Open source software has long been accepted as a legitimate software license by tech-savvy crowds. It's become recognised by business. And even the courts are taking seriously open source software authors rights despite the fact no money has changed hands.

"It was a partial harmonisation with only those parts of American law that favoured certain interests," he said. "The reality is that American law doesn't change; Australian law changes, but specifically it excludes the consumer-friendly parts of American copyright law, namely the doctrine of fair use."

Novell has filed its first motion in limine [PDF], the full title of which is Motion in Limine No. 1 to Exclude Evidence and Argument Concerning Claims Not Included in SCO's Appeal or the Tenth Circuit's Limited Mandate. It's making me chuckle. Ah! The mandate rule. Since the judge, the Hon.

Mandate open source? Force everyone to use Linux? That’s…that’s…communist! Can they do that?

Talk to any open-source vendor (myself included), and we'll tell you that there's a lot of money to be saved by dropping your proprietary software in favor of open-source alternatives. But is that always the case? And, if so, what are the necessary preconditions for saving money?

"Paris, Jan 26th - The European Parliament's committee for legal affairs (JURI) voted the Medina report on Copyright last week. This report goes against its initial objective to account on the failure of the 2001 copyright directive. It only contains ridiculous repressive measures dictated by the entertainment industries, and goes as far as denying the Commission's ongoing studies.

The Government of Canada has angered those who believe that a proposed copyright law threatens the country's open source business model.

The Internet can prove complex to some, especially copyright holders. Recently, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) notified the webhosting company of a BitTorrent tracker dedicated to Open Source Software, that it was infringing copyright of one of their clients. Without any notice, the webhosting company pulled the tracker offline, not realizing that the tracker had done nothing wrong.

Many have criticized syslog-ng, a replacement for the syslog logging daemon with many additional features, for not being open enough. Syslog-ng has a closed-source commercial version and keeps the entire code base under a single copyright by requiring copyright transfer for contributions, which has been a sore spot in the eyes of many people.