NewsForge: GPL enforcement goes to court for first time in MySQL case

“MySQL AB, the originator of the MySQL GPL database, is
taking Progress Software Corporation, the corporate parent of
NuSphere to court because it continues to distribute a database
product that links statically to MySQL’s code. The product was
originally released without the accompanying source code. The Free
Software Foundation’s chief legal counsel, Eben Moglen, is set to
provide expert testimony in a hearing Wednesday at 2 p.m. in what
is the first court test for Richard Stallman’s GNU General Public
License.

That’s a “garden variety” violation of the GPL, Moglen says.

Additionally, “We don’t expect to have any problem enforcing the
GPL in this situation,” says Bradley Kuhn, FSF’s vice president.
Normally, he says, the Free Software Foundation conducts private
enforcement of GPL violations on software that it holds the
copyright on. In this case, MySQL retains the copyright on its
GPLed apps, and the FSF is simply providing expert testimony in
what is expected to be an easily-gained temporary injunction
against the further distribution of NuSphere’s version of
MySQL.”

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