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Filed under: News, Open Source

US Court rules in favor of "open source" copyright

CC GPL
Over the past few years, we've seen a number of artists, software developers and others release their work under non-traditional copyright licenses. Historically, copyright laws have been used to prevent others from redistributing your work. But Creative Commons and the GNU General Public License allow content makers to distribute their work for free -- while insisting upon certain conditions.

For example, there are Creative Commons licenses that would let you write a poem and allow anyone to publish that poem on their web site as long as they provide proper attribution. Or you can use the GNU GPL to release a piece of software that others can distribute for free, or even charge a fee for -- as long as they continue to make the source code available for free.

Up until now, the validity of these licenses hasn't really been put to the test. But on Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a San Francisco court ruling dealing with just these issues. Basically, a software developer who published model train software was using code that had been released for free. But he did not give credit to the developers of the original software, despite the fact that the license required him to do so.

When the guy who developed the open original application filed suit, the San Fransisco court ruled that the terms of the license were too broad to be enforceable. But this week's ruling overturns that decision which means that software developers, musicians, artists, and others who release their work under an "open source" license have a reasonable expectation that the terms of the license will be enforceable -- at least until some schmuck comes along and takes the case to the Supreme Court.

Filed under: Business, Internet

Does product activation suck?

Across two posts, Charles Miller describes an unfortunate experience with re-registering NewsFire, a popular Mac RSS client. NewsFire's developer, Dave Watanabe, implemented a registration system that simply asks for the email address used to register the software, which the app then checks against a central server Watanabe maintains.

The problem arose when Miller tried to re-activate NewsFire after switching Macs and wiping Mac OS X a couple of times (he goofs around with OS seeds and a lot of software). After one too many activations, NewsFire eventually told him that his email was no longer valid, in which case Miller emailed Watanabe to see what was going on. Check out Watanabe's response:
While you may now activate your software again, the evidence suggests that you've activated your single-user license from a suspiciously wide variety of locations. An explanation would be appreciated. I don't want to have to presume this is breach of license.
This 'interesting' response prompted Miller to explore the many and unfortunately ugly faces of product activation (as well as the fine line between customer service and disservice), and plenty of questions have resurfaced in the ongoing discussion of software and licensing. Is replacing a registration name and key with nothing but an email address a good idea? How about tying a key to specific hardware? Can we trust users with activation systems that *don't* phone home? Should these complications force product activation in the nether-regions of our hard drives, or is there a better idea on the horizon?

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

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