Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuit Says GPL is a Price-Fixing Scheme
Soko writes "Yes, it's real. The crack team of Daniel Wallace and Maureen O'Gara have ganged up once again to protect their version of "The American Dream," he by filing a lawsuit in Indiana court saying the GPL is nothing more than a price fixing scheme designed to drive software vendors out of business, she by parroting the proprietary vendors' "The GPL kills business" mantra (as well as a few well placed insults at the free software community). I found the story on Groklaw - no links to Ms. O'Gara or Mr. Wallace from me. I'm still kind of dumbfounded at the audacity of Mr. Wallace, but wonder if he has an angle that might have a slim chance of prevailing." This Google search reveals some of Daniel Wallace's views on the GPL.
I'm surprised that Slashdot actually posted this drivel on the front page (well actually the real surprise was the lack of spelling errors!) As has been the case for several months now, O'Gara's articles have become deliberately more provocative and frankly ridiculous as she attempts to push up the banner hits on the LBW/LBN website. I don't think she even bothers to cite anything resembling a fact anymore, but simply blurts out the most ridiculous thoughts that she finds stomping around the inside of her head.
;-)
For anyone who isn't aware, one of the other regular "writers" for LBW/LBN was recently outed, caught trolling on the SCOX message board to pull in more hits with his crackpot theories. It's looking like a company policy.
There's no doubt that MOG is simply using this Wallace fellow to help finance the ailing website. Personally I'm not going to visit it, and I'd suggest anyone else with any sense also not bother. The slashdot effect is exactly the thing they wish for over there... unless everyone visits with Lynx, or images turned off, of course
LBW/LBN is fast becoming the "Jerry Springer show" of the tech news sites...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
The slashdot blurb here says that David Wallace and Maureen O'Gara filed this lawsuit. The Groklaw link however seems to be saying that David Wallace filed the suit and Maureen O'Gara was merely acting as volunteer PR shill for it. My OP post above took the slashdot blurb by its letter.
What exactly is the relationship of Ms. O'Gara to this lawsuit?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The software industry is a service industry operating under the guise of a manufacturing industry.
:)
Of course there are some exceptions -- the gaming industry, for example (though MMORPGs have the "subscription service" thing down). Unfortunately I can't name any others at the time but I'm sure there's more.
The GPL isn't a price-fixing scheme...it basically exposed the current artifically inflated price-fixing scheme that is proprietary software.
Adapt and evolve, baby. Or cry about it all the way to extinction.
Okay, normally a price-fixing scheme artificially inflates pricing. Price fixing laws are there to protect the consumer, iirc, and I'd say the GPL is the ultimate consumer protection.
Wouldn't dumping be a more accurate complaint, since anti-dumping laws protect other businesses from large competitors selling for below cost? But since there's virtually no cost involved in making copies of software and the R&D is typically recouped by service contracts with IBM, Red Hat and the like, this lawsuit would appear to fall under the catagory of 'hilarity'.
I don't mind paying for software (except for basic OS and utilities), but if you're going to charge me for it, you damn well better be offering a better product than what a bunch of students and professionals crank out in their spare time for free.
"Really now, how does the GPL fix prices when it allows anyone to charge any amount of money for GPL software?"
And as people are quick to point out about digital goods. They have no value... oh wait, wrong discussion. No "asking for, and getting" are two different things. Plus much like Wal-mart it puts pressure on software practitioners to the lowest price possible.* It most certainly doesn't put pressure on anyone to raise them.
*Throw in globalization and really let the fun begin. Software's free, and the person writting it is damn close to it.
There is a rather vocal individual in the comp.lang.lisp group that makes the argument free software is evil, because it makes it impossible to charge enough for software to make a living. To be fair, he feels this way about ANYTHING for free, so while I strongly disagree with him he is consistent. I'd dearly love to hear him and Stallman have an hour long debate, but I doubt it will ever happen.
People seem to think they have some kind of entitlement to profits. People, the world doesn't owe you ANYTHING. Generally speaking, if you can't convince people to pay you money for your work, it's your problem. If part time hobbiest developers can create free tools that are better for the price than your commercial ones, I'd say you need to work harder.
In a true capitalistic system, profits are VERY hard to come by. This is a good thing, because people work hard without sucking in a huge amount of resources, to the betterment of society. Competition sucks, because you never get to rest on your laurels. You have to keep running to stay in place, and frankly that's BY DESIGN. It is very nearly the whole POINT. You have to really produce something people want to get a profit, and you have to keep innovating to keep it. If volunteer efforts can produce a free tool which is good enough, that means you need to step it up a notch to produce something people want to pay you for. After all, you're expecting to be paid, so you should be able to put more time/energy into it.
Seesh. What ever happened to doing something just to make the world a better place, or make other people happy? Now it's price fixing. I feel very sad when I see this kind of thing, because it underlines how little regard we have for the world around us. The world is a cold, empty place when people generously and cheerfully giving you something out of the goodness of their hearts is looked upon as price fixing, and it's enough to make me sick.
The worst part of it is, in many these companies are making a profit over and above what they are paying their employees, and yet somehow this isn't enough. Providing people with productive, well paying jobs isn't the point, the point is MAKE MORE MONEY.
At some point in the future, we are going to hit a situation where our economy CANNOT, because of limitations of physical resources, be driven by growth. It will have to be steady state, and I think the US is doomed when this happens because we don't know how not to be greedy, to appreciate the community around us, and be happy that it is prospering. We are focused on ME,ME,ME, and it can't go on forever. The Earth is finite, and the energy costs of space travel are not economic on the large scales of the global system. We WILL have to face it, and when we do I hope we can remember how to be human beings, and not just profit machines.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Having sat on a jury, I can tell you that that's the intent, but in fact juries have to interpret law in order to decide whether the facts support a guilty or a not guilty verdict.
In my case, the plantiff was a person who was busted for posession of methamphetamine and drug paraphanelia.
Both sides present to the jury what they think will give the best chance for conviction (ie, the prosecution does this) or acquittal (the defense's job). In preparing the papers for the jury, both sides are allowed to submit papers that describe the offense.
Now this guy was guilty as all hell of what he was accused of. After the case was over, the defense attorney came in and asked the jury what she could have done differently, and those of us talking to her agreed that putting him on the stand would've helped - but she said "Oh, I couldn't have done that, because he was in fact guilty."
She then explained that what would've happened had she had the defendant testify was that the prosecution would've asked him about the warrant he was served with, and he would've had to testify as to his drug production history, which would guarantee a conviction.
Also, in amongst the papers we were given was a definition of the statute we were to rule on where it stated that posession of drug paraphanelia required an intent to use - which wasn't proven in the case. I actually stopped to talk to the judge about this after the case was over, and he said "Yeah, defense attorneys use that citation of case precident to try to get their defendants an acquittal - it never works, but they have to try it." The way it was presented was in its case form - and to a non-lawyer, that can be presented to it looks like a statute.
All jokes aside about not being able to avoid jury duty - it is a very interesting process, and if you live in the US, you should try it at least once.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Parent opines:
> That's completely false. You should be ashamed
> of yourself. Wallace claims, correctly, that Gnu
> is selling their product for less than what it
> costs to produce it.
Hm. Let's see. Even if we go with your inane fantasy here, just how much do you suppose it costs the GNU project to allow someone to produce software for the world under the GNU license? Aside from the distribution costs (borne by major foundation grants as well as smaller donations from people like me) the costs incurred by the GNU project and the FSF come not from software production, but from from championing the open-source movement and hiring lawyers to fend off idiots (i.e. people like... *ahem*.)
> He also claims, also correctly, that the FSF
> engages in price fixing by getting multiple
> vendors to agree to give their products away
> for free.
And here's where you're getting confused. Laws against price fixing exist not to allow other companies to compete, but to allow consumers to get the benefits of competition by prohibiting collusion of those already in the business.
It's hard to argue that consumers are getting shafted by collusion on the parts of the donors when the consumers don't have to pay for their free software.
> The is anti-competitive, because it
> prevents other vendors who don't want to give
> their products away for free from entering the
> market.
By this logic, we should also outlaw public schools, public libraries, national parks, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, municipal police forces, non-toll roadways, and any other establishments for the public good that don't involve a direct fee-for-service model. After all, they're competing against somebody else's potential business. (Thanks for the idea, but no thanks-- I like *this* world better.)
Listen to what I say, not what I mean...
unfortunately you can't really have the libre without the gratis
if you had to pay per unit licensing for every little bit of code you used then collaborative programming would go nowhere as projects would quickly become far too expensive to use
people coding as a hobby will always be destructive to certain segments of the software development profession
software thats freely availible will also be destructive to some segments (companies that sell boxed software)
but at the end of the day there will always be software that companies need that noone wants to develop for fun and someone is going to have to pay to have that software developed because they need to use it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Quite right, parent should be modded insightful.
It's not like this hasn't happened before, after all...
There's the occupation known as "scribe"; a person who, for a fee, writes letters, petitions, etc, for illiterate people. This occupation is in demand where literacy levels are low (and sadly, this is still the case in many poorer countries today). In more developed countries, it's common for the mass of the population to be able to read and write by themselves, without assistance. Tough luck if you used to be a scribe ...
... but hey! which situation is better? Who would seriously reject mass literacy because it's tough on scribes? Only a complete idiot/sociopath like Daniel Wallace.
when communism becomes evil is when it is compulsory. A point you seem to have missed widely.
So it isn't communism that is evil, it is compelling people do something.
So tell me again why Americans hate communism?
meh
I think of GPL and Open Source software as the baseline.. Like those signs near the line for a roller coaster that say "You must be this tall to ride". The GPL software says "Your software must be better than this" in order to sell it.
IMHO, the GPL is good for capitalism. Capitalism is all about competition forcing companies to constantly improve their products, and competition from GPL software will force advancement at a much greater speed than it would be at otherwise.
Those who don't like it, are the lowest tier. They'll be the first driven out of business. Not because of the GPL per se, but because of their own incompetence and inability to adjust to new business reality. Incompetent companies going out of business is, and has always been, good for capitalism and good for consumers.
An intelligent company would look at the OSS movement and see what they can do to adjust to it. Fighting it won't help, the tighter they squeeze their grip, the more star systems will slip between their fingers..
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.