But OSI sees what it wants to see:īut adding the non-free Commons Clause created a different license such that the software could not be characterized as “open source” and doing so in these circumstances was unlawful false advertising. What they got is a court saying that taking Commons Clause away from AGPL made claims about being open source false claims. They want to see a court holding that Neo4j’s release wasn’t open source because they added Commons Clause to AGPL. Check the “False Statement” section, starting on page 23. In the context of this lawsuit, ONgDB wasn’t “free and open source” because PureThink removed Commons Clause from AGPL. Since “could or couldn’t remove Commons Clause” is how the parties agreed to argue whether the “free and open source” claims were true or false, and the court decided PureThink couldn’t remove the Commons Clause, which it did, the claims about ONgDB were false. The actually interesting part of this whole kerfuffle is that the trial court decided PureThink could not rip Commons Clause out of the LICENSE file:ĭefendants argue that there is a reasonable interpretation of the Neo4j Sweden Software License that permits licensees, like GFI or Defendants, to remove the Commons Clause and redistribute the software under the standardized AGPL license. … Plaintiffs argue that Defendants’ representations that ONgDB is “free and open source” is false because “the Neo4j Sweden Software License did not permit Defendants to remove the commercial restrictions imposed by the Commons Clause.” The parties agree that the truth or falsity of Defendants’ statements hinge on “the interpretation of Section 7, and GFI’s right to remove the Commons Clause from the Neo4j Sweden Software License.” Cross-Motion at 30 see also Plaintiff’s Reply at 18 (“ Defendants do not dispute that their marketing of ONgDB as ‘free and open source’ Neo4j(R) EE is primarily based on their (mis)interpretation of the Neo4j Sweden Software License and the form AGPLE upon which it was based.”) The trial court judge followed their lead: But it’s the way that matters in this lawsuit, because it’s the way the lawyers agreed to argue the point. If that seems like a strange way to decide if something’s free and open source, that’s because it is. The relevant bit from the appeals court is here:ĭefendants’ representation that ONgDB is a “free and open-source” version of Neo4j(R) EE was literally false, because Section 7 of the Sweden Software License only permits a downstream licensee to remove “further restrictions” added by an upstream licensee to the original work. Neither trial court nor appeals court even mentioned OSI, OSI approval, any license list, or any trademark on the term. Search them for “Open Source Initiative”. The first page of its decision says “NOT FOR PUBLICATION” at the top and “This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3” at the bottom.īut even if the appeals court had made precedent, there’s nothing in its decision about OSI. It didn’t define any new terms of art legal-system-wide. The court didn’t legally decide anything about the meaning of “open source”. The court only confirmed what we already know - that “open source” is a term of art for software that has been licensed under a specific type of license, and whether a license is an OSI-approved license is a critically important factor in user adoption of the software. The Open Source Initiative’s blog post on the Neo4j appeal is self-serving, misleading, and wrong. PureThink everywhere it looks, OSI sees itself, and in triumph > law, technology, and the space betweenĢ022 The Open Source Initiative Did Not Win Neo4j v. The Open Source Initiative Did Not Win Neo4j v.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |