GPL to be tested in court in Israel

Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on September 5, 2006

It looks like there's a GPL dispute heading to court in Israel. It's between Jin (the original authors) and IChessU (who redistribute it). The case appears to rest on notions of separation between programs, which has long been a grey area with respect to the GPL, because there are complex technical issues involved and the GPL appears to rely on common sense.

At this point I need to explain a bit about the IChessU client, to clarify what I mean by "partial source code". IChessU aim to develop a site which brings chess tutors and students together. An important feature is the ability to see and talk to your tutor and fellow students. This part is an external C++ library Alexander had obtained seperately (I believe another Russian team developed it for him), and is used as a library (via JNI) from the Java code. So, what IChessU have released was everything (which is 95% my code and 5% theirs) except this audio/video over IP library and the few Java classes used to interface with it.

I've then spent a week or so trying to explain Alexander that it does not matter that the A/V library is "a separate library" and that in order to comply with the GPL, he must publish the source code to that too.

Even if this is lost, it's not the end of the world for the GPL, since most likely loss would simply involve slightly withdrawn lines about reuse in proprietary systems.

Thanks to /.

cheers, stuart

Stuart's blog
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		GPL to be tested in court in Israel Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on September 5, 2006 It looks like there's a GPL dispute heading to court in Israel. It's between Jin (the original authors) and IChessU (who redistribute it). The case appears to rest on notions of separation between programs, which has long been a grey area with respect to the GPL, because there are complex technical issues involved and the GPL appears to rely on common sense. At this point I need to explain a bit about the IChessU client, to clarify what I mean by "partial source code". IChessU aim to develop a site which brings chess tutors and students together. An important feature is the ability to see and talk to your tutor and fellow students. This part is an external C++ library Alexander had obtained seperately (I believe another Russian team developed it for him), and is used as a library (via JNI) from the Java code. So, what IChessU have released was everything (which is 95% my code and 5% theirs) except this audio/video over IP library and the few Java classes used to interface with it. I've then spent a week or so trying to explain Alexander that it does not matter that the A/V library is "a separate library" and that in order to comply with the GPL, he must publish the source code to that too. Even if this is lost, it's not the end of the world for the GPL, since most likely loss would simply involve slightly withdrawn lines about reuse in proprietary systems. Thanks to /. cheers, stuart chess \| Copyright Infringement \| Free Software \| GNU Public License (GPL) \| GPL \| Intellectual Property \| intellectual property law \| intellectual property rights \| Israel \| Open Source \| Open Source Software Stuart's blog Login or register to post comments 3683 reads
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