GPL Price-Fixing Lawsuit Dismissed

ansak writes "The case of Wallace vs. the Free Software Foundation has been dismissed. It wasn't entirely on the merits of the case. From PJ's analysis, 'despite the judge clearly telling him where his previous complaint was lacking, he didn't fix it.... In this case, he had five tries.' Nevertheless, the judge did make a strong statement that the GPL 'encourages, rather than discourages, free competition' and ordered Wallace to pay court costs: 'Judges do that when they'd like you to learn a good lesson. It's a signal you shouldn't have brought the case in the first place.'"

Comments

Re:I love irony

[monkeydo]

The real irony is that immediately following her use of legal latin, PJ writes,

People think that because the law is in English, that they get it. I keep explaining that it's English up to a point, but it's really code -- words in the law don't always have exactly the same meaning as the same word in normal use.

The law is only hard to understand because lawyers and paralegals puff themselves up by using legalisms like pro se when writing for a lay audience. PJ could have just written, "Lawsuits where the plaintff represents himself." Along with the joy of knowing that her writing was accessible to lawyers and lay people alike, she wouldn't have been contributing to the problem she was complaining about.