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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.
as in fifth post! WOOOOOOT
"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.
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...
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.
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)
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".
""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!"
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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)
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."
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>
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."
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!"
All legal controversies are manufactured.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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!".
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.
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 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
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.
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
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
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.
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!
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
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
I am sure some "businesses friendly" politician will be able get the law amended to fix that.
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.
'' 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.)
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'.
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.
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.
...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?