My husband John and I have been following the
JMRI open source court case since it
started about 3 years ago. John took the train up to San Francisco again today to
support Bob Jacobsen during today’s federal court hearing. Some background:
- What is JMRI?
From the JMRI model train software website:
“JMRI is an informal open-source group. We do this for
the joy of model railroading, and don’t produce anything for profit.” - JMRI is good work.
It won James Gosling’s
annual
JavaOne Duke’s Choice Award, for “Java Everywhere” in 2006. - Bob Jacobsen is very cool. Bob is a great teacher: he was
the winner of U.C.
Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004. See
Bob’s picture accepting
the Duke’s Choice award. Remember MythBuster’s TV story in 2006 called
Anti-Gravity Device? Bob was the Guest Star Physics Professor on that MythBuster’s
show. Bob is also the JMRI contributor who is bravely taking the lead in this long
and expensive case for what he believes is right: keeping the JMRI open source alive
and free. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation
wrote a summary of this case in
Condition or Covenant, and Why Should You Care? (13 August,
Legal Analysis by Michael Kwun). - Larry Lessig wrote a blog post called
huge and important news: free licenses upheld (August 13, 2008) in which
he wrote: “In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the
[Creative Commons] licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you’re simply a copyright infringer.” - SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation”, defined
in wikipedia as:
“…a lawsuit or a threat of lawsuit that is intended to intimidate and silence critics
by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. … The plaintiff’s goals are accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticism. A SLAPP may also intimidate others from participating in the debate.” - A very brief summary of this complex case (from
JMRI Defense: Our Story So Far):
“JMRI is open-source software for model-railroaders. …
Matt Katzer owns KAM Industries, a company that tries to sell model railroad software. He’s never contributed anything to the JMRI effort. But that hasn’t stopped him from taking JMRI intellectual property.
Matt Katzer and his company KAMIND Associates, Inc. are attacking the rights of open source groups to enforce their copyrights and licenses. If they prevail, the rights of open source groups like JMRI will be significantly weakened, if not lost. We are breaking ground for open source groups in federal court and establishing legal rights for open source groups and their members. We need your help and donations to succeed in this legal fight.” - To make donations, go to
Donating to JMRI. - My husband John is also a JMRI contributor.
Here is John’s writeup from today’s hearing:
JMRI-v-KATZER was 1st on the agenda at 1:30; the focus was on scheduling and paperwork deadlines. Take-home from the whole thing seemed to me to be: Clean up your paperwork so it is clear what you still want, taking into account the ruling from the appeals court, and get it all done and responded to and finished so we can have a "Jacobsen -vs- Katzer Day" (Judge White's words) in court on Dec 19 where the Judge will decide all the things that need to be decided. The "things" seem to be Katzer: Motion to dismiss because of lack of Jurisdiction Katzer: Motion to dismiss because of lack of Merit Jacobsen: Motion for preliminary injunction Jacobsen: Motion to address Anti-SLAPP/DCMA The details of all these motions seem to be in docket filing 227 (http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/docket/227.pdf), as well as in Jacobsen's reply (http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/docket/226.pdf) The Jurisdiction part has to do with the patent(s) that Katzer has disclaimed - his claim seems to be that since he has repudiated that patent, obviously he can no longer sue Jacobsen over it, so this whole court case no longer has any basis and should be dismissed. The Merit part seems tied up in Katzer's claims that this should be a breach of contract issue, with DCMA and free speech thrown in. The injunction (http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/docket/227-2.pdf) to prohibit KAM/Katzer/... from reproducing JMRI and/or JMRI Decoder definitions, make derivative works, distributing any software that is substantially similar to JMRI and authorizing anyone else to do so unless Katzer demonstrates that they have complied with the terms of the JMRI license. I didn't take notes on the last motion, but it was something to do with the Anti-SLAPP stuff that was argued earlier in the decision that was vacated by the appeals court.
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