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GPL vs. Skype Back In Court
mollyhackit writes "Hackaday reports that the GPL vs Skype case is going back to court today. This as an appeal to the court's decision Slashdot reported last July. The original case was brought against Skype for the Linux based SMC Skype WiFi phone. The court upheld the GPLv2 and decided that Skype had not gone far enough in meeting section 3 which details how to provide the original source. This time around Skype is apparently trying to argue that the GPL violates anti-trust regulations."
IANAL, but it seems like their's only two coices 1) The GPL is valid and they need to comply 2) The GPL is invalid and they arein violation of copyright. Aren't they shooting themselves in the foot arguing that it's invalid?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
"Why is eBay asleep at the switch while some rogue laywer at Skype pulls this? They have nothing to lose from releasing the kernel, and both reputation and money to lose while they balk."
For the same reason they are suing Craigslist for stock dilution. I'm not saying I know what it is, but they are both lawsuits with shaky legal ground and huge damages to reputation, so I figured the same genius is behind both.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
A - didn't Ebaybuy Skype at one point?
B - shooting down the GPL - you can bet there is more behind that push than just "somebody" at Skype
great to speculate....
Maybe it's time I shitcanned my Skype account.
Antitrust regulations govern interactions and arrangements among companies. The GPL can be one of those. Cross-licensing agreements, effectively what the GPL is, have been held to violate antitrust law when they're used to keep competitors out of a market.
Consider a company that manages to create a de facto standard based on GPL software and then use the GPL to force competitors to release changes to their own software. The original company doesn't have to do this (since, as the author, it doesn't have to release its own changes). As a result, the original company has a competitive advantage over its competitors.
I'm not asserting that this applies here. But, there are situations where it might.
Actually in germany it's worse. the GPL has not only been upheld it was upheld against SCO's random claims years before a US judge even opened their mouths on the subject.
Not only will this not fly it is going to get flung back at those lawyers. most likely painfully.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Then, they pursue this case when complying with the terms of the GPL would cost them nothing, which is the mark of a lawyer who isn't considering his client's best interest.
An alternative explanation, which is fresh in my mind from the recent Reiser judgment, is a client who refuses to listen to the lawyer's advice as to what is in their best interest. At the end of the day, the client is the one who is in charge. In particular a corporate lawyer is going to take the legal strategy they are told to take.
The enemies of Democracy are
Doesn't the GPL do the exact *opposite*? The whole point of open source is to allow others to have access to the same code, thereby leveling the playing field...I guess in a way.
Yes, it is exactly the as you say. In fact, the power of the GPL is that its strength stems from copyright law. If the GPL is deemed in violation of anti-trust, it means copyright law is in violation of anti-trust. Needless to say, it is not very likely they have a sound argument here.
IMO, this case from the Skype point of view, is more about protecting the hardware from what one might call "rogue" firmware developers. Compared to SIP based hardware, Skype-only equipment is very cheap. If a new firmware image could be built for the phone, it would be incredibly easy to use the phones with Asterisk rather than the intended Skype, simply by replacing the phone application with something that speaks SIP, since the hardware access pieces of the software would fall under the GPL, being part of the OS.