From the motion to dismiss copyright complaints, the person removing attributions and trying to close-source the project for his own gain has argued this:

Defendants seek to dismiss the Copyright Act claim on the basis that the right to bring a copyright infringement claim has been waived since Jacobsen granted the general public a nonexclusive license to reproduce, copy and distribute the open source software.
This is despite the fact that the copying has been done contrary to conditions of the license, which include attribution. The argument seems to be that once you let someone copy a work, the restrictions you put in the license about what else they must do in order to be allowed to copy the work are unenforceable under copyright law.

The result, if the judge agrees, would seem to be that instead of criminal copyright violation, the copyright holder would have to sue for breach of those terms as per contract law. That puts a much higher burden on the copyright holder to protect the work.

I'm hoping someone can clear up any misconceptions I and others have over this case. It's clear the sky is not falling, but this might be bad for Open Source developers in a more limited way.

In reply to Re^2: Artistic license being tested in court? by mr_mischief
in thread Artistic license being tested in court? by mr_mischief

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