Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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GPL lawsuits

Author:	Mark A. Hershberger
Posted:	8/25/2000; 10:47:30 PM
Topic:	Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:	20307 (In response to 20305)
Prev/Next:	20306 / 20308

To my knowlege, the GPL is not court-tested. The FSF has managed to get people and companies to comply with the terms of the GPL out-of-court so far when it has found violations. Other people (Linus Torvalds, for example) have allowed violations to a certain degree.

I don't think anyone who uses it is especially anxious to court-test the GPL, and so far everyone has been mostly honest about the whole thing. A determined person could really take it to court, though and then all this theoretical bickering about the validity of it would be over -- well, probably not, but there'd at least be the beginning of legal precedent.

Mark.

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