I don't think that, in the end, the SCO case will have anything to say about the GPL. Aside from David Boies' public posturing, the actual arguments seem to be about the details of contracts and cross-licensing agreements that IBM signed with SCO, SCO signed with oldSCO, oldSCO signed with Novell, and so on. As far as I can tell, there's no evidence that any currently BSD'd or GPL'd code is even involved.
It's only a matter of time before a real GPL case makes it to court. So far, AFAIK, they've all been settled before ever reaching a court. Most of the easily-searchable public information is about cases in Europe, though.
You said: >Courts have generally held that reliance on boilerplate language will not work absent > proof that users actually saw it and indicated their agreement in some demonstrable > way.
Isn't that applying a much higher standard to digital creative works than to printed ones? After all, the "claim" on a hypothetical book that's being litigated is likely the copyright registration and the boilerplate copyright notice on the front page. Why would registration and a notice not also work for source code?
1. You're right about SCO; it's simply the highest profile case that's even in the ballpark. I look forward to seeing how the first real (US) GPL case will play out some day.
2. Copyright notices on books serve precisely the same function as on source code -- to give notice of a copyright claim and to provide for a potentially larger damages award for willful infringement. As is the case with source code, the inclusion of a copyright notice on a book does not amount to the formation of a contract.
It's only a matter of time before a real GPL case makes it to court. So far, AFAIK, they've all been settled before ever reaching a court. Most of the easily-searchable public information is about cases in Europe, though.
You said:
>Courts have generally held that reliance on boilerplate language will not work absent
> proof that users actually saw it and indicated their agreement in some demonstrable
> way.
Isn't that applying a much higher standard to digital creative works than to printed ones? After all, the "claim" on a hypothetical book that's being litigated is likely the copyright registration and the boilerplate copyright notice on the front page. Why would registration and a notice not also work for source code?
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2. Copyright notices on books serve precisely the same function as on source code -- to give notice of a copyright claim and to provide for a potentially larger damages award for willful infringement. As is the case with source code, the inclusion of a copyright notice on a book does not amount to the formation of a contract.
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