Legal victory for open source licensing

Internalist writes: "Advocates of open source software have hailed a court ruling protecting its use even though it is given away free. The US federal appeals court "determined that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions", overturned a lower court decision which claimed that authors whose works violate the Artistic License could only be sued for breach of contract, rather than copyright infringement. Said Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig, "In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licences set conditions on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the licence disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer." BBC story here."