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Bruce Perens Explains That 'GPL Is A Contract' Court Case (perens.com)
Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3,872. Bruce Perens writes:
There's been a lot of confusion about the recent Artifex v. Hancomcase, in which the court found that the GPL was an enforceable contract. I'm going to try to explain the whole thing in clear terms for the legal layman.
Two key quotes:
Two key quotes:
- "What has changed now is that for the purposes of the court, the GPL is both a license, which can be enforced through a claim of copyright infringement, and a contract, which can be enforced through a claim of breach of contract. You can allege both in your court claim in a single case, and fall back on one if you can't prove the other. Thus, the potential to enforce the GPL in court is somewhat stronger than before this finding, and you have a case to cite rather than spending time in court arguing whether the GPL is a contract or not..."
- "Another interesting point in the case is that the court found Artifex's claim of damages to be admissible because of their use of dual-licensing. An economic structure for remuneration of the developer by users who did not wish to comply with the GPL terms, and thus acquired a commercial license, was clearly present."
Low UID prestige is quite legitimate. It means we have been around since the beginning, when there was nobody on here but true nerds who almost all knew their stuff. While it is true that a high UID does not prove ignorance and incompetence there is an almost zero chance that a low UID holder will be anything but a person with a lot of experience in the field, a solid understanding of Linux or at least lots of experience with it, and almost zero chance that they are a Microsoft weanie. In other words, we were here when Slashdot was a tech site, and more specifically a linux and OSS tech site.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Bruce Perens .... Slashdot Newbie. /now get off my lawn.
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
Often you will see GPL projects that "allow" a corporate license.
The unwritten detail that you aren't seeing is that a GPL project that dual licences is almost exclusively developed by one company. It isn't a collaboration, because contributors provide their code under the GPL and that can't be included in the commercial product. This means that the GPL code is a gift by the company to the wider world with conditions which allow the company to continue to profit, they typically don't request significant contributions such as donations. The difference with a purely closed source company like Microsoft is that you, as the consumer, have a choice you otherwise wouldn't. For example you can use the GPL version for early development work and switch to the commercial license when you are sure you want to use the library and distribute a final product. The library development process closely mimics a standard closed source company.
Collaborative GPL products work very differently and are never dual licensed. The GPL provides a guarantee for each company contributing that every other company must also contribute. This allows direct competitors to cooperate on a product knowing that they aren't putting themselves at a disadvantage. These projects work very differently to the dual licensed ones, the development process is open to allow communication across multiple companies. They also take code contributions and sometimes financial contributions, often to maintain infrastructure.
I regularly have my company donate to many open source projects. These donations are pretty good (1-5k each) but we all fully agree that never in a million years would we donate to a GPL project or any over arching project ever.
Companies I have worked for have supported projects vital to our work. The license influences libraries we use and the way way we use them. If you are adamantly opposed to the GPL and don't rely on their work then it would make perfect sense not to direct your money or time there.
Not supporting a collaborative GPL project because of a few non-collaborative GPL projects just shows off your ignorance.
The article by Bruce Perens, like all pro-GPL writing, is nothing but Orwellian double-speak, constantly talking about freedom but at the same time insisting that freedom means "you must do exactly as I say".
That's exactly how freedom works. In free societies, freedom means you cannot murder, you cannot steal, you cannot disparage, you cannot do a lot of actions, deemed bad. You should know that, Hobbes already talked about it a few centuries ago.