Recently, in Artifex Software v. Hancom, Inc., a California district court refused to dismiss breach of contract claims for alleged violations of the GNU General Public License (GPL) in connection with the use of open source software. The decision signals a growing acceptance of contract law as a viable option for addressing GPL breaches.
Open Source Licenses
An open source license is a type of license for software that imposes fewer use restrictions than a standard proprietary license. Among other things, it is designed to govern the use of the software released in its human readable or “source code” form. Access to source code, which is not usually contemplated in commercial licenses, allows users to see the underlying “blueprint” for the software. Open source licenses range from “permissive” licenses, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licenses, that contain few restrictions on reuse, to “copyleft” licenses (such as the GPL) that typically require that rights to use the covered software are preserved when the software is shared.