Ars Technica: Dispute Over GPL Could Be Headed to Court
“Israeli open source software developer Alexander Maryanovsky
has filed a lawsuit against international master chess player
Alexander Rabinovich alleging that the chess player and his
organization have violated the GPL. According to Maryanovsky, it
started when Rabinovich started a company, International Chess
University (IChessU), with the intention of teaching chess to
students over the Internet using interactive software. Rather than
develop a framework from scratch, Rabinovich decided to use Jin,
Maryanovsky’s network chess client application. Maryanovsky offered
Rabinovich a $4,000 license that would facilitate proprietary
redistribution. Rabinovich turned down the licensing offer, and
said that IChessU would use the program and simply comply with the
terms of the GPL…”
Jinchess.com: IChessU vs. Jin–The Story
“About half a year ago, I was approached by a Mr. Alexander
Rabinovich, who is an Israeli (I’m in Israel too) international
master. He told me that his start-up, the International Chess
University, is working on developing a chess server and a client,
and asked whether I am available to help them.“Unfortunately, (or, in retrospect, fortunately) I was too busy
finishing my CS degree at the time, so I told him that I could not
help. I also told him that there was no need to develop a client
from scratch–he could simply use Jin…”