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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.
They're just mad because you tk ther jeb!
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.
what's so bad about fixing the price of software?
Bottled watter companies file lawsuit that running tap water is a price fixing scheme! Oxygen tank manufacturers claim air is a price fixing scheme! Recording Industry says making your own music is a price fixing scheme!
Is a crack tram anything like a crack house? On wheels maybe?
Read the complaint that is linked in the groklaw story.. (http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Wallace-Complaint.pdf)
It starts out as "The Plaintiff Daniel Wallace......"
and in the damages section changes to "The Defendant Daniel Wallace..."
what a moron..
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
I always thought that the idea of a price-fixing scheme was to drive prices *up*. What they have said makes absolutely no sense. Free software is causing prices to go up? I think not...
If anything, free software drives prices down (remember when IE was released for free, while Netscape was still selling for $30?). Oh, the commercial software industry is dying too. Then why is Windows still the most popular operating system in existance?
It has nothing to do with reason.
It has nothing to do with justice.
It has nothing to do with quality and or merits.
It has nothing to do with "who deserves to win".
If not SCO, then someone else will win. It will be the stupidest ruling in the history of law, no doubt, but somehow it will win. IBM on our side or not. I am not a troll, though it should be obvious I'm far from being an optimist.
I hope I am wrong.
All that said, does it suprise you that with SCO being an embarrassment, that Microsoft would start up a few other legal experiments? They no doubt have people whose sole job is to dream up possible litigation, and we can expect 1-3 of these things per year, until one succeeds or they run out of money. Guess which one will happen first.
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?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
You know, if you don't like GPL software, don't buy it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
but wonder if he has an angle that might have a slim chance of prevailing
Put any issue like this in a court, especially in front of a jury, especially in America, and literally anything can happen, regardless of the lawyers or facts on either side.
Juries will do what they think is justice based upon what they think they understand.
Saying that SCO's case is lost, or this one would not stand a chance is simply not legitimate. Many experienced legal commentators seem to tend to give either side in just about any major case a 50-50 chance of winning. That is why the smartest thing you can do is to figure out how to stay out of court, unless you are evil and rich and like injustice. Over the long haul it may get corrected, but the courtroom is a roll of the dice.
That is also probably why jury-tried issues carry little if any weight as legal precedence. While it would be very incorrect to say that the facts are irrelevant, it would also be very incorrect to say that they will carry the day or that this or any other issue could not be won in court, especially before a jury.
No, don't do that, otherwise, you'll be spreading the image of free software advocates as harrassing nutcases. What would this accomplish? Do you think that your comment will be the one that changes his mind, the one that causes him to turn from the dark side? Your time would be better spent advocating free software instead of attacking people who don't.
Also, is it so hard to imagine that you would be sued by this guy for harassment?
It's just like those Habitat for Humanity bastards, conspiring to drive down the wages of building contractors!
paintball
"Motion to dimiss your honor. The plantiff is clearly on drugs."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You realize, sarcasm apart, that this "price fixing" or "unfair competition" is exactly what all of the TelCo's and the Wireless carriers are claiming about municipal WiFi efforts...
It's sad that corporations think that they deserve special favors, or believe that they will receive them for the right price...
oh wait, they believe it because it happens...
"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.
Not very much.
When everybody has a compiler, what is your bland piece of software worth?
Not very much.
Without entering into whether or not it's right, the GPL definitely raises the bar on what makes a marketable piece of software. I think the everybody-owns-the-factory analogy is pretty appropriate.
Once upon a time, people made a living by delivering ice to your home. Now we have freezers and make our own ice. What kind of money can you make delivering ice?
Not very much.
Does that mean you should attack the freezer manufacturers or does it mean you should find a better way of doing business?
Apparently, the answer to that question will be decided in a court of law rather than the court of common sense.
Actually, it's all to do with the GPL, as most other licenses (notably BSD and MIT) allow you to take source code, modify it, and then sell it in whole as your own product without releasing your modifications as source code.
And you should check your sources; Stallman came up with the GPL long before Microsoft had its monopoly.
One good turn - gets all the covers.
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.
When you use FOSS Baby Jesus Weeps.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Wait a minute! HOLD THE TRAIN.
I'm confused now. I've been reviewing all these reports that Linux has a greater total cost of ownership. So damn. What's this? Now it's unfairly fixing the price too low?
I don't get it! What am I missing here???
Someone help a poor capitalist out...
---
Moral of the story: You can't have your cake and eat it too.
You know what gets me...
Is that companies who back these kind of ideas are the same ones who will outsource your job to save a buck. In a SECOND.
So they cry when anybody taps their market (be it VOIP, FOSS, or whatnot), and they lobby for laws to *protect* their business. Yet they have no problems doing this to PEOPLE.
Companies HAVE a responsibility to their customers, and the cities/towns/COUNTRIES they do business it. They should be MADE to give back instead of just taking taking taking.
I'm tired of hearing stuff about "well it's their coumpany and they can do what they want." This way of thinking is really wrong, IMHO, and is just a symptom of how they have brainwashed everyone. Morality doesn't seem to exist in the corporate world, everything is for the blind pursuit of profit... generally by crawling up the backs of hard working people, then kicking them down when they reach the summit.
Pure capitalism is faulty, somebody needs to reign these greedy people in. It'd be nice if someone could pull the wool back up, from over the general public's eyes.
this all makes me so bloody angry.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
Obviously, it's so inept it fulfilling that end, that it can be mistaken for nearly anything.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Oh guess what...Not only is baseball exempt from antitrust laws (See Section 26b), but so are not-for-profits. Just like the good Free Software Foundation, a non-profit Maine corporation. Section 13c Nothing in the Act approved June 19, 1936, known as the Robinson-Patman Antidiscrimination Act, shall apply to purchases of their supplies for their own use by schools, colleges, universities, public libraries, churches, hospitals, and charitable institutions not operated for profit.
Free software isn't free until it's been written. Charge for your labor and you don't need to exert control over users afterward. Doctors and plumbers don't expect to do their job just once and then kick back and cash checks for the rest of their lives.
The FSF is not selling a product. There is no offer to buy or acceptance of that offer. In fact, **there is no product** To quote from the GPL:
Read it again: without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY. The FSF is being open that their code is not a salable product.
Anyone is welcome to come along and turn the FSF's code into a salable product. They can do this by offering a warranty that the code has a useful purpose and can do so for whatever price they choose. Again to quote from the GPL:
The generally low price for GPLd software is a consequence of unfettered competition, something monopolists have a problem with.
Now go and crawl back under your bridge.
- nobody is forced to work on gpl'd software
- nobody is forcing anyone to try to make a living directly from gpl code
- people don't necessarily write code and release it under the gpl to make money
- some people WILL "do the right thing", by giving something of value back to the author
If you read the law suit, you'd have seen that the guy is complaining that he can't make a living programming because he can't compete with the price of free software, that the gpl is a "price restraint scheme".part of the "deal" behind using gpl code in your product, instead of developing it from scratch, is the value of you not having to develop it from scratch
there are other ways to add value. Or you can work with proprietary code - oh, no you can't - you don't have the source.
perhaps they are using the code in-house, and see the benefit of getting the "many eyes" of others working on it, saving their company money in the process
this can be code improvements, bug reports, etc. Its not always about money
This is utter bs. There is nothing preventing him from writing closed software. Of course, he'll have to have licenses for any libraries he uses/buys, etc., (or is he going to complain that requiring a license for closed-source libraries *also* prevents him from competing, since the copyright holder of closed-source libraries can charge any price they want ...)
Strange how all these attacks on the gpl, groklaw, etc., come just as LongHorn totally fails to wow everyone. Coincidence? Probably not.
That's called DUMPING, and it's against the law. 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. The is anti-competitive, because it prevents other vendors who don't want to give their products away for free from entering the market.
Can you please cite statutes?
The only ones mentioned in the case are a jurisdictional one and one about remedies (15 USC 25 I think). None of the sections the latter mentions as applicable has anything that I can tell these people are violating...
It is good for business because ALL THE OTHER BUSINESSES BESIDES THE PRODUCING INDUSTRY BENEFIT. With virtually free gasoline practically every product you buy will cost less. Software is a little like gasoline to many industries. Free software is a free public good that is non-scarce and infinitely divisible.
Is it good for the programmer job market? No. Tough titties, it's good for everybody else. Yours isn't the first industry to be decimated by progress.
I find it weird that Americans are so "anti-communism" as if its an evil thing. It's not that bad at all! Of course, I personally don't think it would be the best way to solve the problem of unlimited wants and needs with limited resources. Software is a bit different because it can be duplicated an unlimited number of times for next to no cost.
Anyway, lets look at it:
-OSS: Its communism because everyone works on it for nothing! ner ner.
-Proprietary: Its communism because its all designed from the middle and given to the masses even though they may not like it and have no control of it. ner ner...
I am Australian but I have lived in the US for 6 months and I discovered that the US is unbelievably capitalist with a huge FEAR of anything socialist. Here in Oz, we have a mixed economy that is predominately market but has some socialist aspects such as unlimited welfare (the dole) and free health care (medicare). It think its a good balance.
Anyway, my point is that we should have a BALANCE of OSS and proprietary software.
Can your karma go above being Excellent?
Why shouldn't municipal governments provide wi-fi? Internet access has become an important service, and is there some part of the US, Canadian or any other Constitution that I'm unaware of which guarantees "profit and unending dividends for all [businesses]"? The economy should serve society, not the other way around. Cities don't just decide to offer these services without a mandate from their residents, and if residents of a city want municipal wi-fi, some telco should certainly not be able to over-rule that just because their profits are at risk!
It's not the "nanny-state", it's democracy. What it damn well shouldn't be is corporatocracy.
Freedom: "I won't!"
In what nanny-state, commie pipe dream is it the government's responsibility to provide internet access to people who can almost certainly get it cheapy from commercial ISPs?
You got it backwards. When a town votes and decides to turn certain services like Internet access over to a public utility, that's called "democracy". Perhaps you have heard of it.
When the state government comes in and negates the will of the voters in some corrupt scheme to help commercial campaign contributors to make more money, that's "real communism" (i.e., corrupt, centralized government).
Hi, communism is the revolutionary theory of marxism. Marxism is a rather complicated theory involving a notion called dialectical materialism. This has fuck all to do with the GPL. The GPL is one thing, and one thing only: sharing. Nothing to do with communism or marxism. But then again, this is Slashdot, where you can equate apples with oranges and get bananas, and that is 'insightful'.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
the GPL is nothing more than a price fixing scheme
Actually, it's not the GPL which is a price fixing scheme, but copyright. As in copyright allows the author to set any price they want to license their work. Somehow I don't think Wallace, O'Gara, and countless others quite understand this simple fact (or are not willing to admit it, as this pseudo-monopolistic characteristic of copyright seems to fly in the face of other free market ideals).
The GPL actually removes this restriction by allowing a copyrighted work to be licensed for any amount of money desired by any party with a copy of the work. Zero just happens to be the most typical number, for the practical reason that it is difficult to get customers to pay exorbitant sums for what is usually available elsewhere for free.
Heh, maybe we should just abolish copyright and remove this restraint of trade in all cases. This way anyone could license any work created by anyone else for however much they thought they could get, though this probably isn't the type of "solution" the software industry has in mind.
The ultimate plays for Madden 2006
when communism becomes evil is when it is compulsory. A point you seem to have missed widely.
No one gives a shit what you CHOOSE to do for a hobby, who you CHOOSE give the results to, or if you CHOOSE to run off and live on a commune with River Moonchild and a bunch of other random hippies.
It's when you demand under threat of violence (usually via government) that I do these things that we have a very, very big problem.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
That is because slashdot is moderated by monkeys and monkeys like bananas.
ya, i think they call that "competition". even when software is free, competition fosters improvement.
I'm not against the Libre software movement, but I genuinely believe that the 'gratis' software movement is screwing things up for all of us.
Um, the former implies the latter. And your main point is just spectacularly wrong. Imagine a world where Apache, Linux, Java, Perl, Python, MySQL and all similar "gratis" software never came into being. If you want to run a web site, you have to pay thousands of dollars for the software just to get started. Will the demand for programmers be more or less than in our world? Hint: not more.
And even if free software somehow were harmful to programmers, opposing it on that basis alone is profoundly immoral, as it's an unquestionable benefit to everyone else. It would be the equivalent of candlemakers sabotaging light bulb factories to keep their jobs
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Actually, it would be better to say that communism is *a* revolutionary theory of Marxism --- one that comes from an awful misreading of Marx.
The GPL is actually quite *un*Marxist, as a True Marxist cheers on the onslaught of Unimpeded Capitalism (which we plainly do not have, as there are brakes on the economy and safety nets put in place in order to prevent the consequences of Unimpeded Capitalism from driving the 99% to overthrow the 1% feeding off of them, followed by the 99% installing some sort of Workers Paradise (not unlike the Christian idea of the Eschaton, though wholly materialistic and without a Final Judgement, eternal life, etc.). The GPL throws a monkey wrench into the works, as it keeps someone's labors from being stolen out from under them with no recompense. The GPL works well with Capitalism With Governor(s) Installed by acting as a governor on the system.
Thus the GPL is about as far from communism as you're going to get, as it is designed to help keep the capitalist system from destroying itself. This makes those who oppose it suspect, as they seem to be very interested in the self-destruction of capitalism, and work to remove the very mechanisms which allow capitalism to survive.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
You've obviously never read Marx's work or taken a serious class in market economic theory, otherwise, you'd realize the GPL is more capitalistic in concept and in no way embodies a communist ideal.
Intially, communism requires a central authority directive whereby others are told what to make, how to make it, etc. by the central authority. As you can plainly see, no one in the Free Software community *forces* anyone else to make certain software to certain standards. In fact, the whole idea of the GPL is that if you dislike the direction a project is moving in, you can fork the project and make your own. Hardly a central planning scheme. You also have to look at what happens after the product is created: there's no central government that forces people to use this software. RMS doesn't come from on high and threaten to kick you out of the FOSS group if you chose to use x instead of y. You can use whatever you want - even none free software! Again, hardly characteristic of communism.
Your point that "It's a way of creating code for the community, and forcing those that use said code to in turn contribute to the community as well" is hardly indicative of communism - not does it force you to do anything. Intially, I can use OpenOffice or any other GPL'ed software without being require to contribute back. If I create derivative works of said product and intend to release my derivative works, I do have to GPL my product. You've entered a contract - it's no different from if I require a liscensing fee of so many dollars - that's the price you pay for entering the contract. You have the option not to create derivative works and instead start from scratch, creating no obligation to GPL your work. You *choose* to use GPL. And that's the fundamental difference between communism and captialism - freedom of choice.
As for why the GPL acutally espouses capitalism, the reasons seem more obfusated and possibly less obvious if you aren't up on your knowledge of free market economics - but, none the less, it's there. The GPL aids in the free flow of information - by being required to distribute your source code, your consumers are able to see exactly what your product does. Furthermore, this requirement for open source helps the market find its equilibrium price: people are able to make the best product possible, at the least price possible. You're in no way required to not sell your product - all the GPL requires is that you distribute your source code with your product. I can still sell my product for $300 if I want, so long as I include the source code with it. However, distributing it at $300 runs the risk that someone will modify my code to make it better and then sell it at a cheaper price, or might just redistribute copies of my software for free. Thus, I might decide to include some sort of support service as part of my price. Another person might decide to do the same at a cheaper price. I might have to lower my price as a result. This will continue until the market equilbrium price is reached (which very well might be zero - often times, however, it is not. Look at how much the commercial versions of Linux sell for, as an example). Rather than prices being artifically high because a monopoly exists on the product, you have a free market where supply/demand drives the price, which is based on the quality and desirability of the product provided.
Another way the GPL is capitalistic is that, above all, it provides *choice*. The whole point of capitalism is to provide a myraid of choices so that the best product at the best price prevails. The GPL ensures this will happen by preventing monopolies and ensuring consumers are informed. It also aids in the creation of new choices by getting rid of the red tape and bureaucracy usually involved in creating a derivative work. Freedom of choice is the antithesis of communism - it is at the very heart of captialism.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that the US is not compeletly a free market economy. Things such as p
"Actually, Communism is evil. Not evil in the trying to kill you way, evil in the I know what's right better than you way."
:-)
So if a country invades other countries and brings them democracy because it is better for them... they are communists?
No, give banana!
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.