Commercial entities that that have integrated "free" software code into
their offerings might take note of these quotes by no other than the Free
Software Foundation's own attorney: the "free" software authors are likely
able to yank the "royalty free" license from underneath you once your
product succeeds in the marketplace. Talk about bait-and-switch.
--Lucky Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look
upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg 446
http://www.citizensofamerica.org/missing.ram
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf
> Of Marcel Popescu
> Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 14:08
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: Fw: GPL may not hold up in court
>
>
> X-Loop: openpgp.net
> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 8:53 PM
> Subject: [Freenet-chat] GPL may not hold up in court
>
>
> > http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,35258-2,00.html describes
> > recent legal maneuvering with the "cphack" program, which decodes the
> > data from one of those site-blocking programs. To get out of hot water,
> > the cphack authors signed the rights over to Mattel, the plaintiff.
> > However the original program was released under the GPL, which
> is intended
> > to grant open source rights irrevocably.
> >
> > Well, it turns out that this may not work. Apparently one problem is
> > that the GPL grant of license may not be valid unless it is signed with
> > pen and paper:
> >
> > The law requires "a written instrument signed by the owner of the
> > rights licensed."
> >
> > "This is one of the reasons why the Free Software Foundation strongly
> > urges authors of free software to assign their rights to FSF. It does
> > them no harm and it provides us with precisely the signed
> instrument,"
> > said Eben Moglen, FSF general counsel and a law professor at Columbia
> > University.
> >
> > "What has happened here is that these gentlemen [may have] left
> > themselves open ... because they made no signed assignment of their
> > rights under GPL to anybody," Moglen said.
> >
> > In fact there may be a worse problem, even if the signed
> document exists:
> >
> > Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, said that Mattel might be
> > able to argue that the GPL is invalid because users don't pay for
> > the free software.
> >
> > "Nonexclusive licenses given for free are generally
> revocable, even if
> > they purport to be irrevocable," Volokh said. "Even if the
> GPL license
> > in cphack is treated as signed and is covered by 205(e), it
> might still
> > be revocable by Mattel as the new owners of the cphack copyright."
> >
> > "It is unfortunately not quite as solid a case for the good guys as
> > the GNU license theory would have at first led us to
> believe," he said.
> >
> > Freenet is under the GPL, and as a program which might well face legal
> > attacks in the future, you might want to consider doing this
> FSF signover.
> > I don't know if there is a downside, like whether it would somehow give
> > RMS control over the project.
> >
> > Hal
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Freenet-chat mailing list
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/freenet-chat
> >
>
>
>
>
>
