Open source software licenses are not contracts
Posted by Emil A. Georgiev on 17 January, 2009
The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has recently resolved an uncertainty within US copyright law, namely whether open source license terms constitute a (copyright) “license” or just a “contract”. This appears quite funny to a continental european legal as in his or her understanding the license is just one sort of contract. Not this way in US. The major difference between “licenses” and “contracts” lies however in terms of procedural law. In a copyright infringement procedeeings the possibility to seek and obtain injunctive relief is available only if a license is affected, whereas this door is closed in the event of contract enforcement.
Although the authority in Jacobsen does not deal with GNU GPL being the most important open source license, it is still very important as open source issues are virtually never settled before court. One may remain curious as whether further authorities will follow.
adolushanov said
Here is a very interesting article about this case by Bruce Perens, the creator of the Open Source Definition. It seems that if the Court of Appeals took the side of Katzer this could put to threat even huge open source projects like Linux, Apache and Wikipedia. This judge saved the world from a new Stone age of internet.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3775446_1/Bruce-Perens-A-Big-Change-for-Open-Source.htm