Hyman Rosen wrote: > > Alexander Terekhov wrote: > > A copyright "to be licensed at no charge to all third parties" > > is NOT a full copyright. It is not a copyright at all. > > Of course it is. If it were not a full copyright, it would > allow someone to begin charging for its use.
http://ianmurdock.com/2005/05/04/r0ml-has-a-bl0g/ "I first saw r0ml speak at the OReilly Open Source Convention in 2003. The talk was Protecting the Innovation Premium: Open Source Business Models. Not too far into the talk, he starts discussing Sharia, or Islamic law, how it forbids the charging of interest, and how banks with Islamic clientele have found clever ways of charging interest without it actually, technically speaking, being interesthence, not in conflict with Islamic law. Thats neat and all, but a quick glance around the room shows Im not the only one unsure what this has to do with open source business models. Just as Im wondering this, he puts up a slide comparing Borlands and Red Hats (at the time) latest quarterly numbers, with Borlands revenue labeled license revenue and Red Hats revenue labeled subscription revenue; and alongside these numbers a series of percentages (personnel expense as compared to revenue, etc.) that shows that, percentage-wise, the two are roughly equivalent compared to traditional service revenue. In other words, the open source religion forbids Red Hat from calling it license revenue, even though thats what it really is, so Red Hat just calls it subscription revenue instead, all so Red Hat doesnt violate open source law and damage their careful positioning as the open source good guys. Brilliant!" >From RHAT's 10Q: <quote> Our subscription-based contract model may encounter customer resistance. The subscription agreement used for many of our products, including Enterprise Linux, requires customers to agree to a subscription for our services for each installed system on which they deploy our subscription based products. At the same time, the subscription agreement places no restriction on the customers right to redistribute the products [other restrictions prohibit Red Hats customers from redistributing Red Hats binaries]. While we believe this practice complies with the requirements of the GNU General Public License, and while we have reviewed this practice with the Free Software Foundation, the organization that maintains and provides interpretations of the GNU General Public License, we may still encounter customer resistance to this distribution model. To the extent we are unsuccessful in promoting or defending this distribution model, our business and operating results could be materially and adversely affected. </quote> Quoting Red Hat's Subscription Agreement: <quote> The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs or executes the Software. The term "System" means any hardware on which the Software is installed, which may be, without limitation, a server, a work station, a virtual machine, a blade, a partition or an engine, as applicable. The initial number of Installed Systems is the number of copies of the Software that Customer purchases. </quote> Note that Red Hat's "Software" is contractually defined term. <quote> The term "Software" means the subscription </quote> Now, since it's just impossible to install and execute on a computer a *subscription* (a legal arrangement for providing software), they must mean software (not Software) in the definition of "Installed Systems". And here's the hammer: <quote> If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System. During the term of this Agreement and for one (1) year thereafter, Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customer's facilities and records from time to time in order to verify Customer's compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Any such audit shall only take place during Customer's normal business hours and upon no less than ten (10) days prior written notice from Red Hat. Red Hat shall conduct no more than one such audit in any twelve-month period except for the express purpose of assuring compliance by Customer where non-compliance has been established in a prior audit. Red Hat shall give Customer written notice of any non-compliance, and if a payment deficiency exists, then Customer shall have fifteen (15) days from the date of such notice to make payment to Red Hat for any payment deficiency. The amount of the payment deficiency will be determined by multiplying the number of underreported Installed Systems or Services by the annual fee for such item. If Customer is found to have underreported the number of Installed Systems or amount of Services by more than five percent (5%), Customer shall, in addition to the annual fee for such item, pay liquidated damages equal to twenty percent (20%) of the underreported fees for loss of income and administration costs suffered by Red Hat as a result. </quote> "My issue with Moglen and RMS re Red Hat is that they never really convinced me that RHAT's subscription contract and EULA for their proprietary software product didn't mean that RHAT was violating GPL when distributing GPL code to enterprise subscribers. I gave what I still think is a good reading to that effect (way more certain than my reading of the RHAT press release -- I mean a reading I'd take to court) and got back basically "we see it differently". It seemed like their reading might have been more politically expedient than legally sound and it bugs me to this day." http://technocrat.net/d/2008/6/11/43190/ What say you now Hyman? regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
