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Wallace's Second Anti-GPL Suit Loses
Enterprise OpenSource Magazine is reporting that Daniel Wallace's second Anti-GPL lawsuit has gone down in flames. From the (short) article: "The judge wrote that 'Antitrust laws are for 'the protection of competition, not competitors.' In this case, the GPL benefits consumers by allowing for the distribution of software at no cost, other than the cost of the media on which the software is distributed. 'When the plaintiff is a poor champion of consumers, a court must be especially careful not to grant relief that may undercut the proper function of antitrust.' Because he has not identified an anticompetitive effect, Wallace has failed to allege a cognizable antitrust injury.'"
Judges stand up for consumer shocker.
Read all about it!
This is what it means to be "laughed out of court".
If you're interested then have at these instead:
n tiff)2 01540127
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Wallace_(plai
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060320
"From the (short) article: "The judge wrote that 'Antitrust laws are for 'the protection of competition, not competitors.'"
So what does that say about the Microsoft antitrust case brought up by the likes of Netscape and others?
He has had no luck with anything since he broke up with Grommit.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
"If you can't find a lawyer willing to represent you, it usually means you don't have a case."
That may be true for this case, but more often than not it means you can't afford the lawyer's fees whether you've got a case or not. Justice and the legal process are things that are for sale in the United States these days. If you've got a small business there are any number of silly lawsuits your enemies can bring against you that will bleed you dry in legal fees alone. And that's for DEFENDING yourself against a bogus complaint, never mind prosecuting a case where you know you're in the right.
this suit was manifestly stupid. What he was claiming was that because someone is cheeper they are damaging the market. Is this not exactly the same as all companies - they are as cheep as they can afford to be in order to gain business from other companies? did he want to stop that - because it would have. Further, if the case went through and won it would mean that nothing could be given away for free, and possibly that the internet is illegal because it takes away from the market for books on the subject.
If this had won it would have literally killed the economy and taken it back to the dark-ages.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
What surprises me is not that Wallace was laughed out of court. That was almost certain for various reasons. What did surprise me is that the judge's comments showed that he really understood the GPL and its role in ensuring a competitive marketplace.
We have freedom from *high* prices, not *low* prices.
It must have chaffed MOG's hyde to print this news. I do have to give her points for writing the facts of the case for once instead of anti-IBM FUD.
As for Wallace, he is a fucking crackpot and now everyone in the IT industry knows it.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I'm just curious-- who is this Daniel Wallace character, and what does he have to do with the GPL? What prompted the suit? I read the Wikipedia page and there wasn't much on him other than his two suits were thrown out.
Oh cool! You're on your way to a "+5 Troll". I haven't seen one in a Looonng time!
Also, it's not "dumping" unless it's:
Coming from another country.
And, the industry that's "victimized" has a shit load of political clout - Agriculture, Auto and Steel as examples.
First of all, loss leaders are not illegal, and not necessarily anticompetitive.
But in this case the product/service isn't even being sold below cost. Something like Linux was produced mostly by non-employees of the companies in question. IBM, Novel, and Red Hat charge a price based on how much effort they put into writing code, validating code, and providing support. There is nothing anticompetitive about that.
I read your post half a dozen times or so and but I can't tell. Do you charge your loved one for making her happy? (I know, I know, I'm making a few assumptions here.)
SysCon really sucks.
They said they wouldn't print any more Maurene O'Gara articles after she went crazy stalking Pamela Jones and making fun of her religion. So now they're printing MoG's articles but without any attribution.
As always with MoG, the article is misleading. The judge didn't accept the facts as true. To dismiss a lawsuit the judge has to say: "If these were all true, should the case go forward?" In this case the answer is no. The "if" is important.
Anyway here is the original article where the Daniel Wallace stupidness started. The actual syscon link is offline because syscon took all MoG's stuff offline.
Daniel Wallace is a net kook. I wouldn't be surprised if he created a slashdot login to respond anonymously to this article. He always posts about how the GPL is a contract not a license. He is not a legal genius but he is funny.
Maurene O'Gara is evil. She lies constantly. I've never seen anyone who is as sick and twisted as she is. I despise her.
The Wiki article isn't too informative and I'm kind of late to the game... I mean we know he sued because he doesn't like GPL, but why doesn't he like GPL? Does he own a closed sourcesoftware buseinss that was trying to compete with Linux? Or is he a paid shill? Or did RMS insult him at a comic book convention? Maybe Linus wrote a scathing reply to his ponies request inclusion to the Linux kernel?
The Wiki and other articles is very uninformative of who this guy is and his motivations and why he would even go out of his way to this. It is like the man spontaneously came into existence just to sue.
Although people have sued other over less...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Dumping at a value less than the cost of production (if you think coders' time is free, you're not much of a coder) isn't anticompetitive?
That's right, like us "dumping" our opinions on the market instead of charging for them like professional opinion writers. Or people singing for the fun of it and letting others listen. Not to mention those evil people who don't charge for sex. They should all be in prison.
(if you think coders' time is free, you're not much of a coder)
Next thing you know, Dockers will be suing women for sewing for free. After that, the association of starving artists will be suing preschoolers for giving their parents free drawings to hang on their refrigerator.
If you think crayons and fingerpaints are free, you're not much of an artist.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Alexander Terekhov troll about now?
News at 11.
All this despite Wallace guaranteeing a victory: "Front page, back page, middle page, they will not win lawsuit two".
Dumping at a value less than the cost of production (if you think coders' time is free, you're not much of a coder) isn't anticompetitive?
Nope. The list is too long to even mention but I think you can start with:
Local theater group doing show without pay (professional actors)
Volunteers at a soup kitchen (the local cafe)
Laywers taking cases pro bono (other lawyers)
Doctors providing free medical aid (other doctors)
Any number of arts and crafts that people sell at less than real cost on fairs and the like
Every local band who can't make a living out of it but plays anyway
Every sort of artist who doesn't make a living out of it, but does it anyway
Every sort of "scratch-an-itch" programmer who doesn't make a living out of it, but does it anyway
Anti-trust requires that there has to be sort of monopolizing intent - that you want to pressure the competitors out of the market, then raise the prices afterwards. In fact, it typically has to go beyond pure pricing (e.g. Wal-Mart killing local shops, McDonalds killing local burger shop) and more on to discrimination and misuse of market power. How can you do that with the GPL? You can't, because there's noone who has that power, not even Linus himself. He couldn't turn around and say "Haha suckers! Now that Linux is the only OS in existance, I'll close it up and become the new Microsoft."
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
""From the (short) article: "The judge wrote that 'Antitrust laws are for 'the protection of competition, not competitors.'"
So what does that say about the Microsoft antitrust case brought up by the likes of Netscape and others?"
IANAL, but AFAIK, it doesn't say anything was wrong, really. They too had to prove in court that not only MS is hurting competition, but also that it hurts the consumer.
I.e., in a nutshell the gist of it is that you can't go and say "I can't compete with company X. Make them raise their prices, so I have a chance." What you have to prove is that first and foremost this has hurt the consumers (e.g., company X is in a position to shamelessly gouge its customers, or companies X and Y aggreed to fix their prices high, or it has some other effect that consumers obviously don't want) and in which way are they creating an artifficial barrier, i.e., other than for example price or brand name, that keeps others from competing.
So in that MS antitrust case, yes, they had to argue that:
A) MS's monopoly is hurting the consumers (e.g., that the cost of a MS OS has been steadily rising in the same time interval where the cost of the computer itself has been steadily dropping. And since at the time it was just short of impossible to buy a computer without Windows, that was an ever-increasing burden upon consumers as a whole.) and
B) that there is an artifficial barrier in the way of anyone trying to compete with MS. The keyword being "anyone", not "me". As was said, those laws are to protect competition, not one or two competitors. That's why for example MS was able to use Linux as an example of "but we still have competitors in the OS arena", although it wasn't the product of Netscape and the other.
You may notice that the same applies to this lawsuit too. See the other quote in the summary, about the GPL allowing people to get programs extremely cheaply. It's not part of the same "protecting the competition" reasoning, but addressing the other (more important) point: then it hasn't hurt the consumer. Without that, you don't really have an anti-trust case.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
No one can claim that GPL hasn't been upheld in court anymore. Was this his goal?
Wallace is a Physicist who looked at the BSD licence. Basically here is what I can piece together went on in his twisted brain.
"Oooh, look, I can take this, change some strings in it so it says 'WallaceOS' and sell it as a green screen command line OS for shitloads of money per copy, distributing it under a licence so my suckers...er customers can't redistrubite it, and so I don't have to give out the source code."
"WTF... nobody's buying my really cool WallaceOS? WTF there's this thing called Linux that is soooo much better under a licence called the GPL that keeps people from doing what I'm trying to do with BSD? That's anticompetative!!! "
"I must sue the Free Software Foundation and remove this evil thing called Linux and the GPL. It doesn't seem to matter that the FSF has nothing to do with the Linux kernel... only the GNU part of the OS, but who cares.... with the GPL gone, people will buy my l33t WallaceOS for whatever money I want to charge and I'll beeeee riiiiich!!!! I just hope they never hear about FreeBSD!"
How wrong can you be, let me count the ways.
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2 .' just before you burn the iso or pack up the tarball divided by the number of people who then receive the code?
"Dumping"
Dumping implies that the costs can be recouped later by raising prices. In the case of GPL'ed software, the GPL implies the distributor has no monopoly on the distribution so he can't raise his own prices after he 'destroys' the competition and expect the market to let him recoup the costs that way. His competitors can just keep dishing out the same GPL'ed code at the old price.
"at a value less than the cost of production"
The cost of production of someone else's GPLed software is next to nothing. The marginal cost of software distributed on the internet, even the stuff you yourself write, is next to nothing (and marginal cost, or similar measures of cost is generally the measure used for antitrust claims). At least three of the defendants in his lawsuits will happily sell their GPLed code to you for way above the cost of burning their CDs or whathaveyou.
"if you think coders' time is free, you're not much of a coder"
Danny wasn't alleging that the price of the code itself was fixed. He couldn't because the GPL explicitly says otherwise. You can charge money for writing GPLed code, and for copying or distributing the code.
The only thing you can't charge for is *permission* to use the code. How much money does it cost you to give one person permission to use the code? One measure would be the cost of typing 'cp
"This judge"
These two judges
"may have just vacated a couple of hundred trade laws..."
The judges didn't have to look at the trade laws because Danny was unable to write down exactly what damage it was that the GPL did to the software market, after about six or seven attempts in two courtrooms.
For such a small post you have managed to be completely wrong in quite a few different ways. I'm impressed. Is your name Danny Wallace by any chance?
All I could find about him in Google is that he is a physics teacher and a member of the FSF. This raises the question: did he lose on purpose? The whole thing was done so ineptly and without apparent motivation to win that one wonders if he's just trying to work some judicial precedent for the GPL.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Source for this one, please ? I'm in the Fellowship of the Free Software Foundation Europe; i can't believe the FSF set something up.
There are somepeople who believe they can handle it as well as an attorney. There are some cases that are on the cutting edge and some attorneys don't like to take chances.
On contingency cases, attorneys take them because they are likely to win and collect. Not just win.
Fight Spammers!
If you don't think most Linux developers see Linux as a "Windows Killer" you're very, very mistaken.
Depending on the state, the statutory limit in small claims could be as high as 5 grand. For the cost of a plane ticket, I'd much rather take that, than complain that lawyer fees are more than any settlement. Recoup what you can. You're running a business.
Yeah, but the only thing they can do to get rid of Windows is improve their product. In a sense that is the purest competition.
I love watching you dolts totally miss the point.
One woman sewing will not compete on the scale of Dockers.
But if Dockers was paying $4.75/hr in America and China could pay its workers $0.80/hr, then dump them in the American market at a price below that cost, Dockers would have a complaint.
This has been done hundreds of times and is a cornerstone of world trade negotiations.
P.S. Giving your code away for free is stealing from your own retirement.
The fact that no American company has attempted to corner an American market through dumping in a long time is testament to the fact that judges usually recognize dumping when they see it.
However, check recent stories about Citgo giving heating oil away for reduced prices in northeast towns this past winter. They did it to embarass the Bush administration, but their competitors started crying that they were dumping.
We can only hope that the real facts in this case are that the plaintiff merely bollixed the proof portion of his claim of dumping, and not that the judge just said that dumping isn't anticompetitive.
If Linux succeeds in displacing Windows, you will start to see non-free versions of it appear. Versions with enough modification that the "free" part is no longer the significant portion of its value. And the free versions will be obsoleted by their remnant bugs.
GPL is not BSD.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Antitrust laws are for the protection of competition, not competitors. ... When the plaintiff is a poor champion of consumers, a court must be especially careful not to grant relief that may undercut the proper function of antitrust.
Man, this judge is my hero! Winners do, whiners sue!
So say we all
GP just handed you your ass on a plate with all the trimmings and you haven't yet retreated under your bridge? Let's see: How is the hypothesis you are making that all of a sudden open source will be abandoned for profit by the community, have anything to do with the GPL violating anti-trust laws?
loss leaders are not illegal, and not necessarily anticompetitive.
That depends on the goal of the loss-leader. If it's to induce collateral purchases and thus still gain a net profit on the gross total, then the effect is not a loss to corner a market.
But unless you're new to "Free Software" you know that the whole point is to compete with and hopefully end un-free software.
And Linus Torvalds has been employed by someone for most of his Linux-kernel-writing career. The true fact is that there is an enormous value input to the body of "free software" and as nobody is attempting to recoup that value, it's being dumped. Not disposed of, because it intends to continue production. The only real question is, who do you sue for that? The person who's giving away the copy that competes with your product. It's up to them to sue the person who gave it to them. Eventually, it gets back to the person who paid for the labor and gave the product away for free.
That's right, like us "dumping" our opinions on the market instead of charging for them like professional opinion writers.
That presumes your opinion had any value when it was created.
I submit that it clearly does not.
That's probably because there are no reliable sources on who this guy is and what his motivation is. About the only things we know are: (1) he has a degree in physics; (2) he's retired; (3) he used to be an FSF member. Everything else is speculation.
What's important here is that the GPL was recognized as legal and beneficial. The judge ruled the GPL:
encourages, rather than discourages, free competition and the distribution of computer operating systems, the benefits of which directly pass to consumers. These benefits include lower prices, better access and more innovation.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You can visit the yahoo message boards and read up on most of it, plus some interesting comments on SCOX at http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mb?s=SCOX
He used to be a member of the FSF but that was
long ago.
The last few years he has been in any board he could get into trying to prove the GPL wouldn't have a chance in a court of law and, basically, being laughed at.
He probably couldn't take the laughs any more and he tried to prove he was right.
One woman sewing will not compete on the scale of Dockers.
So? How many does it take? How many grandmas have to knit little mittens for their grandchildren before baby-clothes manufacturers feel the competition? How many people must cook dinner for their families before McDonalds starts feeling the pressure? How many kids must run lemonade stands at rates far below market costs before Minute Maid goes out of business?
How many programmers must work on GPLd code before Microsoft does more than twitch?
Giving your code away for free is stealing from your own retirement.
Explain.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
GPL is not BSD.
When was the last time you read the GPL in every file you downloaded?
All it takes is a little linguistic shift.
I'm sorry. You didn't explain your idiotic argument in full detail, so I wasn't able to extrapolate this retarded theory of yours from your previous post. I'm not too good at reading the minds of people whose basic premises have some sort of passing acquiantance with reality, never mind fools who don't know the GPL from Theo De Raadt's asses' ass.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'free' here, but I'll tell you why you're an idiot either way.
If you mean 'free as in speech' free, then you're wrong. All works based on GPLed works must be distributed under the GPL. The only way that a non-free Linux kernel can appear is if either it's copyright runs out (which is effectively never under the current corrupt legal system) or a significant proportion of the kernel developers (which is apparently of the order of 5,000 these days) agrees to license the kernel on GPL-incompatible terms. Barring some sort of apocalypse, Linux can never be legally non-free.
If you mean 'free as in beer' then you're almost certainly wrong, in that anyone who pays for just one of these mostly 'non-free' Linux kernels has the right burn their own ISOs or put the GPLed work on their website for pretty much $0 per copy. The free market makes GPLed software more or less free, moneywise, although there are, of course, ways in which people can make money by charging for related services and products.
If you mean a Linux distro rather than a Linux kernel, then I'll remind you that distro's are never wholly under the GPL.
Are you finished yet? You're in danger of breaching your daily retardedness quota.
On another gmane post http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.licenses.open- source.general/2073/match=/ he describes himself:
It would explain a lot of things:... Wallace couldn't resist.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
That's a painful way to find out you're wrong.
"How does the hypothesis that anyone dumping will return to a profitable model once they've driven the competition out of business have anything to do with violation of anti-dumping laws?"
Because law in the Wallace case relates to his allegation of predatory pricing as per section 2 of the Sherman Act. The latest bit of relevant case law on the subject is the fourth circuit appeals court judgement on "Brooke Group Ltd vs Brown & Williamson" which has this to say on the subject:
"A plaintiff must prove (1) that the prices complained of are below an appropriate measure of its rival's costs and (2) that the competitor had a reasonable prospect of recouping its investment in below cost prices. Without recoupment, even if predatory pricing causes the target painful losses, it produces lower aggregate prices in the market, and consumer welfare is enhanced. "
Now stop making an ass of yourself in public, please.
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=200 3-12-12-020-26-OS-CD-CY-0003/
"If you still insist on flaming me, you should know that I have powerful friends in Washington, Beijing and Moscow."
Said Mr Wallace. Scary! Why would someone who Sues against the GPL be a member of the FSF? What a complete, total, utter MORON!
I don't think any of the Kernel-Developers see Linux as a Windows-Killer. Better suited for them? Hell yes ! Better suited for the unwashed masses ? Don't think so
It's Daniel Wallace' not Daniel Wallace's.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
And were you paying attention when I was telling you about how the various court circuits use Marginal Cost or similar measures (i.e. how much it costs you to give the product to the n+1'th person after giving it to n people) when deciding on issues of predatory pricing?
I got the point and answered it in my first post, but you were probably far too dumb to actually look up 'marginal cost' in the dictionary. There's really nothing I can do with someone as obtusely stupid as you other than throw well-warranted juvenile taunts in your direction.
Keep your juvenile taunts to yourself.
This coming from the guy who called other responders idiots, lousy lays, and dolts? Real high ground there.
I think you're missing the point. This is clearly not illegally anticompetitive. I am free to do anything I want and give it away or sell it for any price I want to set. It doesn't matter what it cost me -- if I want to lose money on the transaction, I am free to do so. No one can tell me my price is too low. If I'm "stealing from my own retirement," that's my own business.
As the judge points out, laws against price fixing are in place to protect the consumer from artificially high prices due to the absence of competition. They aren't there to ensure that competitors can make money.
Furthermore, I think you'd be hard pressed to show that it's truly anticompetitive in any sense of the word, not just legally. As the non-free OS vendors like to point out, an OS ends up costing a lot more than the price of its license. Making that license free lowers the cost, but does not make it zero. There is still business opportunity.
Don't believe me? Then just ask how there are Linux companies still in business? Yeah, they're giving away their OS license for free, but they're still generating revenue. Further, the fact that they're giving it away for free is not pricing anyone out of the market -- Windows and OSX seem to be selling just fine.
Well, despite the fact that the GPL is directly related to software, it doesn't really take any understanding of software, computers, etc to understand its legal implications. I'd assume that, since the guy was a judge, he understands copyright law, and that's really all you need to understand to get the GPL.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
"... he's been investing in research and development of "computer programs in order to prepare a compact computer operating system for test marketing" of a "command line system" intended "for use with computational physics programs and numerical analysis involving scientific modeling."
John Dvorak, QED
No, but when I start my business selling and supporting Open Source it will be stealing from your retirement, but I don't care because you're clearly not good enough to fend for yourself in this big bad world. I mean you couldn't even get paid as a professional Troll (They exist) because you're crap at that, too. Why do you think you're entitled to get paid for everything you clearly suck at? I can't stand freeloading scum like you.
FSF owns copyright on the GPL for exactly that eventuality. If someone puts out a slightly-altered GPL that isn't the GPL to trap users, not only is it not enforceable if the victim inadvertantly 'breaches' it, but the FSF would, in all probability, sue and injunct the perpetrator the instant they noticed it.
If you think sex is free, you're not much of a whore.
In other news: The Bush administrations looks into restructuring the Southern District of Indiana.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I think that you'll find most judges get the GPL. These are guys that have been lawyers for 20 years, and are generally able to understand insanely complex contracts and licenses that would twist our brains. The GPL must be a breath of fresh air to them, a license that not only doesn't even try to screw the people who accept it over, but that is the equivalent of a well-commented hundred line program. I expect that most judges are able to look at the GPL and think of things in minutes that you or I didn't see after knowing the GPL for years, and imagine how refreshing it must be to see those concepts in print and being used.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
And how would this harm the consumer? Mr Wallace?
GPL has nothing to do with the marketplace. Its just a political document that states you want to give your code out for free with no direct economic benefit to the creator..
In most of Europe nearly all the examples you give would be tried in a decent and affordable manner.
Now you can see the proposal!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Giving your code away for free is stealing from your own retirement.
You have no understanding of the market incentives for writing open source code. For example, if a software product costs $500 per installation, then for ten users, that is $5000 that they can save by writing their own open source equivalent. That's 50-100 hours of a good profession or 1000 or more hours of an undergraduate in college. Over thousands of users, that's a huge value returned to those users.
Second, working on such projects generates several relatively intangible benefits. It builds experience and enhances your reputation. It's also a fun activity for many programmers. So the combination of all this drives down the actual opportunity cost of programming. Ie, perhaps you can claim that someone's time (even a salaried person) is worth so many dollars an hour. Then add in all the benefits you ignore. Suddenly that cost is an overall benefit. Then that means that claims that they are producing code below cost are incorrect. The open source and free as in beer programming is several decades old. If it really were a "below cost" operation, then they would have given it up by now.
So who is right? One slashdot poster or thousands of smart programmers who understand the economics of programming and saving up for retirement?
The usual modus operandi of trolls like blairq1 (aka Alexander Terekov?, who's happens to be posting on the yahoo SCOX board as I write this) is to simply keep regurgitating the same old bs until those that are debating with them simply give up because rational argument is futile with a troll. In their minds, this constitutes a "win". Just let the mods take of him.
The way this happens is inclusion of propetiary binary drivers into the kernel, or thin wrappers around binary blobs (NVIDIA, for instance, or Intel to use wireless network cards). Then we have the NDIS wrapper so that Windows drivers might be used.
This is happening today in the Linux kernel, and FreeBSD is on the same path. Why should a vendor release hardware documentation when OS developers bends over to include their binary blobs?
Besides, the newest darling Ubuntu embraces binary blobs
Maybe, but the judicial system frowns on that sort of thing. Even if a case is just a test case, the it's important that the parties really are trying to win and that there is a real controversy, not a manufactured one.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
IAmNotALawyer, but that part is somewhere on the spectrum between inaccurate, misleading, and just plain wrong.
Exact rules on Small Claims Court vary from state to state. It is uniformly true that a private citizen is not required to get a lawyer to sue there, but the exact rules on lawyers vary widely. Some states mandate that an incorporated entity must obtain a lawyer for representation when either plaintiff or defendant in small claims court. Some do not permit lawyers to represent plaintiff or defendant in court, or even to be present (excluding lawyers working pro se, or lawyers holding salaried positions with a corporate plaintiff). All, of course, permit a lawyer to advise plaintiff or defendant outside the courtroom; and some do permit representation by an attorney in court.
More important from the standpoint of this particular blithering loon, it's also universally true that small claims court judgements are limited to a relatively small amount of monetary damages (limits vary between states, but I think I heard IL at $10000 is the current largest), with no opportunity for injunctive or equity relief; and I believe in some states, receiving an affirmative judgement in small claims court renders you inelegible to seek any further relief from any other civil court. (Depending on state, merely filing in Small Claims may preclude seeking non-monetary remedies, even at appellate level.) So, if Wallace went to small claims court, the best he could get is a check for ten grand (plus filing costs), after which IBM et alia could continue on their merry way, without changing their business practices, and leaving Wallace unable to sue over the matter again.
Of course, IBM seems to resist blackmail even when it would be cheaper, just because giving in to blackmail sets a lousy precedent....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Wallace_(plain tiff)
Frankly, I was expecting a plain TIFF image of the donkeyhole.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Holy cow! Is he actually suggesting that there is more to a written law than the exact wording?
I guess I'm going to have to read a little more on this. The impression I got from the article is something to the effect of, "Oh my gosh, Red Hat, Novell, and these other guys all agreed to sell their software for $0! That's price setting!"
There's a big difference between a bunch of hippies in a "Local theater group" and IBM/Oracle/Sun/Apple teaming up and colluding to undercut a Microsoft product. A particular action that would be illegal under anti-trust law doesn't magically become legal because someone waved the magic GPL wand.
Trying to make a blanket statement about the legality of the GPL either way is stupid. The Wallace guy was trying to make some general anti-GPL point and was wrong, just as you are wrong for claiming the GPL provides universal immunity to such activity.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
All legal controversies are manufactured.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
FYI, the word you want is not injunct, it is enjoin. Of course, if someone is enjoined, then this was accomplished by their opponent asking for injunctive relief and the court issuing an injunction, so your confusion is perfectly understandable.
This is the sort of thing that makes the English language so much fun.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
> The fact that no American company has attempted to corner an
> American market through dumping in a long time is testament to the
> fact that judges usually recognize dumping when they see it.
*cough* Hardwood lumber *cough*
Neither IBM, Oracle, Sun, or Apple own the majority of GPL software. They're just making use of it because it's a resource that's available to them. Microsoft has this option too, if they wanted to get in on the action.
You can sue people for a large variety of anti-competative behaviors, which may include dumbing a product, but it's not illegal in and of itself.
Otherwise you'd be able to sue car dealerships for giving away hamburgers and hot dogs, or banks for giving away lollipops.
And you especially can't sue people not making money when they give something out. To be anti-competative, they have to be a for-profit business, you idiot. Otherwise, Scientology could sue free churches, restaurants could sue food kitchens, and maid services could sue people who volunteered their time to help out the elderly.
Basically, if you knew anything at all about this, you'd know you were full of shit by implying people who volunteer their time could be sued for it. So the question is: Are you an idiot, or delibrately spewing FUD?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Judges may not understand technology very well, but they do understand antitrust law. This judge is to be congratulated for his clear, logical, and apolitical judgement. Unfortunately, those are not necessarily the qualities that ensure advancement in the legal system.
Dumping at a value less than the cost of production (if you think coders' time is free, you're not much of a coder) isn't anticompetitive?
It can be. When Microsoft gives away IE for free, arguably, that's taking place: they were trying to, and succeeded at, driving a competitor out of business, and the results have been business advantages for them. Whether it's legally actionable depends on a bunch of more factors.
But that's not what's happening with free software. Free Software is essentially a co-op--something to which members contribute and from which members benefit. It is perfectly fine for co-ops to offer products cheaper than other commercial enterprises can; that's the whole point of a co-op.
Free software as a co-op is a little different from, say, your shopping co-op, because it doesn't require any joint ownership of physical property, and because it doesn't require any detailed accounting of contributions and benefits.
So, no, a coder's time isn't free, but people contribute to free software because they get benefits from doing so. In addition, dumping means a specific benefit: you undercut costs for the purpose of driving a competitor out of business, so that later you make more profit in the market. Microsoft is arguably doing this. But free software is not; free software coders may or may not desire that Microsoft goes out of business, but they aren't going to make any more money from their contributions by forcing Microsoft to go out of business.
Many companies have as their goal to do better than their competitors, preferably to the point where all their competitors are out of business. That's not illegal.
What is illegal is generating and using a monopoly to hurt consumers.
So, giving away software for free is fine, even if your goal is to put non-free software out of business. What is not fine is then charging exhorbatently for your product after there are no longer any competitors in the marketplace.
It's next to impossible to do that with GPLed code, because even if you relicense the code, the last GPLed version is still Free. Further, anyone can fork the code if they feel like it, so it's really hard to maintain a "monopoly" when there's any pressure for diversity or specialization. But, if someone figures out some way to use the GPL to hurt consumers, the appropriate time to bring a case would be then, when the damage is being done.
If some commercial software vendors cannot come up with any software that people are willing to pay for, that is unfortunate for them. They should work on something else. This is business. If your product is not needed, get out of the marketplace.
(You should try suing Wikipedia for dumping its encyclopedia, too while you're at it.)
If the intention had been to create a judical precendent for the GPL, he would have had to do better. As is, the case failed at a much too basic level. Basically the court told him, he was not in a position to sue, no less and not much more. The judge did not even have to consider the GPL itself, hence no chanceof creating a real precedent IMO. If at all, what's been ruled on, is that it's not per se illegal to give something away for free. Big deal.
We'll have to wait until somebody else dumb enough to try to disprove the GPL in court, and smart enough to actually get the formal basics right, shows up. Daniel Wallace wasn't the one.
"But unless you're new to "Free Software" you know that the whole point is to compete with and hopefully end un-free software."
I am not new to Free Software, and while that may be the aim of RMS and the GPL, (I said may, so as not to have to argue that point) that is hardly the aim of every individual Free Software program.
Now, as to the distributors, who contends that all of the linux distributors are giving their distros away for free to corner the market.? I am not sure that even makes sense...
Yay, a hundred of us distros have cornered the software market worth $0.00 in revenue. Whee. Oh wait! What? You mean we really don't have the software market cornered? What? People can get the programs we distribute direct from the actual programmers? How can that be? I thought we had the market cornered...
Gotta love it.
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111123
Seems I am trying to corner the market in unfinished novels.
http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145
And the market in instructional videos and other markets as well.
Imagine that!
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I must agree. +5, Troll is the correct moderation for GP.
Too bad it's now floating at -1, Troll.
> The fact that no American company has attempted to corner an American market through dumping in a long time is...
> However, check recent stories about Citgo giving heating oil away for reduced prices in northeast towns this past winter.
> They did it to embarass the Bush administration, but their competitors started crying that they were dumping.
Yea, and 'they' is Hugo Chavez, a sworn foreign enemy of the US. Citgo is a foreign company dude, try buying a clue somewhere other than DailyKos next time.
> We can only hope that the real facts in this case are that the plaintiff merely bollixed the proof portion of his
> claim of dumping, and not that the judge just said that dumping isn't anticompetitive.
Dumping may or may not be illegal. Which is why people who know always accuse their foe of 'illegal dumping.' Dumping is merely selling below the cost of production and can happen in a Free Marketplace for a variety of reasons, only a couple of which are deemed illegal by current laws. Just as a quickie example, half the merchandise in Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Burke's Outlet, etc. is being sold at a price lower than their original cost of production and it is legal.
Democrat delenda est
The strength of a democracy iies in the priciples behind it and not in the structurse established. Such is also true for a dictatorship.
"There's a big difference between a bunch of hippies in a "Local theater group" and IBM/Oracle/Sun/Apple teaming up and colluding to undercut a Microsoft product."
Poor MS, lucky for them they have you to defend them. Go shillboy go!.
"Trying to make a blanket statement about the legality of the GPL either way is stupid. "
Mmmm. GPL gets taken to court, the GPL is upheld by the judge. Repeat four or five times both in the US and in Europe and guess what it seems that the GPL is indeed legally enforcable.
Sucks for MS (and you) but great for us.
evil is as evil does
Copyright law wouldn't stop anyone from putting "GNU General Public License" on top of a different license and/or just saying their work was under the GNU GPL when they were talking about a different `GNU GPL'. Depending on jurisdiction, they'd probably be allowed to copy the few paragraphs of the GNU GPL under fair use too.
However, I'd imagine a court would find anyone pulling this stunt to be guilty of criminal deception, fraud, passing off and/or trademark infringement. In which case, whether they broke copyright would become rather irrelevant.
BTW, I think the reason the FSF stated they took that decision was actually to stop the propogation of similar, incompatible licenses (which I don't think it is effective at doing either, as, if it is coverable by copyright, one can just rewrite it in one's own words or rely on fair use) and to stop people removing the preamble; as opposed to people passing off another license as the GNU GPL.
Although, it is rather unimportant, it does seem, especially given its ineffectiveness, rather awkward of the FSF to not release the GNU GPL under a free license. Having said that, I think RMS has now backed down by saying that he won't enforce the FSF's copyright on the GPL against people modifying the terms (as opposed to the preamble) of the license, but he still expects people to get the FSF's permission before modifying the terms to create a similar license (as was done, with permission, by Afferro).
[* Consider that what one would consider a modified version is probably less clear or wide with a copyright license than a computer program.]
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
There are a lot of potential legal problems with the GPL, and I don't know that its all that clear how some parts of it would stand up in a contract dispute. But challenging on antitrust grounds is bizarre.
It's only anti-competive if after monopolizing the market you intend to raise prices. Since that is impossible with the GPL, you have no point.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
GPL coders code for the Karma. Which is quite often better than money.
I don't know about your state, but my law license states that I am admitted to practice before all courts of the State of Louisiana. It doesn't list any exceptions for "small claims courts"
"That depends on the goal of the loss-leader. If it's to induce collateral purchases and thus still gain a net profit on the gross total, then the effect is not a loss to corner a market."
In the case of open source, it's to induce purchase of services. e.g. customization, documentation, timely bug fixes.
"But unless you're new to "Free Software" you know that the whole point is to compete with and hopefully end un-free software."
Sounds like "cornering a market" to me.
> Some people are paid various people with an agenda to say things that aren't true. You're right about it being sick :)
> and twisted, even if you're a little naive to think that she's somehow unique.
No, MOG is in a different camp from the notables you listed. Michael Moore might be mad as a hatter but he isn't just a gun for hire. Regardless of whether you share his views, it is generally agreed by both friend and foe that he believes in the rightness of his cause and the truth of his arguments. Same for Limbaugh and Coulter. MOG doesn't actually believe the crap she spews, she is just a pen for hire. But as for Bill O'Reilly, I'm not so sure which group to place him.
Democrat delenda est
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But the great thing about it is, if some parts are invalidated, the situation just reverts back to plain copyright law and whoever was breaking the GPL has even less permission than they did before.
Nope. A judge would take a very dim view if you sue me for distributing your software after you have given me explicit permission to do so. You might have some legal grounds to quibble over trivialities, but for all practical matters the software would still be Free Software.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This judge is to be congratulated for his clear, logical, and apolitical judgement. Unfortunately, those are not necessarily the qualities that ensure advancement in the legal system.
You give too little credit to judges - at the higher levels although they may have been appointed under political circumstances, judges are often people who are able to keep personal politics out of decisions they make. The judges job in many cases is to rule based on precident of law and most of them are quite excellent at that, and the rare case that is first impression is usually gone over with great care by not just the judges by a lot of other people as well before it is published. This keeps the actual rulings on pretty much an even keel.
There are truly political judges but they are the exception rather than the rule and tend to get overturned on appeal pretty often.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only real question is, who do you sue for that?
That may be the first question that springs to your mind. IMO, the only real question is "Does this ultimately harm the consumer?"
There is absolutely nothing illegal about offering a superior product at a lower cost than an existing product. If it was illegal VCRs would be $800, and personal computers would cost millions. There is nothing illegal about offering a superior product at a lower cost than it might cost someone else to make such a product. If an cobbler makes $20/hr, what is the minimum price a discount shoe store can legally charge for a pair of sneakers. In this case, a type of license has been created where people are willing to produce a good for far less than they might otherwise charge. Part of the reason is that they recoup that value "in kind" from other contributors.
In your post, you say that "as nobody is attempting to recoup that value, it's being dumped." Let's work with your definition of dumping. When somebody (or many somebodies as observed above) does attempt to recoup that value, it clearly ceases to meet that definition of dumping. So now you have to prove that the the manufacturer that you are going after is not recouping some value from Linux. If you were going after the manufacturer of a storage appliance, you might try to prove that they will charge the same or more for bare hardware as for a working system. If that is not the case than Linux is contributing to the final price. It also raises an interesting question: "when is the cost(*) of an ephemeral good sufficiently recouped to satisfy anti-trust legislators?" The marginal cost of "a Linux" is very nearly zero so the cost that must legally be recouped under your definition must also eventually drop to very nearly zero.
(*) Since the price of goods are not determined by the state, it becomes likely that the OP intended "cost" where they said "value". It also reconciles the OP's definition of dumping with the more usual interpretation of selling a good below cost.
Many lawyers make a living off reputation. Established ones don't want to be ridiculed (and maybe lose respectable business) for taking on a laughable case.
The existence of silly lawsuits is due to the other bunch of lawyers, the shysters, and to self-represented nuts.
If you shop a case to half a dozen experienced and "reputable" lawyers and they tell you to go away, and then you find some not-too-busy lawyer nobody's heard of who will take the case, ask yourself whether you're getting an entrepreneurial risktaker or someone so bad they have nothing to lose.
True, but he didn't say they didn't. He merely said that, if windows were in fact to die, the people making/adding to linux could not subsequently make a commercial monopoly out of their product. And he's right - how on earth can you claim "monopoly" when the program isn't commercial?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
It's been a while since I read about the details of his suit, but as I recall Wallace is not actually in the business of selling software and hasn't written anything that he has tried to sell. He just says that he would like to be, and that the GPL makes it impossible for him.
Exactly. The ruling looks to me more like "I know antitrust complaints, and you, sir, are no antitrust complaint!".
Once again, killjoe, you have totally misrepresented my argument because you don't have the intelligence to understand it.
I also have to say that your posts help Bill Gates much more than mine because you are pretty much the embodiment of a Moronic Linux Zealot stereotype.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
But you weren't given explicit permission, you were given permission contingent on the limitations specified. If those limitations were improper than the whole agreement should become void too, because the licensor never agreed to any less restrictive terms.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I think you're wrong. Consider a "traditional" license.
I give you permission to redistribute/modify my code if you pay me X dollars.
You don't pay me X dollars.
The GPL is:
I give you permission to redistribute/modify my code, as long as any derivative works from it are GPL.
You don't do so.
It's the same thing. Why would the judge take a dim view?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Where did you get 5,000? No, I am not debating any part of this thread. I am honestly want to know how to locate this information. I have always wanted to be able to determine the numbers myself for curiosities sake. If the answer is "just grep the kernel code for X" then I will happily do that. Thanks.
Uh.
Didn't Sys-con sack Maureen O'Gara (sp?) after she printed a tissue of lies about PJ from groklaw with a bunch of irrelevent accusations and misinformation?
Thought i remembered the article. Here at groklaw
It was something Linus said in his recent CNN interview. 5000 was his rough outside estimate of the number of people who'd made any kind of contribution to Linux.
However, copyright law (which says one cannot usually copy and distribute without a valid license such as the GNU GPL) is very much enforcable.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
It is not illegal to sell something below cost unless you are a convicted monopoly. If what you were saying were true, gift giving would be illegal and so would loss leaders and any sales event that lowered the price of an item below cost. I suspect you are just looking to get a rise out of people. Or perhaps you are simply stupid and/or misinformed. Can you really not think of any instances of things being given away or sold below cost?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
lol, I had read that but didn't connect the number to your post. Thanks for replying. :)
A particular action that would be illegal under anti-trust law doesn't magically become legal because someone waved the magic GPL wand.
Sure. But can you think of a way the GPL could be used to break anti-trust laws? There is no way IBM/Oracle/Sun/Apple can team up and collude to undercut a Microsoft product with the GPL and not benefit the consumer at the same time. Non that I can think of anyway...
Nope. You would be quite dim if I gave you explicit permission to distribute my software, and you sued me claiming that you don't actually have that right. Even dimmer would be to take away your own right then to continue distributing it.
Going back a few posts: someone said the GPL is a "contract" which is not true. The GPL is not a contract, not a license. It is a copyright. Thus, it would not be possible to sue claiming that you had MORE rights than the copyright allows you.
Possibly all of the above, who knows what might motivate the sort of douche that hates that powerful Free Software is available to all and sundry to use gratis.
The GPL itself does not specify that zero dollars has to be charged for the transfer of the software, or any other value for that matter, it leaves this entirely up to the distributor:
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
So to charge them with Price Fixing is an utter absurdity that the license itself refutes.
I followed your link and I get the impression that you missed the obvious fact that the sentence you quote was a joke. Perhaps you need to lighten up a little. This post (but no others) licensed under the GPL, if that makes you feel any better.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
The GPL is not a contract, not a license. It is a copyright.
Uh? No, the GPL is not a contract, and not a copyright, it is a license from the copyright holder authorizing others to perform actions normally limited to the copyright holder, subject to certain limitations.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
A contract dispute doesn't mean anyone was actually breaking the license, any more than someone being charged with a crime means they are guilty.
And I'm not sure the prospect of the situation where the GPL was ruled invalid and everyone who has ever distributed any GPL software that they weren't the original creator of every piece of is now a copyright violator is "great"
Further, an invalid term doesn't necessarily render the entire contract invalid, a court might reform the invalid term or simply sever it from the contract.
It is a copyright.
It's a license, applied atop copyright. A "copyright" is the exclusive right granted to the creator by a government to copy their work. More rights are given, but they are given by way of a license, which is a contractual agreement.
Unless I'm just not following you.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Daniel Wallace's crackpot Anti-GPL arguments were repeatedly and utterly refuted back in Febuary 2004.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We'll have to wait until somebody else dumb enough to try to disprove the GPL in court, and smart enough to actually get the formal basics right, shows up.
So what you're saying is, we need someone dumb enough to stick his dick in the meat grinder and smart enough to turn the crank.
Off the top of my head, something like OpenOffice -- a former commercial product with a "cathedral" development model and value-add payware version -- could be used in a collusion scheme.
But anyway, the point is that the anti-trust rules don't get automatically lifted just because there's a public CVS server involved.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
If you don't think most Linux developers see Linux as a "Windows Killer" you're very, very mistaken.
If you think most Linux developers do see Linux as a Windows killer, you're clueless and should go hop on some mailing lists and talk to people. Whether kernel devs, KDE/GNOME devs, app devs, etc., the number of people who are working on open source in order to kill Windows is vanishingly small, perhaps zero.
No, "Linux developers" work on Linux because they like Linux and want to make it better fit their needs.
The people who see Linux as a Windows killer are the Linux fanboys, not the Linux developers.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Jeez, give it up already. You seem to be exceptionally thickheaded, if you can't get the message that you're wrong.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
> Dumping is merely selling below the cost of production and can happen in a Free Marketplace for a variety of reasons, only a couple of which are deemed illegal by current laws.
One example being the xbox 360. Or playsation 3 (eventually)
Are you saying SCO paid Daniel Wallace to sue the FSF over the GPL?
No I didnt. You drew that conclusion. It just there has been a lot of discussion about Wallace over time. Some quite good ones. I have been reading that list for a long time. I dont comment there, just enjoy watching the stock, and some of the antics there.
Right. I thought it was going to be Darl McBride, but he seems to have cut his own dick of already.
This sig all sigs devours
"You are mistaken. The GNU GPL, unlike Microsoft's EULA, does not attempt to enforce anything on the user and therefore can never be enforcable (thank goodness)."
That's a non sequitor. The GPL effects everybody who modifies and then redistributes the code. At that point it takes effect and is a legally binding document.
evil is as evil does
This is wholly incompatible with the business model of many potential users. Of course it's easy to fix this by offering a second license that does not have such limitations, but may have other limitations like reasonable costs.
Of course this argument is rather untested, and because it applies to the individual project, it's not something that could ever be tested on a wide scale. Also this argument does not apply at all to most other free software licenses, like BSD or such.
One thing that this argument has in it's favor however is that it applies to the effect of the GPL upon users, and not upon competitors.
"I also have to say that your posts help Bill Gates much more than mine because you are pretty much the embodiment of a Moronic Linux Zealot stereotype."
Well Mr Gates is a lucky man then. With you protecting him from the likes of me he has nothing to worry about. Go shillboy go. A corporation needs your help! Bill Gates needs you!.
evil is as evil does
How does the GPL ensure a competitive marketplace?
I'm not saying the judge made the wrong decision, but I don't understand how the GPL helps encourage competition.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
But I didn't just give you permission to distribute my software. I gave you very specific permission to use my copyrighted work under the terms of a specific agreement. If you violate that agreement, you lose the rights you gained under said agreement, and hence have no rights at all, as I had not simply said `Here, distribute this.', but `Here, you may use this in a restricted fashion as long as you adhere to the following stipulations. A component of the usage that you will retain so long as you do not violate our agreement is the ability to distribute the work or modifications thereof.' I fail to see how a judge would argue that because under a specific set of conditions you have the right to distribute, you maintain that right when in direct violation of the contractual requirements to do so.
They're there affecting their effect.
"a license that not only doesn't even try to screw the people who accept it over"
Do licenses try to screw those who accept it over? Licenses mostly screw people who violate it over.
If I accept the GPL, I can do anything I want except what isn't allowed by the license. If I do try that stuff, I get screwed.
How is the GPL any different in this way?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Rule of law only works when everyone agrees upon semantics. Whenever I try to figure out what semantics another person is using, I get accused of playing word games or the like!
I have some. Eliminate the minimum fee schedule the guild gives themselves, and set a cap on fees, and not in the thousands of dollars an hour range either. The cap is needed because "law" needs to be universally accessible regardless of income, and should be based on something no more than the equivalent hourly wage times twice the current for that year median income (this is an example but is close enough for conversational purposes), which is quantifiable using data that is collected annually anyway, so it would be pretty transparently open what things might cost. This is the law, peoples lives and businesses and reputations at stake, it should not be treated like a luxury product you can do without, it needs to be *regulated* like a public utility is regulated as to access and fees, so that the costs do not become onerous and a burden on society as a whole. This part is critically important. This is needed to insure that not only the wealthy may afford "justice".
Get rid of judicial rulings! Where the hell did that one sneak in from?? We are supposed to have universal jury trial on matters more than IIRC 20$ in civil cases, and in ALL criminal cases. What happened to that???
Make procedural instructions and filing requirements, etc, a LOT more accessible to the public in general, simplify it, so that more pro se cases can occur and proceed in an orderly and informed and constructive and benefical to-all manner.(I have done several pro se, it is a royal PITA to get all the trivial T's crossed and I's dotted, it is made way overly complicated to limit "civilian" non guild members participation, IMNHO.)(I win, too, BTW)
Have an actual grammatical constraint that is quantifiably measurable in the sentences used to construct "laws", in other words, outlaw obfuscatory language or "lawyerese", I don't care if it is as simple as a maximum word or letter count in a sentence. Sentences do not need to be the equivalent of three "normal" paragraphs long and contain ambiguouus terminology or obscure references, we are supposed to (in the US anyway, going back to original discussions pre and post both the articles of confederation and the constitution) have laws written in such a manner that you aren't supposed to be a professional lawyer or equivalent in order to read and understand them.
And we *really* should address the obvious dichotomy of passing "laws" that become enforceable BEFORE a competent and thorough judicial review of their "legality". This current situation we "enjoy" is illogical and quite..well, it is nuts, insane. Bass ackwards and stupid. It has resulted in non-clarity being a norm! The latter "fix" would apparently take a constitutional amendment near as I can parse it, but I certainly would be in favor of it happening.
If it is not a liscence, what does the "L" stand for?
Nonsense. I paid for that "traditional" license, and I followed the onerous restrictions in the GPL. I am in FULL COMPLIANCE with both licenses.
If a "traditional" developer sued me after I paid him money for the permission to redistribute the software, the judge would be well within his perogative to deal with him very harshly. The same goes for you. The GPL does not absolve you of being an asshole. If you give me permission to redistribute the software under certain conditions, and I meet those conditions, you have NO grounds to sue me.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Me giving away my code for free is none of your damn business, which is the real point of this story.
If I choose to release my work under the GPL, that's my decision, not yours.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Agreement, what agreement? Everyone from RMS on down keeps telling me the GPL is not a contract, but a copyright based license. Now you're telling me it's a contract. Make up your mind.
Besides which, I am in FULL COMPLIANCE with your conditions. You publicly told the world that I can redistribute the software if I met certain conditions, and I HAVE met those conditions. To turn around and sue me for doing what you told me to do is very low indeed. That you think such behavior is moral sickens me.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
and you sued me
Sued you? It is you who are suing me! You gave me permission to redistribute your software under certain conditions, and I have met those conditions. But now you sue me just because some judge ruled a small part of a clause to be invalid. Someone less polite than I would tell you to fuck off!
This is wholly incompatible with the business model of many potential users
Actually no.
The GPL applies to distribution not usage. As an end user who is not distributing binaries or source code for the GPL'd product you are totally unaffected.
If it were ruled the way you suggest then how much more would it affect Microsoft software? MS wants the right to probe my computer and search it and basically control it. That is not compatible with any business model that requires security and privacy for their data. So by your logic Microsoft and DRM would be ruled illegal. Not to mention the right to unilaterally change the license any time a flaw is patched. Remember Microsoft doesn't negotiate custom licenses with other businesses and they are the only source for their software.
True, the key word is win. Many attorneys will take very little risk -- they want a cookie cutter case a sure win.
I spoke to a large firm about taking a contingency on a spam case, but they were not set up to work that way. Of couse, after receiving over $250k in judgments this year and collecting over $100k, a partner in the firm took me out to lunch.
Fight Spammers!
If at all, what's been ruled on, is that it's not per se illegal to give something away for free. Big deal.
No, what's been ruled on is that it's not per se illegal for COMPETITORS to AGREE to give product away for free.
Which I think is an extremely interesting ruling - what if Sony and Microsoft got together and agreed to give away game systems until Nintendo was forced out of business?
paintball
But of course that's not actually loony enough to stun people's brains into insensibility. You had to pack more in there: competent businesses are making money for their work, the barriers to entry are just stunningly low, the whole business has, as you say, produced "enormous value" and, according to your reasoning, this is a bad thing... because ... they're building on work that wasn't done for profit? It's supposed to be somehow illegal to make work available for public benefit on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms?
But even outlawing work for the common good isn't loony enough. No. You want to outlaw using that work. Corporations liable for using benefits freely available to all! The low, criminal depravity!
'bye.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
I am confused here. You're saying it's "low" to countersue you if you (theoretically, as is this entire discussion) get parts of the GPL invalidated.
Luckily, the GPL has a section suited directly for this legal quandary:
In effect, you'd either have to get that specific section invalidated as well (good luck), or get the entire GPL ruled unconscionable (in which case the agreement with you and all others for distribution is null and void as a whole, and you'd have to negotiate a new agreement with the copyright holder to continue to be able to distribute).
A judge simply isn't going to "substitute in" a different license if the GPL is invalidated.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
P.S. Giving your code away for free is stealing from your own retirement.
Then so is posting on Slashdot when you could be doing or looking extra work. You seem to know just enough about economics to make spectacularly wrong and foolish statements. Here's a *free* lesson: utility is not equivalent to money.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I am sure some "businesses friendly" politician will be able get the law amended to fix that.
ian
You're saying it's "low" to countersue you
I said nothing of the sort! What is wrong with you Slashdot people, don't you even know how to read posts? I said it is "low" to sue me for distributing the software after you've given me permission to do so. That is all. Period.
Frankly I am distressed by the extreme negative response to my post. It's almost as if you GPL users *WANT* to sue people! Hauling people into court for distributing the software you gave them permission to distribute IS NOT FREEDOM, not matter what RMS tells you. Sheesh.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Sometimes the law is ambiguous or conflicting. In that case, the judge should be as conservative as possible, by which I mean the judge should avoid any decisions that change the status quo. He should then issue in his opinion a criticism of the conflicting laws, and suggest that they be clarified.
Of course, if one law supercedes another, the greater law holds.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
>Local theater group doing show without pay (professional actors)
Union issues can lead to problems with law enforcement. Free Speech is one thing,
but theatre occupancy is another.
>Volunteers at a soup kitchen (the local cafe)
I have personally been threatened with arrest, and I know many people who have been arrested, for serving free food to homeless people.
>Laywers taking cases pro bono (other lawyers)
Definitely there is a system of rules here, that carry the force of law.
>Doctors providing free medical aid (other doctors)
Rules, with the force of law, govern this.
>Any number of arts and crafts that people sell at less than real cost on fairs and the
>like
You must not go to many fairs
>Every local band who can't make a living out of it but plays anyway
Copyright, ASCAP, noise ordinances and busking permits...
>Every sort of artist who doesn't make a living out of it, but does it anyway
>Every sort of "scratch-an-itch" programmer who doesn't make a living out of it, but does >it anyway
Patents, export controls...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>There's a big difference between a bunch of hippies in a "Local theater group" and
>IBM/Oracle/Sun/Apple teaming up and colluding to undercut a Microsoft product.
There is, but the doctrine of "equal protection of the law" makes it difficult to make the case to support your premise, before a judge.
The independent theatre group is still expected to follow the law. Free speech and free assembly doesn't exclude copyright law, and doesn't eliminate the fire chief's authority to limit the number of people in a building, and so on.
The theatre group isn't going to be slapped with an antitrust injunction, and the tech corporations are not going to be arrested for public nudity or for violating some local rule about hiring a union electrictian to plug in stage lights.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
No. The nature of the GPL prevents this. Code under the GPL has to be redistributed for free, giving any company the chance to develop its own value adding edition upon a free base. In any case, code under the GPL is protected from ever raising the price needed to have permition to use it.
Consider this: I buy a windows license to browse the web, read some emails and probably setup a network. 5 years later, I'm forced to upgrade (for security reasons) to a new edition of windows, while I am seeking the same functionality. Even if someone will argue I am getting more value with a new edition of windows, is it actually worth the extra money I fork over, or is microsoft rent seeking?
Rent Seeking is the Capitalist Way and not normally illegal, where collusion can often be.
Regardless the "nature of the GPL" doesn't prevent any sort of illegal activity by it's contributors, whether it's murder or violating anti-trust laws.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
'' What surprises me is not that Wallace was laughed out of court. That was almost certain for various reasons. What did surprise me is that the judge's comments showed that he really understood the GPL and its role in ensuring a competitive marketplace.''
It was reported on groklaw, that Wallace made the tactical mistake to attach a copy of the GPL to his claims. Why was that a mistake? At the very first stage of a court case, the judge must only decide whether a valid claim was made. He is not allowed to look at any evidence, that comes later. So normally, the judge would not have looked at the GPL or wouldn't even have been allowed to look at it, and without looking at it, it _might_ be possible that the GPL forces anti-competitive behavior. But since the GPL was attached to the claims and therefore part of the claims, the judge was not only allowed to, but required to read it and to decide whether it is anti-competitive. And I think the contents of the GPL is absolutely crystal clear to any judge. It is a purely legal paper and very easy to understand for any lawyer or judge.
Also, Wallace has mixed up everyday language and legal language quite badly. If A has a Formula I car, and B has a bicycle, and they decide to race each other, B might say "I cannot compete, because A has a Formula I car and I only have a bicycle". In the legal language, B is wrong. He can compete. He loses badly every time they race, and he has not the slightest chance to win, but there is nothing stopping him from competing. Or if you sell a widget for $100 each, and I figure out that it costs me $110 alone to produce it, I might claim that I cannot compete. In legal language, I can compete by selling my widgets for $150. Nobody will buy them, and I will go bankrupt doing it, but nothing stops me from competing. (Better ways of competing would be to find a way to build the widget for $50, or painting it in fashionable colors so people buy it at the higher price etc.)
Well, you can keep your capitalist ways. The free-world really doesn't care for them. But anyway, to slap an anti-trust case against the GPL you would have to prove that it is against consumer interests. How is it possible for someone to put out (essentially everlasting) free code and be accused of price fixing? The cost of implementing free code is usually covered by support contracts, or can be regarded as training costs for most OSS developers. Just because the OSS model isn't consistent with the proprietary model of software development, does not on its own deserve a lawsuit. GPL is not a magic wand, but it sure as hell is impossible to slap a case against GPL vendors for undercutting proprietary vendors' product. You can not prove someone has a "reasonable prospect of recouping its investment in below cost prices". If _you_ can, I'm all ears...
Plausible, but least likely.
He had lost 2 lawsuits already and has been ordered to pay costs on at least one.
The average lawsuit costs in the US this will bankrupt a maker of WallaceOS right away so he has to have some bigger sponsorship to be still alive.
Who is paying this guy's costs?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
SCO?
In the case we are talking about, where the GPL is found invalid somehow, you no longer have a way to comply with it, since it's invalid.
Nothing else gives you permission to use the software, so you must discontinue using it until the copyright holder grants you a new license.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Sorry, I misused the word contract. Contract is an agreement to perform action, license an agreement stating an allowance of priviledge. However, noting a license everywhere I previously stated contract, to attempt to distribute a GPL derived work after failing to meet a part of the GPL is still a violation, just of the licensing agreement, and as such removes your ability to distribute.
Trying to distribute software after failing to meet the requirements in the license is infringing on the copyrights of the authors. GPL protects me the original author. You the downstream author can use my works, on its very specific conditions. You cannot relicense, or refuse to distribute source, or any other bull shit. Nor can you revoke the rights of further downstream parties. With GPL, you lose the right to take the rights of others. If you want to do that, grab BSD.
Using software given to you on a condition, refusing to meet that condition, and then claiming you get the rights anyway is ignorant. "Sheesh".
They're there affecting their effect.
Besides which, I am in FULL COMPLIANCE with your conditions. You publicly told the world that I can redistribute the software if I met certain conditions, and I HAVE met those conditions.
It appears you are completely missing the point.
No one is claiming that if someone meets the GPL conditions, it should be okay to sue them. Obviously that would be absurd!
But that's got nothing to do with the claim that the GPL is unenforceable. Enforcing the GPL obviously doesn't involve suing people who abide by the rules (!), it obviously involves suing those people who don't. Indeed, the post your replied to earlier explicitly said "whoever was breaking the GPL ".
I guess I just didn't see that side. In the software market space I see how the GPL does encourage competition in those ways.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
And that's why we have people like Clarence Thomas? And why Bush keeps proposing candidates that are judged to be marginal or unsuitable?
If you look at what they have done and what they do after they are appointed, most of them are fine. Did you have a problem with Roberts? The answer to that defines if you are being reasonable or just a mindless Zombie repeating what MoveOn tells you to think. Or Alito, who every single one of his very democratic clerks supported without reservation?
You are also focuses on supreme court justices where there are a lot of fine judges out on the federal circuit, which is more what I was talking about.
Get your head out of your ass and do some research on what the people closest to the judges think of them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps he is just a kook with a pile of money he got from something entirely unrelated.
Female Prison Rape in NY
I think what pisses off the Slashdot crowd is trying to take advantage of the benefits of the GPL (distribution) without adhering to the requirements. That was never the intention of the GPL. The restictions of the GPL are mainly there to keep people from restricting other people's rights. So it is clearly the intention of the GPL to not allow that. (This is the main difference between the GPL and the BSD license.) It's not the distribution that pisses us off -- it's the restriction of people's rights, and taking advantage of our gifts to the community without following the simple rules we require to do so.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
The only technical difficulties of the GPL (that I can think of) are the parts about "source code" and "object code". And source code is defined well enough in the license text.
I thought the GPL also mentioned "linking", but apparently that's just in the LGPL. Still, an understanding of linking would be helpful to determine what is and what is not a derived work, at least in respect to system libraries.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
By the way, you've highlighted an ambiguity (mixing normal language with legal language) in 'can' and 'cannot', not in 'compete'.
Its going to be damn tough since it is theoretically impossible to steal from oneself.
What the GP is attempting to do is use the connotation of the word "steal" to make it seem like doing volunteer work is wrong. While volunteer work may not be the best decision with respect to economic interests, it is certainly not wrong or stealing from oneself.
This is important, for sure. It seems to be a good strategy to get your foot in the door to new users. If I hear about this "Linux" and it doesn't work with my shiny new ATI video card, I'm not going to think twice about switching from Windows.
Of course, this foot-in-the-door approach comes from the pragmatist open source line that promotes FOSS as a means to an end, rather than an end itself as the free software promoters do. The open source approach got me, but I was then lead to the ideas of the FSF, RMS, etc. By getting me in the door, I now know that I will buy hardware that does have open drivers. Without getting people to use GNU/Linux, the manufacturers will not care at all about open drivers since the market share will be so low. It is certainly a balancing act between principal and pragmatism.
I think this division will fix itself generally if GNU Hurd ever gets into a semi-usable state. The folks at Debian are making slow but steady progress porting their packages to GNU Hurd, but until they quit changing the kernel every three days, they're going to have problems.
On a minor note, Shuttleworth did endorse (I think) a sub-distro of Ubuntu called Ubuntu-libre that would be 100% FSF-approved software.
The GPL restricts. That's the whole point of a license. If you didn't want to restrict, you'd put it in the public domain. Then you truly could do whatever you want with it.
Someone GPLs something instead of giving it away because they want to maintain some forms of control over it. It is there to restrict. Some may say the restrictions are good things, that's not for me to judge.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Then the EULA that uses isn't restricting either. It's giving permissions. When they snuck in language that said you couldn't use Visual Studio to make a spreadsheet (i.e. compete with Excel), they weren't restricting, they were giving you permissions. You should feel lucky to be allowed to use Visual Studio at all.
Thanks for realigning my thinking. Now I'm much more appreciative of SCO. I mean, they didn't have to let me use Linux at all, now they want to enable me to do it, for a small fee.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What the GP is attempting to do is use the connotation of the word "steal" to make it seem like doing volunteer work is wrong.
Pff. Even if one could steal from oneself, the original poster fails to take into account the ability of a person to capitalize on what they produce. If I'm a salaried programmer, then any programs I write don't go towards my retirement at all. I get my $100k, and the company gets rich off my work.
If I try to go into business for myself, then I almost certainly end up having to sell interest in my company to finance it. Profits from my software go to the shareholders, and again my retirement benefits not.
The only way that writing software could reasonably be expected to affect my retirement is if I'm
A) already filthy rich and able to support myself during the research/development phase, or
B) come up with something so awesome that it publishes itself overnight, and the money starts pouring in.
So, since the last two are highly unlikely, I keep working my day job by day while pounding out code when I feel like it, to keep my mind sharp.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Give up intentionally misunderstanding the GPL *and* your respondents, will you? Or are you *actually* that dim/stupid/daft?
But the great thing about it is, if some parts are invalidated, the situation just reverts back to plain copyright law and whoever was breaking the GPL has even less permission than they did before.
Nope. A judge would take a very dim view if you sue me for distributing your software after you have given me explicit permission to do so. You might have some legal grounds to quibble over trivialities, but for all practical matters the software would still be Free Software.
I think you are missing the chain here...
The key clause being "if some parts are made invalid." If you cannot comply with the GPL due to some legal ruling saying the GPL license is not valid, you no longer have any permsission to make copies of the software.
Now it is unlikely you could be sued for your prior use of the software, as you had a reasonable expectation that what you were doing was with the permission of the copyright holder because you were obeying the license the copyright holder put on the software. But, if that license is made invalid everything reverts to copyrght law and you no longer have any license giving you permission to use or distribute some one else's copyrighted work aka the software. So, any subsequent distribution would be subject to copyright law and without a new license, illegal.
This is where people knowledgeable about the GPL and copyright law laugh at those who want to invalidate it thinking that it makes the software public domain. If the license is invalid there is no license which means the copyright holder retains all rights and no one has permission to distribute the software anymore. There is no law or legal precedent that automatically makes a copyrighted work public domain other than expiration of the copyright term. If there were there would not be the problem of so many orphaned copyrighted works that cannot be archived or rescued because the copyright holder cannot be identified.
In a lower post you say if you pay money for a license you are allowed to use the software. But, we can show the same effect there as well. Click wrap licenses are a good example since they have had portions ruled invalid or unenforceable before. The key is that the copyright holder did have a choice they could have revoked the license and you would no longer have permission to use the software, but more typically they just let you continue using the software under the same license minus the invalidated clause, or more analagous to the GPL issue under a new license that is the same as the original minus the invalidated clause. If they did revoke the license because of the invalidated clause, I suspect you could reasonably sue for a refund of your license fee, and they could not sue you for prior use because you reasonably thought you had a license. In the end there is nothing in it for the copyright holder of paid software to revoke licenses when some egregious license term that they really had no intention of ever enforcing gets invalidated.
Like a good looking woman who cooks and cleans, free sex is an imaginary concept. Sex always costs - only prostitutes are prepared to admit it.
...you gave them permission to distribute... ...as long as certain requirements are met. If those requirements cannot be met, you cannot distribute the software.
Period.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Haven't ever read the GPL, have you?