On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, JTK wrote:
>
> Ian Hickson wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Frank Hecker wrote:
> > >
> > > JTK wrote:
> > >> So what happens when somebody needs to be taken to court for
> > >> infringing on the license? Who's the plaintiff?
> > >
> > > The copyright holder for the code which is the subject of the alleged
> > > infringement. Again, IANAL, but my understanding is that the copyright
> > > holder is normally the only person/entity who can sue for copyright
> > > infringement.
> >
> > This is why the Free Software Foundation ask that you reassign your
> > copyright to them on any code that you contribute to their projects -- it
> > makes the legal process of defending the GPL a lot easier.
> >
> > http://www.fsf.org/licenses/why-assign.html
>
> Right, so why does AOL presumably *not* do that?
Lots of groups using free software licenses, inluding the GPL, don't do it.
> I can think of only a few reasons:
>
> 1. The MPL gives AOL more rights than the actual copyright holder.
A brief reading of the MPL will show this isn't true. (It _is_ for the
NPL, of course -- don't use that!)
> 2. AOL is big enough that copyright doesn't really matter in this case;
> if AOL sees an "abuse" (which apparently includes actions wholly in the
> spirit of Free Software
Why do you say "apparently"? I don't understand to what you are referring.
> ) and wants to go after it, they can and will do so simply because of
> their almost limitless power.
"Limitless". I'm sure AOL stockholders would be much happier if that was
true! :-)
> 3. The MPL is in fact uninfringeable: anyone can do anything with any
> code placed under it.
That's certainly not the case, any number of things, such as me taking MPL
code, changing it, compiling it, and selling it without the source, are
illegal.
The fourth, and (I believe) actual, reason is much more mundane: They
didn't think it was worth the effort and couldn't really be bothered.
--
Ian Hickson )\ _. - ._.) fL
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