I was baffled this morning when I got an email from the Open Source Software National Observatory (http://www.cenatic.es/) regarding a copyright infringement case sworn at the Supreme Court of Mauritius.

The plaintiff is a company called Linux Solutions Ltd. It seems to be covering an alleged breach of an NDA between a contracted freelancing developer and Linux Solutions. That contractor (the defendant) has apparently published some of the work he had done while contracting for the plaintiff.

While none of that seems to be clearly connected with the GPL, what is extremely disturbing is the sworn affidavit / oath by one of the executives of the plaintiff. Some extracts state:

5. Licenses of open-source software like “Linux” and “Asterisk” have no copyright restrictions which in effect puts no restrictions on their use or distribution. As a consequence, any work which is derived from the open source software as conceptualized, created, installed and managed, by the Applicant becomes the ownership of the Applicant.

6. In the light of the above, therefore, the applications, configuration files and features so developed by the Applicant are the sole property of the Applicant, make up the knowledge base of the Applicant, make the basis of its business operations, and are highly confident in nature. The applications, configurations and features have been built and acquired by the Applicant through important capital investments and manpower over a period of time.

What they are in fact stating under oath is stating at the Supreme Court is that: that GPL-Licensed software (which the Linux kernel definitely is), has no copyright restrictions? And that any derived work is the sole property of whoever created the derivative?

There is already an outcry in the OSS community and folks are looking at the Free Software legal community to help file legal documents to the Supreme Court of Mauritius.

As Herald Welte from Germany (Linux Kernel Developer, GSM Expert, Hacker, Freedom Fighter, Nerd. Kinky and founder of gpl-violations.org) said it well:  What kind of pot are they smoking in Mauritius?