current software, and are popularly used within the open-source community. You do not need a commercial license from Artifex. Views Read Edit View history. Ghostscript: Ghostscript 8.

Jacobsen made code available for public download under an open source public license, Artistic License 1.0, which Katzer copied into their own commercial software products without recognition of the source of the code. Jacobsen argued that the terms of the license defined the scope what the code could be used for and that any use outside of these restrictions would be a copyright infringement. The license holder here expressly stated the terms upon which the right to modify and distribute the material depended.

I want to use GNU-GhostScript-9.06 commercially which is distributed under GNU-GPLV3 License. This License says that - GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program to make sure it remains free software for all its users.

Psd templates for photographers free download. MEX TREVOR LOGISTIC & Transport PSD Template is a the best design for Businnes 2018. Any kinds of Businnes One page & e-Commerce Template Based on Bootstrap, 12 column Responsive grid Template. “MEX TREVOR LOGISTIC” is a smooth and colorful PSD Template, perfect suitable for, Businnes PSD Template.

The Court of Appeals established that these license terms are enforceable copyright conditions. Katzer had failed to affix the required copyright notices to the derivative software, which therefore was an infringement of the license. This case established that violations of open source licenses can be treated as copyright claims.

BusyBox litigation (2007-13)[edit]

During 2007 to 2009, Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) filed a series of copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf the principal developers of BusyBox. These lawsuits claimed violations of the GNU General Public License Version 2.

In September 2007 they filed a lawsuit against Monsoon Multimedia, Inc. alleging that Monsoon had violated the GPL by including BusyBox code in some of their products without releasing the source code. In October 2007, an SFLC press release announced that the lawsuit had been settled with Monsoon agreeing to comply with the GPL and pay a sum of money to the plaintiffs.

In November 2007 they filed a lawsuit against Xterasys Corporation and High-Gain Antennas, LLC. In December 2007, SFLC announced a settlement; Xterasys agreed to stop shipping infringing products until it published the complete source code for the GPL’d code and to pay an undisclosed sum to the plaintiffs. In December 2007 SFLC filed a lawsuit against Verizon Communications, Inc. alleging that Verizon had violated the GPL by distributing BusyBox in wireless routers bundled with the FiOS fiber optic bandwidth service, without providing corresponding source code. A settlement announced In March 2008, included an agreement to comply with the GPL and an undisclosed sum paid to the plaintiffs.

In December 2009, they filed a lawsuit against 14 companies, including Best Buy, Samsung, and Westinghouse with the same allegations of violation of the GPL. By the end of September 2013, all of the defendant companies had agreed on settlement terms, except for Westinghouse, against whom default judgment was entered.

Free Software Foundation, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc (2009)[edit]

Ghostscript commercial license price list

This was a lawsuit initiated by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) against Cisco Systems on December 11, 2008 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The FSF claimed that various products sold by Cisco under the Linksys brand had violated the licensing terms of many programs on which FSF held copyright, including GCC, GNU Binutils, and the GNU C Library. Most of these programs were licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2, and a few under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

The Software Freedom Law Center acted as the FSF's lawyers in the case, asking the court to enjoin Cisco from further distributing Linksys firmware that contained FSF copyrighted code, and also asked for damages amounting from all profits that Cisco received 'from its unlawful acts.' The FSF contended that code to which it held the copyright was found in multiple Linksys models, and in the program QuickVPN.

On May 20, 2009 the parties announced a settlement that included Cisco appointing a director to ensure Linksys products comply with free-software licenses, and Cisco making an undisclosed financial contribution to the FSF.

Open source license as a contract litigation[edit]

Artifex Software Inc v Hancom Inc (2017)^[4][edit]

Leading on from Jacobsen v Katzer this case, from the United States District Court, N.D. California, focused on the breaches of open source software licenses, but extended to contract breaches as well as copyright infringements. Artifex is the exclusive licensor of the software product, ‘Ghostscript’, under the GNU General Public License Version 3. Hancom is

Ghostscript Commercial License Price