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> Only the owners of a copyright have standing to sue That's not true, at least in some countries. For example, see this case in France from 2009: http://arst

> Only the owners of a copyright have standing to sue That's not true, at least in some countries. For example, see this case in France from 2009: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/09/big-gpl-copyright-enforcement-win-in-paris-court-of-appeals/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/09/big-gp... > "We've long said the GNU GPL is enforceable, and of course we're pleased to see another court reaffirm that fact," said FSF France president Loic Dachary in a statement. "It's a commonly held belief that only the copyright holder of a work can enforce the license's terms—but that's not true in France. People who received software under the GNU GPL can also request compliance, since the license grants them rights from the authors."

hugoroy 12y ago
This interpretation of the decision is wrong, and I think this is also not a right interpretation of copyright and of the GPL. However, I do think that parties receiving GPL software also have standing to sue, not just authors. And this may also be true in the US: see for instance one of the decisions in Versata v. Ameriprise where the court considered GPL to create contractual obligations towards third party beneficiaries -- i.e. towards people receiving the code. That whole case has been settled out of courts but that's still an interesting decision (and to my knowledge, this decision had not been further contradicted by upper courts so it is still interesting).