Last week, a law case that started in San Francisco came to a conclusion in favor of free software supporters. Robert Jacobsen wrote a Java software system for controlling model railroads known as JMRI, which was released under the Artistic license. Jacobsen accused the firm Katzer/Kamind of copying and incorporating part of the free software created by him in a non-free derivative product without respecting the license rules.

The question was whether or not the original creator could sue under copyright law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C ruled in his favor. It has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code (i.e under GPL, CC or similar licenses) can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material.

That is a great victory for the free software supporters because the most important thing to keep the movement growing is that the 4 freedoms are respected, so that software can be free if it is modified, re-used, distributed, etc. For the community, who builds this software, the recognition of the work doesn’t come as money (with exceptions of course) but by retaining the credit and rights to the authors. A history of the case can be found at the JMRI website.