[lugm.org] Fwd: [FTF-Legal] Mildly GPL related case in Supreme Court of Mauritius

Tue Jun 28 13:24:18 UTC 2011

Dear all,

I have just received this email from Philip Hands in the UK referring to a
case currently in the Supreme Court of Mauritius. It would seem that the two
parties involved have different opinions on what an open source license
really is, more specifically the GPL. Someone called Harald Welte has
written a post on his blog on this matter.

A few months ago, someone called me at work asking me about what the GPL
really means but I am not sure whether he is one of the parties concerned.

What do you think?

Avinash

---
From: Philip Hands <phil at hands.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 4:01 PM
Subject: [FTF-Legal] Mildly GPL related case in Supreme Court of Mauritius

Hi Avinash,

I'm forwarding this to your mailing list in the hope that someone on
the list knows how to inform your Supreme Court properly.  It wasn't
clear to me if that was a subscriber-only list though, so I'm also
sending it to you direct, as you appear to to be the founder of the
LUG. I hope that's OK.

Here is the main point from the attached mail:

 http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/06/27/

in which you can see that someone from http://www.linuxsolutions.mu/
seem to be claiming (under oath) that there is no difference between GPL
licensed software, and Public Domain.

I'm sure that any feedback that you have would be welcome, either on the
ftf-legal-bounces at fsfeurope.org mailing list, or perhaps if you get in
touch with Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>, and he can then update
his blog (of course, you're welcome to reply to me as well).

Cheers, Phil.

P.S. FYI I'm a long-time Debian Developer, and have hosted the Debian UK
mirror (ftp.uk.debian.org) since the mid 90's -- and I make occasional
contributions to the Free Software Foundation Europe mailing list where
this issue came up.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>
To: ftf-legal at fsfeurope.org
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:58:53 +0200
Subject: [FTF-Legal] Mildly GPL related case in Supreme Court of Mauritius
Hi,

since I don't expect everyone here is following my blog, I would like to
post a small notice here: http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/06/27/

The case is mostly about whether or not a freelancing contractor
(defendant) has broken and NDA and anti-competition clauses he signed
with the plaintiff.

I don't understand all the details as I have only some of the
documents, but for whatever reasons a "duly authorized marketing and
sales executive" of the company ceritifed under oath that "open-source
software like "Linux" have no copyright restrictions, which in effect
puts no restrictions on their user or distribution".  And furthermore,
"any work derived from the open source software [...] becomes the
 ownership of the applicant"

I don't really see how this is cloesly related to the heart of the case,
but I still think it's devastating to see such an argument be made in
front of the highest court of any (albeit small) country.

I'm not sure what can be done by the outside world (e.g. us) to help the
court understand that Linux as well as Asterisk are very well
copyrighted works, and that at least Linux is only available under
GPLv2, which has a number of conditions on its distribution.

If anyone is interested in this, I have some more documetns that the
defendant has permitted me to share (not sure if he has authority to
permit that, but well...).

(and in case you wonder, Mauritius has signed the Berne convention in
 1989).

Specifically if anyone has an interest to send some kind of
letter/amicus curiae to the court clarifying the issue, it would be
great.  Apparently there are arguments on the lines of "you cannot just
download the GPL text from the internet and claim it is valid" etc.
The Judge seemed to describe himself as 'computer illiterate'.

Maybe there are also some existing English legal publications that one
could DHL/FedEx/UPS to the court ;)

Regards,
       Harald
--
- Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>           http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
============================================================================
"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
                                                 (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)
_______________________________________________
FTF-Legal mailing list
FTF-Legal at fsfeurope.org
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/ftf-legal

--
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND

---------- Forwarded message ----------

-- 
*Avinash Meetoo**
**Managing-Director of Knowledge Seven*

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