"C has the third party source code, but they signed an NDA that means they can only distribute it as binaries to their users."
But you can't form a contract regarding illegal acts or services. Thus, pieces of paper agreeing to supply illegal drugs, or commit murder, are pieces of paper with written statements on them, not contracts. To be a contract there needs to be reciprocal compensation. Otherwise it is just a promise, not a contract.
Thus, you agree not to disclose information in return for rights to distribute. But it turns out it was a scam, and the party didn't have the right to grant you rights to distribute. Are you going to have to abide by the NDA under those terms? If you sign an NDA with a scam artist, I think the courts would want you to still tell the police you were scammed...
My understanding is that the FSF position is that you can't accidentally in up losing your own code. If you make a mistake, they are more intent upon having the mistake fixed. If you knew the binary was GPLed then you deserve to have to GPL your code. If you had a good faith expectation that you were buying rights (rather than being scammed) then you certainly had no intention of GPLing your stuff, and while you certainly would have to stop distributing the bundle, and I agree that party C is screwed, I still maintain that it was the scam that screwed them and not the GPL.
I also agree that standard models need tweaking if you want to commercially avail yourself of the GPL codebase. I might disagree that because things change, the cost of change is more than the benefit. Obviously, know what you are doing. People seem to be making money, though.
You left off the all important "for a limited time." Copyright wouldn't be such a problem if it lasted for 6 months to a few years, and source code had to be deposited at the time you applied for the copyright (to then be made public.)
How about this thought? If it were illegal to sell binaries without also distributing source code along with them, and there was no copyright protection, would a GPL be necessary? The "you can't control distribution w/o copyright" really means, "control of distribution wouldn't be the same if it were done differently." Well, yeah. Thats the point.
"Bulmash misses the point that without copyright, I can find the appropriate place in your machine code to insert my functions and then distribute the modified versions to my friends. That's 90% of the GPL right there..."
Yes! Someone who gets it! It would make for a very different world.
I'm not sure about your second point, though, because I think that the efficiency of having universal computing devices would be enough to (eventually) bring about convergence. We certainly didn't have to let criminals become as rich as God Himself to establish de facto standards (that disregard de jure standards).
The title (currently) is "You Can Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source" with 13 comments posted. If they changed it (if it ever was different) they changed it *fast*!
I suppose the real trick would be to make NDAs and DRM illegal at the same time that NSF grants are issued for reverse engineering closed code. That would be a hell of a world...
And yet strangely enough, the GPL doesn't "force you to do certain things if you choose to use my work", although that is a common misconception. The GPL itself even states this fact explicitly:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
Stating its so doesn't make it so. Score:4, Insightful likewise doesn't make it so. You are exhibiting a point of view that goes like thus: "To a man who only has a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail." The question posed is whether replacing copyright laws with other laws would allow the spirit of the GPL to prevail. Probably the GPL would need to be rewritten to be in accord with a new set of laws.
Two things irritate me about this topic:
people who assume that copyright is an inherent right, when it is so obviously not;
people who think that without our current copyright structure, there could only be chaos.
IANAL, but if all you received was the binary, you aren't obligated in the manner which you state. You would have to stop distribution, and you should sue the people you bought the binary from, but you had no intent to commit a crime. Go after the people you sue to recap the cost of stopping distribution.
Life is strange, and these are "interesting times", for sure, but in terms of what is really going on, I suspect there might just be other sharks circling in these waters and creating a little bit of turbulence:
As a result, even though the two companies have spent the last decade battling each other, Novell's chief executive Ronald Hovsepian found it in himself to approach a contact at Microsoft last year, after a boardroom shake-up in June 2006 saw him replace then incumbent, Jack Messman.
Hovsepian's aim of starting a dialogue was aided, however, by some of Microsoft's major financial services customers making it clear that they were going to use Linux whether the vendor liked it or not. The reality is that enterprise customers want the vendors to start playing nicely together in order to deal with the resultant interoperability issues.
Organisations such as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Wal-Mart and AIG Technologies have since purchased coupons from Microsoft that provide them with a one-year subscription for maintenance and updates to Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), along with a mix of priority and standard support services.
There is lots of controversy regarding mono. To ask if anyone doubts if mono infringes indicates you've already made up your mind. I don't see where they have infringed. Could you be specific? Or are you just paranoid?
Doesn't everybody think WebCT sucks? It is such a pain to use. Sort a field, but then select a student, and when you come back its unsorted again. And whats with viewing 23 students in the grade book as default? Make it say all, but then you go to do something with it, and it reverts back...
"k.... what version of Windows is running on the X-Box and how is it identical to XP/Vista?"
Regardless of other factors in the dialog, this deserves comment because the ability to compile source code has to do with compilers and libs. Your comment's parent's remark stands on its own here:
Dude, code that compiles and runs for two processor architectures isn't called "cross-platform". It's called "not broken".
Yes, accept that "allow you to build a brand identity" is a side effect, the *purpose* is to prevent others from "trick(ing) people into thinking that what they're buying is your product". Targeted competitive advertising doesn't confuse people as to product.
No, Trademarks were not enacted for the purposes of business, but rather for the purposes of consumers. Trademarks are a way of making it easier for consumers to identify products. Insofar as Trademarks help consumers, then Trademarks do provide their intended function. This is actually an attempt to hijack consumer rights.
Yes, *if* Newegg has paid for "Newegg" to be on Utah's protection list. Note: it doesn't seem to need to be a trademark. So I could buy Utah protection for words for which I couldn't get a Trademark.
But in our scenario, the "entry for John's Computer Emporium has the address and contact details for"... John's Computer Emporium. There is just an advertisement next to it for Apple Computer (that is marked as an advertisement).
"All Google has to do is ban anybody from advertising keywords from within Utah". Not good enough. You actually have to "ban anybody from advertising keywords" from within France (and Canada and Wyoming and *everywhere*), if the person *viewing* them is viewing them from inside utah. If I have a trademark and I'm based in Georgia, I can still pay Utah for "protection".
Actually this legislation doesn't ban linking competitors when there is a trademark. Rather, if you have a trademark, you can purchase "protection" for your trademark from Utah. Just having a trademark isn't enough, you see. But once you've paid Utah to get on their list, then at least in Utah you have rights that transcend mere Trademark law.
No need for a "wide interpretation of the 1st", just awareness of The Commerce Clause:
The Commerce Clause to the United States Constitution provides that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. (U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 8). This provision also has a "dormant" aspect that "prohibits state . . . regulation that discriminates against or unduly burdens interstate commerce."
"Call me crazy, but I think there SHOULD be dossiers and profiling of people who are affiliated with these kinds of groups (and I use that term loosely) in an effort to ERADICATE any such groups!" Ok, you are crazy. Would you feel just as good about the police keeping dossiers and profiling the people who are trying to set up free trade? Would it be OK if the police decided to clean up, say, all the liberals? What if the police decided to go after neo-cons? Why should the police be allowed to be taking sides in matters of politics? Crazy.
Would making the video available to the judge, so the judge could determine if the footage was relevant, make any difference? Would the prosecutors' motion to prevent the judge from looking at the footage to determine if it would be relevant make any difference to you? Doesn't this seem like a power play?
So how far do you take it? The video didn't include any footage of a crime, but the police have every right to it? How about if the video was taken the day before or the day after? Do the police still get it? If you get married in a park, do the police get to make copies of your wedding video and your wedding photos because there was a mugging in the park (on the other side park, say, the year before)?
"I thought this case was about a video blogger not giving the cops a video of some people damaging a cop car and setting it on fire. Now about the government suppressing information." Which is what you were supposed to think. You'd know better if you RTFA. The video didn't have any footage of the damaged to either the police car or the policeman's skull. The police want to be able to get access to all recordings of any event that interests them. In this case, they managed.
Slashdot Mirror
"C has the third party source code, but they signed an NDA that means they can only distribute it as binaries to their users."
But you can't form a contract regarding illegal acts or services. Thus, pieces of paper agreeing to supply illegal drugs, or commit murder, are pieces of paper with written statements on them, not contracts. To be a contract there needs to be reciprocal compensation. Otherwise it is just a promise, not a contract.
Thus, you agree not to disclose information in return for rights to distribute. But it turns out it was a scam, and the party didn't have the right to grant you rights to distribute. Are you going to have to abide by the NDA under those terms? If you sign an NDA with a scam artist, I think the courts would want you to still tell the police you were scammed...
My understanding is that the FSF position is that you can't accidentally in up losing your own code. If you make a mistake, they are more intent upon having the mistake fixed. If you knew the binary was GPLed then you deserve to have to GPL your code. If you had a good faith expectation that you were buying rights (rather than being scammed) then you certainly had no intention of GPLing your stuff, and while you certainly would have to stop distributing the bundle, and I agree that party C is screwed, I still maintain that it was the scam that screwed them and not the GPL.
I also agree that standard models need tweaking if you want to commercially avail yourself of the GPL codebase. I might disagree that because things change, the cost of change is more than the benefit. Obviously, know what you are doing. People seem to be making money, though.
You left off the all important "for a limited time." Copyright wouldn't be such a problem if it lasted for 6 months to a few years, and source code had to be deposited at the time you applied for the copyright (to then be made public.)
How about this thought? If it were illegal to sell binaries without also distributing source code along with them, and there was no copyright protection, would a GPL be necessary? The "you can't control distribution w/o copyright" really means, "control of distribution wouldn't be the same if it were done differently." Well, yeah. Thats the point.
"Bulmash misses the point that without copyright, I can find the appropriate place in your machine code to insert my functions and then distribute the modified versions to my friends. That's 90% of the GPL right there..."
Yes! Someone who gets it! It would make for a very different world.
I'm not sure about your second point, though, because I think that the efficiency of having universal computing devices would be enough to (eventually) bring about convergence. We certainly didn't have to let criminals become as rich as God Himself to establish de facto standards (that disregard de jure standards).
Especially we need to repeal the DMCA!
The title (currently) is "You Can Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source" with 13 comments posted. If they changed it (if it ever was different) they changed it *fast*!
I suppose the real trick would be to make NDAs and DRM illegal at the same time that NSF grants are issued for reverse engineering closed code. That would be a hell of a world...
;-)
Stating its so doesn't make it so. Score:4, Insightful likewise doesn't make it so. You are exhibiting a point of view that goes like thus: "To a man who only has a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail." The question posed is whether replacing copyright laws with other laws would allow the spirit of the GPL to prevail. Probably the GPL would need to be rewritten to be in accord with a new set of laws.
Two things irritate me about this topic:
people who assume that copyright is an inherent right, when it is so obviously not;
people who think that without our current copyright structure, there could only be chaos.
IANAL, but if all you received was the binary, you aren't obligated in the manner which you state. You would have to stop distribution, and you should sue the people you bought the binary from, but you had no intent to commit a crime. Go after the people you sue to recap the cost of stopping distribution.
There is lots of controversy regarding mono. To ask if anyone doubts if mono infringes indicates you've already made up your mind. I don't see where they have infringed. Could you be specific? Or are you just paranoid?
Doesn't everybody think WebCT sucks? It is such a pain to use. Sort a field, but then select a student, and when you come back its unsorted again. And whats with viewing 23 students in the grade book as default? Make it say all, but then you go to do something with it, and it reverts back...
Regardless of other factors in the dialog, this deserves comment because the ability to compile source code has to do with compilers and libs. Your comment's parent's remark stands on its own here:
Yes, accept that "allow you to build a brand identity" is a side effect, the *purpose* is to prevent others from "trick(ing) people into thinking that what they're buying is your product". Targeted competitive advertising doesn't confuse people as to product.
No, Trademarks were not enacted for the purposes of business, but rather for the purposes of consumers. Trademarks are a way of making it easier for consumers to identify products. Insofar as Trademarks help consumers, then Trademarks do provide their intended function. This is actually an attempt to hijack consumer rights.
Yes, *if* Newegg has paid for "Newegg" to be on Utah's protection list. Note: it doesn't seem to need to be a trademark. So I could buy Utah protection for words for which I couldn't get a Trademark.
But in our scenario, the "entry for John's Computer Emporium has the address and contact details for"... John's Computer Emporium. There is just an advertisement next to it for Apple Computer (that is marked as an advertisement).
"All Google has to do is ban anybody from advertising keywords from within Utah". Not good enough. You actually have to "ban anybody from advertising keywords" from within France (and Canada and Wyoming and *everywhere*), if the person *viewing* them is viewing them from inside utah. If I have a trademark and I'm based in Georgia, I can still pay Utah for "protection".
Actually this legislation doesn't ban linking competitors when there is a trademark. Rather, if you have a trademark, you can purchase "protection" for your trademark from Utah. Just having a trademark isn't enough, you see. But once you've paid Utah to get on their list, then at least in Utah you have rights that transcend mere Trademark law.
"Call me crazy, but I think there SHOULD be dossiers and profiling of people who are affiliated with these kinds of groups (and I use that term loosely) in an effort to ERADICATE any such groups!" Ok, you are crazy. Would you feel just as good about the police keeping dossiers and profiling the people who are trying to set up free trade? Would it be OK if the police decided to clean up, say, all the liberals? What if the police decided to go after neo-cons? Why should the police be allowed to be taking sides in matters of politics? Crazy.
Would making the video available to the judge, so the judge could determine if the footage was relevant, make any difference? Would the prosecutors' motion to prevent the judge from looking at the footage to determine if it would be relevant make any difference to you? Doesn't this seem like a power play?
So how far do you take it? The video didn't include any footage of a crime, but the police have every right to it? How about if the video was taken the day before or the day after? Do the police still get it? If you get married in a park, do the police get to make copies of your wedding video and your wedding photos because there was a mugging in the park (on the other side park, say, the year before)?
"I thought this case was about a video blogger not giving the cops a video of some people damaging a cop car and setting it on fire. Now about the government suppressing information." Which is what you were supposed to think. You'd know better if you RTFA. The video didn't have any footage of the damaged to either the police car or the policeman's skull. The police want to be able to get access to all recordings of any event that interests them. In this case, they managed.