On Friday 16 February 2007, Michael K. Edwards wrote: >On 2/15/07, Gene Heskett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >[ignorant silliness] > >> There is no one to my knowledge here, who would not cheer loudly once >> a verdict was rendered because that courts decision would give the >> FOSS community a quotable case law as to exactly what is, and is not >> legal for you to do with GPL'd code. We would after 16+ years of the >> GPL, finally have a firm, well defined line drawn in the sand, a >> precedence in US case law that at present, only exists in Germany. > >Oferchrissake. We do have a US precedent, insofar as a decision in a >court of fact on issues of fact can ever be a precedent in a common >law system (hint: zero, unless the later judge feels like quoting some >compelling prose). That would be Progress Software v. MySQL (also >known as MySQL v. NuSphere in some commentators' writings). The FSF >interpretation of the GPL lost.
Pacer citations please. >Completely. Which is true also of >the Munich and Frankfurt decisions. > >The plaintiffs, as authors of GPL works, got a full hearing in each >case -- via routine reasoning about the GPL as an offer of contract, >whose conditions either had (Progress Software) or had not >(Fortinet/Sitecom and D-Link) been performed to the extent necessary >for the defendant to claim license under the GPL. MySQL did obtain a >preliminary injunction, but on unrelated trademark license grounds; >the GPL claim got them nowhere, for at least four distinct reasons >stated in the opinion. Harald's recovery was limited to statutory >costs and, in the Munich case, an injunction to _either_ offer the >source code of netfilter/iptables itself _or_ stop shipping product. >Both German courts refused to find contract "in personam" (necessary >to a breach of contract claim, in turn necessary to a demand for >specific performance). > >"GPL is a creature of copyright law" lost in court, every time. >"Section 4 is a limitation of scope, not a conditional performance" >lost. "You can lose your license irrevocably" lost. "We can compel >disclosure of source code with no alternative" lost. "We can >circumvent contract law standards of breach and remedy" lost. >Everything RMS and Eben Moglen have ever written about the legal >meaning of the GPL is wrong, and where "derivative works" are >concerned, embarrassingly hypocritical as well. Take the Big Lie >elsewhere, please! > >- Michael -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/