Disclaimers: IANAL; IANADD; TINLA; TINASOTODP.

On Wednesday 2009 January 07 13:26:33 Joerg Schilling wrote:
> John Hasler <jhas...@debian.org> wrote:
> > Joerg.Schilling writes:
> > > On the other side, Debian introduced problems with GPL and Urheberrecht
> > > in the fork so wodim/cdrkit cannot be legally distributed (see above).
> >
> > When and in what court was your lawsuit filed?  Where can we read the
> > decision?  If no suit has been filed, where can we read the opinion you
> > obtained from an attorney with appropriate credentials and
> > qualifications?
>
> This seems to be an interesting claim.....
>
> If you only believe a lawsuit in court, then you would obviously not
> believe the claims from Debian. Nice to see!

From what I understand, Debian does not think what you are doing is illegal, 
so there is no need to file a lawsuit.  In any case, Debian-as-a-legal-entity 
(SPI, IIRC) would not have standing as their copyright would not be 
infringed.[1]  You are claiming your copyright is infringed, but are not 
following up with the claim.  If you really think Debian is hindering the 
advancement of Free and Open-Source Software, you should be able to get some 
help from the Software Freedom Law Center so pursue your case.

I do not recommend you sue SPI or any DD or vice-versa.  In fact, I recommend 
against either, because Debian can provide more value to me when they aren't 
spending resources on lawsuits, spurious or otherwise.

However, your existing arguments are not enough to convince me (or 
debian-legal it seems) that you are correct on either of your legal claims.
[2]  While precedent OR an attorney's opinion would probably convice us, 
there may be less severe action that will do so as well (if that's important 
to you).  Perhaps you might restate your position more clearly or with better 
references, or have the FSF or Sun (authors of the licenses in question) come 
forward with a supporting statement?

> When will Debian continue to ship the official non-crippled software?

When they believe it is legal for them to do so.  They would rather do less 
than the law allows than risk a suit.  They do not feel distributing wodim is 
risking a suit.

Disclaimers: IANAL; IANADD; TINLA; TINASOTODP.
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[1] IIRC, Debian does not generally own copyrights.  Instead, the DDs and 
other contributors do.

[2] A) distribution of cdrecord binaries by Debian does not expose it to legal 
risk OR B) distribution of cdrkit by Debian does expose it to legal risk.

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