1.The software developers who adopt licenses like GPLv3, MIT, or Apache 2.0 for their projects
OR
2. The original authors of those licenses (FSF, Apache Foundation, etc)
If the appeal fails to overturn the flawed lower court ruling, it will set a precedent allowing legal cases to focus on how software developers themselves interpret the terms of licenses like GPLv3, MIT,Apache 2.0, etc.
This is precisely what happened with Neo4j.
This issue is significant enough that two of the leading open-source foundations submitted amicus briefs in the case.
I think Neo4j knows it is wrong after this latest Amicus and they have the power to stop this in its tracks by simply settling the case before the ninth circuit makes a ruling which will be precedent.
Pretty crazy situation!
Many in the community are only just starting to realize the potential impact of this case on FOSS licensing
that modified GNU licenses are problematic should not be surprising. i'd stay away from any project that tries to do that.
the impact is similar to companies calling their products open source even though they don't use an open source license. now we get a company calling their license GNU even though it actually isn't.
beyond that i don't think the outcome of the ruling will matter much.
So Neo4j added additional restrictions to their "GPL" licence, those were removed by a project that redistributed it.
FSF called out Neo4j and Neo4j just relicensed their entire project rather than make it properly GPL, but won't stop hassling the redistribution of the old version. Presumably to stop a GPL version of their older code being out there?
