Model railroad case settles Open Source licensing dispute

[Old.Professor]

An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source
licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable
toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux. Did
such weighty questions come up in cases involving IBM, Sun, HP, or Red
Hat? No, this is the quirky world of Free Software: it was a court
case about model trains.

Read it all at http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3775446/Bruce+Perens:+

[Stevert]

To all of us who know, love, use, and contribute to JMRI, this is
old, albeit excellent news. The CAFC's opinion was a resounding
upholding and endorsement of Open Source licensing. You can read the
Appeal Court's opinion here:
<http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf>

The sad part is that there are still other victories JMRI needs to
win. More info on the entire JMRI legal defense here:
<http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/index.html>

I would *strongly* encourage anyone who cares about freedom to
innovate in the Model Railroading hobby, or Open Source software, to
contribute to JMRI's defense (I have):
<http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/donations.shtml>

Stevert