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Is there a defence to using the code because you had a good faith belief it was licensed in such a way that would have been fine, if the original author did hav

by lol768 6y ago

Is there a defence to using the code because you had a good faith belief it was licensed in such a way that would have been fine, if the original author did have the right to grant said license?

smarx007 6y ago
I think it is (sort of) and the best signal may be not a legal analysis alone but the actual shift in the enterprise-backed communities. Ever since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Internation.... Eclipse Foundation required what they call "Type B" IP scan for all projects (Eclipse F. is not just an IDE but a competitor to the Apache F.), essentially a deep scan of the code searching for any bits of GPL (our Eclipse project had a dojox dependency flagged because its MIT-licensed code contained a small snippet of GPL, that was the only time we got a rejection of a library). In late 2019, the change was made to make "Type A", a deep scan of the licenses only, to be the default (https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/wayne-beaton/updates-eclipse-ip-due-diligence-process https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/wayne-beaton/updates-eclipse-...). To me it signals that the common sense in the enterprise community now is that there is not much risk in that scenario, worst case would be that the original IP holder can force you to remove their code if they convince the court the developer had no right to publish it as opposed to getting crazy amounts awarded. I think it is also judged that the likelihood and the amount of trouble are relatively small compared to full code scan of all deps transitively at all times (incl lost productivity).
Quarrel 6y ago
Sort of. Blatant infringement is typically punished worse by judges / legislation. You still can be fined, have injunctions bought against products etc without it being wilful. There have been a bunch of song examples of this, where someone alleges a small riff is taken unknowingly or not from another song, and the songwriter losing all royalties to the song.

by lol768 6y ago

Is there a defence to using the code because you had a good faith belief it was licensed in such a way that would have been fine, if the original author did have the right to grant said license?

smarx007 6y ago

I think it is (sort of) and the best signal may be not a legal analysis alone but the actual shift in the enterprise-backed communities. Ever since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group,_Inc._v._Internation.... Eclipse Foundation required what they call "Type B" IP scan for all projects (Eclipse F. is not just an IDE but a competitor to the Apache F.), essentially a deep scan of the code searching for any bits of GPL (our Eclipse project had a dojox dependency flagged because its MIT-licensed code contained a small snippet of GPL, that was the only time we got a rejection of a library). In late 2019, the change was made to make "Type A", a deep scan of the licenses only, to be the default (https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/wayne-beaton/updates-eclipse-ip-due-diligence-process https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/wayne-beaton/updates-eclipse-...). To me it signals that the common sense in the enterprise community now is that there is not much risk in that scenario, worst case would be that the original IP holder can force you to remove their code if they convince the court the developer had no right to publish it as opposed to getting crazy amounts awarded. I think it is also judged that the likelihood and the amount of trouble are relatively small compared to full code scan of all deps transitively at all times (incl lost productivity).

Quarrel 6y ago

Sort of. Blatant infringement is typically punished worse by judges / legislation. You still can be fined, have injunctions bought against products etc without it being wilful. There have been a bunch of song examples of this, where someone alleges a small riff is taken unknowingly or not from another song, and the songwriter losing all royalties to the song.