Important Decision in JMRI vs Katzer!


Cjcrescent

Master Mechanic
This was the decision handed down in Washington DC on Aug 13, 2008.

Well done!

This was copied from the JMRI web site.


"The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued its
decision in our copyright appeal, and it's a ringing victory for JMRI and open-source in general. In summary, the Court decided:
  • The Artistic License does put valid conditions on the use of licensed software.
  • Those conditions limit the copyright license, and actions outside them are infringement.
  • An injunction to stop that infringement is a suitable remedy.
Specifically, the Court wrote:
It is outside the scope of the Artistic License to modify and distribute the copyrighted materials without copyright notices and a tracking of modifications from the original computer files. If a downloader does not assent to these conditions stated in the COPYING file, he is instructed to "make other arrangements with the Copyright Holder." Katzer/Kamind did not make any such "other arrangements." The clear language of the Artistic License creates conditions to protect the economic rights at issue in the granting of a public license. These conditions govern the rights to modify and distribute the computer programs and files included in the downloadable software package. The attribution and modification transparency requirements directly serve to drive traffic to the open source incubation page and to inform downstream users of the project, which is a significant economic goal of the copyright holder that the law will enforce. Through this controlled spread of information, the copyright holder gains creative collaborators to the open source project; by requiring that changes made by downstream users be visible to the copyright holder and others, the copyright holder learns about the uses for his software and gains others' knowledge that can be used to advance future software releases.​
The Appeals Court ruled that the lower court's decision is "vacated and remanded". This returns the case to the District Court for Northern California, which must decide on a remaining question before issuing the injunction.
Although there will be some further proceedings, this is a huge step forward for us. The appellate judges have ruled that when Kater took JMRI files, modified them, and distributed them as if there were his own, he was violating copyright law and we can hold him accountable."

PS; v 2.2 is available for those who haven't upgraded to the latest JMRI.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ah, I get it now. I didn't get the SourceForge connection. That really is great since authors of freeware now apparently have the same protection against infringement on their products as the giants like Microsoft.
 
Thanks CJ, that is good news!
Question: upgrade 2.2, is this install on top of the present version or do you have to save/copy files, delete old first?
 
Thanks CJ, that is good news!
Question: upgrade 2.2, is this install on top of the present version or do you have to save/copy files, delete old first?

Download new files. Install. It automatically installs over old files leaving the data files intact.
 



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