David Kastrup wrote: [...] > And when cross-licensing or pooling arrangements are not mechanisms to > accomplish naked price fixing or market division, they aren't. There > is no naked price fixing going on, since the various Linux > contributors sell distributions at a wide variety of price tags.
You either mean that various violators of the GPL simply fail to adhere to the GPL "no charge" price-fixing restriction, or, most likely, once again attempt to conflate price fixing in IP rights with "variety of price tags" in services, physical copies, and whatnot which is all besides the point (apart from proving "a dangerous probability" that GPL conspirators will "recoup[ ] its investment in below-cost prices" (Brooke Group, 509 U.S. at 224) in IP). > > > Another possible anticompetitive effect of pooling arrangements may > > occur if the arrangement deters or discourages participants from > > engaging in research and development, thus retarding innovation. For > > example, a pooling arrangement that requires members to grant > > licenses to each other for current and future technology at minimal > > cost may reduce the incentives of its members to engage in research > > and development because members of the pool have to share their > > successful research and development and each of the members can free > > ride on the accomplishments of other pool members. > > But there is nothing which forces members to share their successful > research and development unless they _deliberately_ decide to use it > in the context of GPLed software. ------ The defendants claim an uncoordinated and unrelated unilateral use of the GPL agreement. The Supreme Court has addressed this disingenuous type of claim: As this Court stated in the Interstate Circuit case (page 227 of 306 U.S., page 474 of 59 S.Ct.): 'It is elementary that an unlawful conspiracy may be and often is formed without simultaneous action or agreement on the part of the conspirators. ... Acceptance by competitors, without previous agreement, of an invitation to participate in a plan, the necessary consequence of which, if carried out, is restraint of interstate commerce, is sufficient to establish an unlawful conspiracy under the Sherman Act.' And as respects statements of various appellees that they did not intend to join a combination or to fix prices, we need only say that they 'must be held to have intended the necessary and direct consequences of their acts, and cannot be heard to say the contrary.' United States v. Patten, 226 U.S. 525, 543, 33 S.Ct. 141, 145, 44 L.R.A.,N.S., 325.; UNITED STATES v. MASONITE CORPORATION, 316 U.S. 265 (1942) ------ regards, alexander. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
