http://linux-watch.com/news/NS3973290690.html
This is very interesting. This article is about how the "GNU" General Public License is finally having a day in court. All previous infringement / license agreement breaches were handled out of court. The article mentions that the company's CEO is an accomplished lawyer - he must be as his company is selling a product which takes advantage of the same types of "fair use" concepts as we posted in the last blog entry here about time and space shifting. My guess is that he knows exactly what he is doing, and is letting this case go to trial to get more media exposure, but will then settle the case somehow by releasing their own codebase under the GPL, or something like that.
Related to this, the "big battle" brewing in the open source world is that over software patents. Developers are reverse engineering "closed source" applications and finding out that they are protected by patents, at least in the US. The flip side is that patents are often of questionable enforceability, and the economics of enforcing them won't add up when those that are infringing them have little to lose - 1,000 small companies instead of one 800 lb gorilla. I'd be curious to hear what you think about that.
UPDATE November 1, 2007: The case has been settled, according to this article at linux.com.