Take your meds, Hyman. Hyman Rosen wrote: > > On 2/10/2010 10:08 AM, Alexander Terekhov wrote: > > At some point, the New York bar will have no choice but to disbar the > > entire gang of utterly incompetent GNU arch legal beagles from SFLC for > > consistent filing of frivolous lawsuits such as > > http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit/ in > > which (1) "the Software Freedom Conservancy" is utterly frivolous > > 'plaintiff' because it doesn't own ANY busybox copyrights and (2) Erik > > Andersen is also utterly frivolous 'plaintiff' because he was NOT joined > > by Bruce Perens and other contributors to the joint work known as > > busybox at http://busybox.net/. > > The SFLC has had successful outcomes in every single case > that it has filed - all defendants have come into compliance > with the GPL. No defendant has chosen to fight the plaintiffs. > I understand how frustrating it must be for the GPL skeptics > to see such untrammeled success, and how they must hope for > some external force to appear and turn things their way. But > that won't happen. > > You are also quite wrong about joint works in at leats > four separate ways. > > <http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jan/1/241478.html>, > According to the Copyright Act, the authors of a joint > work jointly own the copyright in the work they create. > A joint work is defined in Section 101 of the Copyright > Act as "a work prepared by two or more authors with the > intention that their contributions be merged into > inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole." > > When the copyright in a work is jointly owned, each joint > owner can use or license the work in the United States > without the consent of the other owner, provided that the > use does not destroy the value of the work and the parties > do not have an agreement requiring the consent of each > owner for use or licensing. A joint owner who licenses a > work must share any royalties he or she receives with the > other owners. > > First, BusyBox is a joint work only if all the authors have > agreed to make it so. Given that one of the authors is a party > to the suit and can insist that he did not intend to form such > a joint work, the plaintiffs might have a difficult time showing > otherwise. > > Second, if BusyBox is a joint work, then each author has full > rights in the work and may sue for infringement without needing > permission from the other authors. > > Third, even if BusyBox is a joint work, each contributing author > has released his changes under the GPL, and therefore it may be > argued that there is an agreement in place among the authors that > the only way their work may be copied and distributed is by GPL. > > Fourth, even if BusyBox is a joint work, the plaintiffs need to > demonstrate that they have permission to copy and distribute it > in some way other than under the GPL, granted to them by some > author of the joint work. That one author has said after the > suit was filed that he does not want to be a party to it does > not mean that he has granted permission to copy and distribute > BusyBox outside of the GPL.
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
