Artistic license terms enforced by US Court of Appeal An important legal victory occurred late last week in the US Federal Court of Appeals providing a clear decision for anyone who was still wondering whether open source licenses were legally enforceable. The ruling was part of a lawsuit between Jacobsen v. Katzer (PDF) around the enforceability of the Artistic license. Robert Jacobsen wrote a Java software system for controlling model railroads known as JMRI, which was released under the Artistic license, also widely used in the Perl community. A firm called Kamind Associates downloaded Jacobsen’s code, stripped out the copyright notices and began distributing the code on their own and without approval. The judges ruling states very clearly: “Copyright holders who engage in open source licensing have the right to control the modification and distribution of copyrighted material.” Ars Technica has a great report on the case and its significance. Open Source