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Op-ed: Oracle Attorney Says Google's Court Victory Might Kill the GPL (arstechnica.com)
Annette Hurst, an attorney at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who represented Oracle in the recent Oracle v. Google trial, has written an opinion piece for Ars Technica in which she urges developers and creators to not celebrate Google's win in the hard-fought copyright case as the decision -- if remains intact -- is poised to make them "suffer" everywhere and also the free software movement itself "now faces substantial jeopardy." As you're aware, in a verdict earlier this week, a federal court announced that Google's Android operating system didn't infringe on Oracle-owned copyrights because its re-implementation of 37 Java APIs is protected by "fair use." Hurst writes: No business trying to commercialize software with any element of open software can afford to ignore this verdict. Dual licensing models are very common and have long depended upon a delicate balance between free use and commercial use. Royalties from licensed commercial exploitation fuel continued development and innovation of an open and free option. The balance depends upon adherence to the license restrictions in the open and free option. This jury's verdict suggests that such restrictions are now meaningless, since disregarding them is simply a matter of claiming "fair use." It is hard to see how GPL can survive such a result. In fact, it is hard to see how ownership of a copy of any software protected by copyright can survive this result. Software businesses now must accelerate their move to the cloud where everything can be controlled as a service rather than software. Consumers can expect to find decreasing options to own anything for themselves, decreasing options to control their data, decreasing options to protect their privacy.
Annette Hurst, an attorney at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who represented Oracle in the recent Oracle v. Google trial, has written an opinion piece for Ars Technica in which he urges...
As usual, great Slashdot "editor" work here... Unless it's a transgender "dude" or "lady"...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Best Sour Grapes of May 2016"
"Best Nail in Coffin for Confidence in Legal Judgement"
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
It's the implementations that they're protecting with the GPL, not the interfaces.
...I think a judge has to rule that it IS fair use, to render copyright "meaningless". He's just sore the judge ruled that way.
There never was copyright on the interface code as it is required to function. This was about Oracle bean counters trying to make their balance sheet look better through shenanigans rather than actually doing real work.
This case was not about the core code which is still covered fine by copyright and the GPL.
These comments are just spin.
Re-implementing an API and wholesale lifting a GPL software package are not even vaguely related. And, the end part of her quote, where she proclaims doom and gloom if we don't all move to the cloud, is ponderous hyperbole. The is just scare tactic garbage from an attorney who wants to bait the waters before she takes on the appeal and charges Oracle millions of dollars for the privilege.
This scumbag takes her sour grapes and shove them up her ass, and stops polluting the rest of the world with them.
Not to mention that the GPL exists because of copyright law, not thanks to it.
Never read such a stupid article. If oracle has won; alot of open source projects had been dead in the USA. In EU they had lived on since there APIs are not copyrightable because of interoperability.
Now they can continue to live even in the US.
As for the point that this makes it possible for people to steal open source code. It wont. Since it's always been possible to take open source code and reimplement it as closed code. Its never been forbidden before and thus this won't change that. APIs has never been seen as protected by the software industry before and its a sad state that USA has changed that.
Just saying it like it are.
Considering how obviously biased she would be, I can't believe that Ars even gave her a forum for her piece, or at least, didn't find some one to compose a counter point. I'm not sure I really buy her argument, but considering her vested interest, I have trouble accepting it at face value.
Oracle's loss is a huge threat to free software and the GPL. That's why Stallman has been campaigning on their behalf for years now, hanging out with Ellison on his private catamaran, writing op-ed pieces supporting Oracle's treatment of Java post-Sun acquisition, etc.
I'd post the links, but it's easy enough to find them with Google.
This is plain double-speak. If Oracle had their way they'd kill GPL software. Innovation revolves around an application programming interface. The API is the "shape" of the program. The code inside the shape is the implementation. The GPL revolves around the implementation and has nothing to say about the shape. If shapes were always copyrightable then that would absolutely kill innovation. All of a sudden if you used someone else's shape in a way they didn't like they could totally shut you down with just the threat of a lawsuit - not everyone has deep pockets to fight that. Copyrighted API's would become just another kind of currency much in the way software patents already are. If you can't beat them with money then beat them, forced licensing, with other kinds of currency. In the Oracle world we wouldn't even enjoy the powerful computers we have today. Decades ago Phoenix clean-room reverse-engineered IBM's BIOS and made the same shape with a different implementation. If that shape had never been open we would have never experienced the rapid advancement of a bazaar that component manufacturers can revolve around. We would have been stuck with IBM's will and computing would have stagnated because they would not necessarily have had an interest in advancing it as much as competition does. At the time IBM's BIOS was reverse-engineered they weren't even the best computers. There were others that were much better like the Commodore Amiga, however, when the ecosystem around an open BIOS happened then the feedback effects from that made it win. Without a doubt.
Shh.
Like commercial software, which you do not own but merely use under license...
Like commercial services, which grant themselves increadibly broad licenses to everything that you post, store, and transmit, usually for far longer than merely the duration that you use the service...
Like commercial software and servicves, which report back telemetry data, raid amazing quantities of your PII for the services' own benefit (well I'll just be uploading that contacts list for you...), and generally function as your own personal stalker for the benefit of the service and many other third parties (dear advertising partner, our user is a 18-34 year old female who is 4 months pregnant and just about to walk past your storefront).
Yeah. Having someone reimplement a GPL-licensed software product by mirroring the APIs is certainly going to lead to things worse than that.
...in the "little people" episode. Totally appropriate response to her op-ed.
Looks like the author was in a hurry. This almost makes no sense.
Here. Fixed that for you.
The sky is falling. Ahhhhhhh! Bunch of self-serving bleep.
I doubt it will "kill" GPL software that is released without an underlying profit motive though.
Oracle is fucking scum... Google should just buy 'em out for the few million they're (not) worth.
WTF are you trying to say? Is GPL the worst, or not? If not the worst, then what is worse? Never mind, you're just another fuckweed grousing about open source.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Before Oracle v. Google, everyone assumed (based on extensive legal precedent) that APIs were not subject to copyright at all. Yet the GPL was just fine. Why would the GPL be threatened all of a sudden just because one more API turned out to be copyable?
The only tangible result of this case has been a very slight strengthening of copyrights, since the appeals court rules that APIs might be copyrightable under certain circumstances. How does strengthening copyright weaken a license that relies on copyright?
This is either monumental stupidity, or outright shilling. Hanlon's razor suggests I ought to go with the former, but I'm going to wait and see.
"This jury's verdict suggests that such restrictions are now meaningless"
APIs are little more than a collection of function names. Lists can't be copyrighted, because they're facts. Anyone with objdump is going to end up with the same list of function names, and it isn't copyright infringement to create a function with the same name as somebody else's function.
The software industry isn't going to fall apart just because people can legally write a completely independent drop in replacement for someone's copyrighted library.
"Software businesses now must accelerate their move to the cloud where everything can be controlled as a service rather than software."
These services are still just libraries, it's just that all the functions are just wrappers to make the call remotely on somebody else's server, where you can't have access it its implementation. If anything, how ridiculously trivial this makes your library makes it even more nonsensical that its API can be copyrighted.
"Google exerts control over its APIs. Google prohibits copying of its APIs for competitive uses."
If this were true, then it sure is lucky that you lost your case arguing that APIs can be copyrighted.
Though things were already going this way. This will just speed it up a bit. The biggest effect will be loss of corporate funding to open source efforts that are not deemed in the corporations immediate interest. HP is already going this way, and IBM has been following this track in a more sophisticated way for years.
It's not Hurst's fault she's an idiot. Blame the intern she got to lookup GPL on Ffffacebook. This is why interns don't get paid - because they're idiots. Besides, it's Linked in, no one important reads it (just lawyers, the unemployed, and the unemployable (I mean lawyers).
Also, this is why we can't have nice things.
One day people will realize that the "law" isn't some mystical artifact or based on natural observations. They will in fact realize laws are written by people and interpreted by people. When that day comes, all their nonsense cultural arguments about it being the law will cease. At this time they will also realize that public discourse shapes public perspectives and ultimately influences the law. When this day comes they will realize what lawyers already know and what the average Joe dirt doesn't. The law is a game and those that know the game are the ones that win. Enjoy the next few months of public perspective shaping.
I'm pretty sure one of Oracle's IP lawyers would understand the difference between specification and implementation. To claim this could kill the GPL is at best disingenuous and at worst incompetence. Or perhaps the other way around
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Which is why it is at the heart of two of the most successful software projects in history; the GNU toolset and the Linux kernel.
In the real world, not the fantasy land you come from, results count, and the result of the GPL is an ecosystem of kernel modules, libraries and applications that is used on hundreds of millions of systems around the world every day.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... consumers don't "own" a fucking thing, ever, anywhere.
Read the goddam EULA.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
There's a farm supply store near me that'd love a steady supply of the kind of high-quality bovine waste product Ms. Hurst is spewing...
Isn't this corporates attorney cool-aid barf she gets paid for?
As I get this, API - application interface - like the front end, how to talk to an set of functionality of a software package, not the guts behind doing the actual work, such as in Unix/Xenix/Linux commandline/sh/ksh/csh, library definitions, awk,samba and what else there is on GPL goodies around for decades.
And getting this Oracle case decided in Oracle's greedy bosses sick mind's favor, all this would be in jeopardy.
Quite the opposite of this truth-talk barfing attorney lady.
Unknown concept for those dorks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
This is the silliest thing I've seen on /., and that's going some!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Are we supposed to believe that Oracle really had the best interests of the Open Source community at heart? Are we really supposed to believe that this case was all about Oracle's altruistic intentions instead of a $9Billion payday??
Now that they have lost this particular legal battle, Oracle are just trying to save face in front of the Open Source community. This lawsuit has alienated a massive segment of the developer community. Arguably that alienation began the moment Oracle acquired Sun, and this lawsuit simply confirmed many people's worst fears. It is clear, from comments in the trial, that Oracle only acquired Sun to have total control over Java, and anything related to it. Now that this lawsuit has confirmed that Oracle don't have the control they thought they did, their only option is to try and sway public opinion with the developer community. I don't see how that will start to happen unless Oracle abandon any appeal and let this case rest.
Hurst said that the whole Open Source community is in jeopardy because this will allow anyone to ignore copyright on source code and claim 'fair use'. Sure, there may be a possibility that 'fair use' could be pose a risk to enforcing the GPL, but the precedent in this case is limited because it specifically involved APIs. That hardly means that the GPL is now worthless. What is certain is that all developers everywhere, including the Open Source community, would have been in far greater jeopardy had Oracle been victorius.
If Oracle had been victorius, then Annette Hurst would have been busy firing off dozens of other API copyright lawsuits instead of writing Op-ed pieces on ArsTechnica. (The only thing that surprises me about this article is that ArsTechnica were so willing to publish something from such a clearly biased source.) Given that this was published so quickly after the trial, I find it hard to believe that Hurst penned this in her spare time after the trial as her personal opinion instead of the opinion of her client. To me it just seems like a lame 'Plan B' approach to sway public opinion for her client while they work on an appeal.
To be clear, I don't for one second believe that Hurst and Oracle have the best interests of the Open Source community in mind. I also don't believe that this is just about making money out of Google (although that is the starting point). This is about Oracle trying to regain total control over Java and anything related to it. The are billions of devices and programs that use Java or make use Java APIs (and not just Android devices), so the potential licensing revenue stream would be massive for Oracle. This is about Oracle trying to put an Open Source genie back in the bottle, and represents a far greater threat to the GPL than fair use ever will.
fucking cunt fucked cunt of cunts cunting the cunts cunt by the cunt of the cunt for the cunt of all cunts cunt cunt
Software businesses now must accelerate their move to the cloud where everything can be controlled as a service rather than software.
Nope, nope nope nope fuck you in the neck nope.
Karnal
You're right.
Copyright protects a specific expression of an idea, not the idea. Ideas are protected by patents. The architecture of software is specifically NOT protected by copyright. If you wrote a large program in C, and I go out and write a program that duplicates the function and structure in Java, I have not infringed your copyright.
As you say, architecture is the hardest part to do write, and it is difficult to adequately protect. The usual strategy is to protect it as "trade secret" - expose the interfaces, but not the internals.
If it is sufficiently novel and it meets some other requirements, you *might* be able to get a patent, but since patents specifically exclude algorithms, that's kind of tricky.
As a list of facts, like a list of phone numbers, is not copyrightable.
A presentation of those facts can be copyrighted - just as a phone book is. But individual facts are not.
It is the INTERFACES that are open, not the implementation.
Many years ago, I had to implement a set of printer drivers but, as usual, the printer codes were proprietary. Using the man pages only, which described the interfaces and data format, I wrote a new subset of the pnm functions for a pnmto program (since I could not locate any LGPL implementation of pnm). I did, in fact, type in all of the characters for the new headers myself, and the text did not match the original headers, except for the function names and parameters.
You all are basing your arguments as if there is still a difference between API's and code. But as the 9th Circuit Appeals court ruled, API's are copyrightable just like code, effectively erasing the difference between them before the eyes of the law. What Google's winning this case means is that a proprietary company can now copy portions of GPL'd code under the legal protection of "fair use". It gets around the licensing restrictions of the GPL.
"Oracle Makes Shit Up To Inspire FUD"
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Get over yourself. APIs CANNOT be copyrighted, period. It's the one decision from the EU high court system that makes sense.
Software, the "exact" bits of code can be copyrighted, but not patented.
does George Orwell's newspeak come to mind?
Please do not glorify this case of sour grapes with any serious attention.
Just call a waaaaambulance!
I think by "worse" GP means "more clearly brings the result under the license used by the library". Static linking creates a strong case that the resulting executable must abide by the license of the library.
The reason why is because copy right is essentially about the right to create copies. Static linking EMBEDS a -copy- of the library into the executable. Therefore you're clearly making and distributing copies, and must follow the GPL is whichever license applies.
With dynamic linking, you're not copying the full compiled code of the library before the program runs. You're "only" copying the external interface of the library, much like Google copied the external interface of Java. Therefore it MAY be fair use and you MAY not have to follow the license of the library.
I capitalize MAY because this case did not rule that all use of any and all APIs, in any way, is always fair use. The jury found that in this particular case, the way that Android used the Java APIs was fair, after considering statutory criteria such as how it affected the market for Oracle's Java products.
The very idea of copyrighting software is not internally logically consistent. Free software advocates, pirates, and other computer enthusiasts have been saying this for decades now. Probably this is the cause of Hurst's apparent panic and confusion. He/she/other however clearly does not grasp the fundamental conceptual difference between a API and an implementation. Lawyers and Judges still calling shots about stuff they don't understand. Nothing new to see here.
is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less.
Google, and Oracle, have both done some blatantly unethical and even illegal acts in their business dealings. But trying to foster dissent among free software and open source advocates by spreading nonsense about imperiling the GPL is like George Bush claiming that Iraq was hosting terrorists.
The Oracle lawyer has it completely backwards. If APIs could be protected by copyright then FOSS could be easily locked out of making compatible implementations. Oracle is not in this battle to get a few billion dollars from Google. They are in this battle to kill off all independent software development. As bad as software patents are, changing the ground rules so APIs can be protected by copyright would be much much worse.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
He argued that writing a program which could be linked with readline violated the GPL even if you didn't include readline, because it was a derivative work.
Nobody asked you, BSD faggot.
The fix is in... the lawyer didn't know enough, I mean listen to that verbiage he uttered... what the? it's designed to get tech people to tell him how to kill the GPL... what are its weak spots... communism, ahem, choke, choke, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more... say no more. forced to comply. initiation of aggression. by someone. likely who?
The basic rule should be that interfaces are not copyrightable, but implementations are. If the contents of /usr/include can be treated as not subject to the GPL, that is no problem. If the 'commonly available' bit applies as the op-ed mentions, then would this not apply at least to all 'freeware'? And to the space filler that comes on a new laptop's hard drive? Copyright needs fixing anyway.
John_Chalisque
somebody will just fork it first
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The author seems to be confused between software and API. Google copied API, not the software. GPL is applicable to software, not the API.
everybody else has already posted why..
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"I'm gonna need you to take your opinions, and shove 'em waaaaay up inside your butthole."
That there is a lot of ignorance around this sort of "technical" and "legal" issues is understood. But what is new to me is that even a lawyer who fought for google in this imporant case belongs to the ignorant.
Fair use applies to using a small PART of the original work to do something new with it. In Google's case that is to implement the API.
But when someone uses for example the whole "gnu sort" program in their embedded hardware, then that is not using part of the copyrighted work as "fair use".
Dear Oracle lawyer: You work for the sleaziest software company in existence. No one cares what you think or say, because you have no clue about anything, and clearly, you're not a very good lawyer either. The verdict you decry only maintains a decades-long status quo, that you tried mighty hard to overturn.
She's just saying if Oracle's license is no good than neither would the GPL. Which is true. I don't know of the exact case but it seems to me that the API descriptions or interfaces are more appropriately considered an LGPL type product (if license-able at all), since you don't want your implementation to be considered a derived work. I think it was important, from Google's standpoint, that they not be using the GPL because they didn't want to get into the issue having to disclose all their source code as a derived work and that's why they made the fair use argument.
The point the Oracle lawyer misses is that I don't think most programmers really care about the GPL details that much, we just want gcc and other stuff to be free as in beer.
> because you are still using all the code from the library
COPYright essentially controls the right to make copies, not the right to use. If I buy a book, I can't legally make and distribute copies of it; I CAN use it to prop up a wobbly chair, swat a bug, etc. Generally I can USE it without worrying about copyright. It's the making of copies that invokes copyright. Static linking makes a copies.
Further, my distribution of a dynamically linked executable doesn't actually even USE the library. The library is used by the recipient when they RUN the program. Presumably they have the right to use the library.
Again, I'm not saying that no court will ever, under any circumstances, hold any kind of dynamic linking to invoke copyrights. Maybe they will. Maybe. I'm saying that making copies by static linking DEFINITELY invokes copyrights. Dynamic, since it doesn't create a copy, is much less likely to involve COPYrights.
This is the dumbest article Ars Technica has ever pushed. Ever. ..
"Free and Fair Use" seems to be morphed into "no need for copyleft" which would get rid of the GPL if all the stuff under the GPL can be shown, in court, to be "Free and Fair Use'. I don't think that likely.
The general question is whether you can copyright an API specification. Some have argued that you can copyright an API specification because the layout of a coherent solution to a problem in the API might have some real value in of itself. However, there is a more sophisticated version of this question. Can a language, such as Adobe's Postscript, be covered by copyright? The line between languages and APIs is getting increasingly blurred. If you look at API specifications for some Scala libraries, the library is really just creating a "holistic" extension to the Scala language, not necessarily limiting itself to providing simple APIs. Here is a simple example, I can define an API to add two complex numbers or I can extend the language so that the plus symbol will add two complex numbers. Scala lets you go down that second path a long way, and it is one of Scala's selling points that it can do this.
Given this blurring of the line between API and language, I argue that any answer you might make about APIs should apply equally to programming languages and vice versa.
My understanding is that most believe the programming languages cannot be copyrighted, but this understanding have never truly been tested in the courts. I think Adobe's Postscript has come fairly close to being tested, but Adobe never really pulled the trigger on some of its threatened legal action. However, I am having trouble getting an accurate history of Postscript licensing, so if anybody else has more details, they can certainly add to this post.
There are many people in control of IT budgets who don't (and won't ever) comprehend intellectual property law and license subtleties.
For these people, all the blather around the money shot is reasonable enough. For Oracle, adequate blather wrapped around a self-interested money shot has always been more than sufficient to run the presses.
What's news here?
This lawyer has an inherent conflict of interest. She IS GETTING PAID BY ORACLE to say what Oracle wants her to. This *might* have been /. worthy if a friend of the court ish lawyer came out and said this. As it is, shame on ARS editors for the free press for Oracle.
And, Yea, what all the other modded up posters said re what can act cannot copyright and gpl.
So oracle brings out a programming language so that we can write our own software then realises they cannot make money off it.. big deal :)
If Java were 100% closed source PaaS and people reimplemented Harmony to mimic its API 100% in another cloud that isn't owned by Oracle, what would these guys say? Basically, this ruling was one between "you can reimplement other people's APIs on your own time and dime, and that's fine" and "My API! Mine! Go make your own!"
GPL isn't dead. Oracle can go implement a closed source version of the Linux kernel API just fine. Make it a drop-in replacement that is better than the GPL one and you might even make some money out of it. GNU/kOracle is perfectly valid without violating any GPL - especially under this ruling.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
So DRM every file? Also what does this even mean?
RMS: Free "stuff", not Freedom. Really? In 2016?
The Free Software Movement said this over 30 years ago. Slashdot, stop posting shit from linkedin blogs and maybe you'll survive. I don't care what site the bullshit was laundered from (ars). Everyone else: https://www.softwarefreedom.or... Annette Hurst don't quit your day job.
To cite one example from my own experience, I'm not sure how giving away an open source mapping script which works with whatever image-processing library happens to be installed is "cheating the GPL", but okay.
> But the biggest one is: how will your users get that library? If give them both to your customer
Probably the most obvious example is pretty much every C program ever written, which is maybe half of all software ever written. Every C program uses the standard library. Approximately none of them include libc in the installer, or any script to get it.
Another example would be the approximately 60,000 packages available from any major Linux repository. When you create an RPM or a .deb package, you simply declare which other packages it depends on.
The first time I re-used an API was in 1968, to implement job accounting on an IBM 360/40 running IBM DOS. Their is a huge amount of prior art to re-using an API. To read accounting info added to Job cards, I had to intercept the job card and process it myself before then handing it off to the next step of processing.
I'm not an expert, but I think oracles continued flailing for a way to charge money for Java, after its long been "free" is killing java more than the "gpl".
not run the install program (make your own installer by dis-assembling theirs)
That's illegal under 17 USC 1201(a) and foreign counterparts if the installer is encrypted, as doing so would circumvent a "technical protection measure".
Dumb people laugh about Oracle, they laugh about the theft of Facebook from its ethnic italian owner and tomorrow they could be the very goyim that other people laugh about as the next victim of Google.
Google's owner-founders are soviet russian jews who aliyahed the to USA and were allowed in, despite the 1927 cessation of immigration. It boggles the mind such foreign agents are allowed to roam free and destroy a great christian country from the inside!
Private property is sancto-sanct in the USA, except when the self-chosen nation wants to take it from christians. Remember, how the non-christian president-dictator for life and friend of Joe Stalin, F.D.R. took all gold from the US goyim, yet nobody took to arms, despite so many guns in the USA? Of course since courts are freemasonic lodges, by default they rule against christians and the US population has been brain-washed to think courts are somehow supernatural.
businesses now must accelerate their move to the cloud where everything can be controlled (...). Consumers can expect to find decreasing options to own anything for themselves, decreasing options to control their data, decreasing options to protect their privacy.
No! No! And no!
On the cloud, not everything can be controlled. Especially not related with fair use vs commercial use! Are you telling me the fact I am using a cloud service during work hours on a work IP is gonna grant a SaaS provider that I am using the service for commercial reasons? Can't I edit a private document in Word or check my free Outlook email on my work PCs now, even if my work is on a BYOD policy? WTF! This is bollocks right there.
And it continues being bollocks when you tell me I don't own a service I actually purchased for the web! When people buy an online game, and online text/presentation/spreadsheet editor (e.g. Office 365), there is a license that states very well that ownership lasts as long as the service can be provided by the provider, and/or has a fixed, unquestionable time frame such as a 1 year license! Despite this being time-limited ownership, IT IS OWNERSHIP! Stop arguing that people have to be bound to a physical object (a CD/DVD) that has to work to full extent OFFLINE for it to be called ownserhip! Even Oracle knows that and it uses SaaS for most of its core business, and it's not even a recent practice - they been doing this for the last 2 decades! (even when they didn't use cloud services, you pretty much had to have Oracle support for maintaining anything on production every N-months or so!). Want me to blow your mind? Time-shares are ownership. From wikipedia: "A timeshare (sometimes called vacation ownership) is a property with a particular form of ownership or use rights." BAM!
Finally, stop arguing about data control and user privacy like you invented the thing! You're a lawyer lady, you know there's no such thing as privacy in a country with the Patriot Act and the Snowden leaks. You just used widespread, catch-all internet and policy issues to justify a circumvention of your (clients') flawed GPL licencing, and by flawed I mean that Oracle made it to protect a solid royalty revenue, and then it simply didn't! Don't call out civilization's evolutionary problems to fix THAT mess! Tell your client to learn from their mistakes. Or simply to drop the patent-troll scheme like most commercial companies like to do now: buy a FOSS company in order to nullify competition by making it non-FOSS. Because unlike that "loss of privacy induced by cloud/SaaS gold rush induced by dual-licensing issues", that is an ACTUAL PROBLEM!
I'm assuming this was directed at the "parse failure" comment right?
Cool. I didn't understand you, TBH, and I was just letting is slide as something stupid. But, now I see what happened - - - I browse everything. Sometimes those AC's write something worth reading, but you gotta wade through a lot of crap to get anything "good". And, TBH, I shouldn't have fed the troll to whom I replied.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I disagree with this. Without the GPL (and copyright law) the FLOSS movement would consist of code released under what amounts to BSD license conditions.
There would be no incentive for companies using the FLOSS code to contribute their improvements back to the code base. How much has Apple contributed to the Linux kernel compared to say IBM? The growth of FLOSS would be much slower without the GPL (and similar licenses). As RMS would say, it is important to build an ecosystem of Free Software -- that is why he has encouraged people to put stuff under the GPL and not the LGPL.