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Wallace's Second Anti-GPL Suit Loses

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the e-for-effort dept.

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.'"

7 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. What? by blair1q · · Score: -1, Troll

    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?

    This judge may have just vacated a couple of hundred trade laws...

    1. Re:What? by blair1q · · Score: 0, Troll

      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.

    2. Re:What? by blair1q · · Score: -1, Troll

      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.

      You wrote a very long post showing virtually nothing about whether I was right or wrong, because you don't understand economics at all.

    3. Re:What? by blair1q · · Score: -1, Troll

      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?

      Hint: don't let the word hypothesis make you think the paradigm of the argument has changed. Hypothesis, accusation, tort, complaint, suit, they're all the same thing.

    4. Re:What? by blair1q · · Score: 0, Troll

      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.

    5. Re:What? by blair1q · · Score: -1, Troll

      I mean free as in not costing to purchase what it costs to produce.

      Keep your juvenile taunts to yourself. They aren't making you look any better when you write two hundred words showing you don't get the point even when it's explained to you.

  2. Re:SysCon sucks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    "Actually, the GPL is a contract, just like most licenses are. It explicitly says you must accept it before you get any of the granted privileges. If you have to agree to something, it is a contract."

    You don't have to agree to the GPL it says so right in the GPL if you've ever bothered to look:

    '5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.'

    Also if you notice it calls itself a LICENSE not a contract. And if you do not abide by its terms then 'However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.'