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Free Software Foundation: FSF Lawyer and Board Member Serves as Expert Witness in GPL-Related SuitFeb 26, 2002, 20:51 (1 Talkback[s])Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Tuesday, February, 26, 2002 - Eben Moglen, General Counsel to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), will testify as an expert witness in the Progress Software Corporation vs. MySQL AB case currently pending in United States District Court in Massachusetts. The current focus of this case is a preliminary injunction sought by MySQL AB concerning a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) by Progress Software Corp. Progress lost the right to distribute MySQL due to a violation of the GNU GPL. Progress distributed a proprietary software component, Gemini, that combined with the GPL'ed MySQL database system. Gemini was linked statically with the MySQL system to form a single binary program. Many times, the FSF has enforced the GNU GPL in such situations, when our copyrights were at stake. We do such enforcement in a confidential setting without the need of court action. Since Progress distributes no FSF-copyrighted code, the FSF is not a party in the case; however, the FSF takes a strong position that Progress is indeed in violation of the GNU GPL. Moglen said: "In our minds, Progress Software Corp. has committed a garden-variety violation of the GNU GPL. We expect to prevail as we assist MySQL AB in their enforcement action. We are quite surprised that Progress has brought the action this far." The preliminary injunction hearing will take place at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, February, 27, 2002 at the Federal Court House in Boston, Massachusetts in the court of Judge Patti B. Saris. Moglen's full affidavit in this case is available at http://www.fsf.org/press/mysql-affidavit.html. Moglen's full essay about enforcing the GNU GPL is available at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html. About Eben Moglen: About Free Software Foundation: Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. |