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? I can think of only a
> few reasons:
>
> 1. The MPL gives AOL more rights than the actual copyright holder.
> 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) and wants to go after it, they can and will do
> so simply because of their almost limitless power.
> 3. The MPL is in fact uninfringeable: anyone can do anything with any
> code placed under it.
Just to set the record straight. Netscape proposed the MPL and NPL
licenses long before AOL bought Netscape. The licenses were discussed in
a newsgroup on this server and there was considerable agreement from
developers outside of Netscape. The license discussions went on for a
couple of months as the licenses were fine tuned. In any property rights
involving Mozilla, AOL is an assignee rather than an original party.
Your 1. is false. Your 2. is incomprehensible. Your 3. is false.
Chuck
--
... The times have been,
That, when the brains were out,
the man would die. ... Macbeth
Chuck Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED]
