Why Governments Should Use Open Source Licensing

“Here’s a wonderful cautionary tale:

“Systran created a specially adapted version of its Systran-Unix
machine translation software for the [European] Commission, calling
it EC-Systran Unix between 1997 and 2002.

“In 2003 the Commission published a call for tenders for work
updating its machine translation systems. That call included
demands that a company conduct “enhancements, adaptations and
additions to linguistic routines … specific improvements to
analysis, transfer and synthesis programs … [and] system
updates”, according to a statement from the General Court.

“Systran told the Commission that the work the Commission was
asking for tenders for would infringe the copyright in Systran’s
software.”

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