A federal court has denied a pre-trial motion to dismiss a GPL enforcement case
<i>To use Ghostscript for free, Hancom would have to adhere to its open-source license, the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GNU GPL requires that when you use GPL-licensed software to make some other software, the resulting software also has to be open-sourced with the same license if it’s released to the public. That means Hancom would have to open-source its entire suite of apps.</i><p><i>Alternatively, Hancom could pay Artifex a licensing fee. Artifex allows developers of commercial or otherwise closed-source software to forego the strict open-source terms of the GNU GPL if they’re willing to pay for it.</i><p>This obligation has been termed &quot;reciprocity,&quot; and it lies at the heart of many open source business models.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rosenlaw.com&#x2F;pdf-files&#x2F;Rosen_Ch06.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rosenlaw.com&#x2F;pdf-files&#x2F;Rosen_Ch06.pdf</a><p>The more important issue here is reciprocity, not whether an open source license should be considered to be a contract.<p>AFAIK, the reciprocity provision of any version of the GPL hasn&#x27;t been tested in any meaningful way within the US. In particular, the specific use cases that trigger reciprocity remain cloudy at best in my mind.<p>Some companies claim that merely linking to a GPLed library is sufficient to trigger reciprocity. FSF published the LGPL specifically to address this point.<p>So I believe a ruling on reciprocity would be ground breaking.