On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 8:30 AM, Twayne wrote: > IMO OOo is indeed akin to "public domain" in many aspects of the license and > protection afforded to it.
GNU LGPL has a clearly defined set of rights and obligations associated with it. Violation of those rights is both a breach of license and a breach of copyright law. Public Domain has no rights or obligations associated with it. As such, there is no way to violate it. By conflating the two, you are impugning upon the moral rights of the GNU LGPL creator, and as such violating copyright law. > One small company in town here refuses to even look at it, insisting that if > it's any good it wouldn't be free and they "they" will extract their moneys > somehow, probably in support charges. FLOSS meet TANSTAAFL. TANSTAAFL meet FLOSS. Whilst both FLOSS and TANSTAAFL come from the same psychoepistomological weltanshuung, they reach different conclusions about Ich und Du. > I wrote to the level of the impression I had of my audience, I didn't say it > was exactly the same and that you could do everything with it you could do > with public domain software, and I didn't say that there were no corporations > discovering that in various courts. I did say it wasn't intended to be sold, > and licensing terms, so as to not give the impression there weren't any, was > mentioned. > I said what I meant, and I meant what I said. In fact I stand by what I > said. > IMO, I think being able to charge anything but a trivial amount of money to > "sell" OOo to anyone should be forbidden This is a discrimination against fields of endeavor, and as such, a violation of the Four Freedoms. > To charge anything *more* than a trivial amount to recoup S&H etc. should > require not only the source code as it does now, but the addition of a > substantial and stated value-added feature set, say, over and above the > original OOo, which should also have to be mentioned as being free. That would make OOo non open source software. Furthermore, instead of encouraging companies to support it, it would discourage them,because doing so would be a violation of the licence --- to wit, a prohibition on engaging in their normal business activities. > As an example, if I take OOo and create a specialized financial spreadsheet > for a company, then I should simply be able to say I did that, so I charge > this much, but if you want to do it yourself, which most people cannot, > here's where you can get the basic programs for free: There is nothing in the license that prevents you from including, or excluding OOo with the specialized financial spreadsheet for OOo that you created, and are peddling for US$100,000. (I'm somewhat surprised that those spreadsheets are not available for OOo.) > I have not yet heard of any corporation "discovering that in various > courts", although it does interest me. I'm not sure if it is a reference to D-link Germany DmbH, Fortinet, or one of the companies that was sued by the FSF on behalf of BusyBox or SCO's claim that the GNU GPL has no legal standing. It might also be a reference to the Korean court that told the discloser of trade secrets that it didn't matter what the GNU GPL required, trade secret law prohibits what they were doing, and they should have done things differently. > Can you, or anyone who wishes to, cite any specific information to support > that? http://gpl-violations.org/ tracks violations and court cases involving the GNU GPL. xan jonathon -- OOo can not correct for incompetence in creating documents from MSO. Furthermore,OOo can not compensate for the defective and flawed security measures used by Microsoft. As such, before using this product for exams that require faulty and defective software, ensure that you will not be unjustly penalized for the incompetence of the organization that requires the use of software that is known to be flawed, defective, bug-ridden, and fails to meet ISO file format standards. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
