Every day we're for freedom. Copyright is just a sword, you can wield it for good or you can wield it for bad. The vast majority of people wield it for their own personal richification at the expense of freedom, but the GPL doesn't.
Whether this is a copyright or a contract case turns on whether the compatibility provisions help define the scope of the license. Generally, a "copyright owner who grants a non- exclusive license to use his copyrighted material waives his right to sue the licensee for copyright infringement " and can sue only for breach of contract. Graham v. James , 144 F.3d 229, 236 (2d Cir. 1998) (citing Peer Int'l Corp. v. Pansa Records, Inc., 909 F.2d 1332, 1338-39 (9th Cir. 1990)). If, however, a license is limited in scope and the licensee acts outside the scope, the licensor can bring an action for copy- right infringement. See S.O.S., Inc. v. Payday, Inc., 886 F.2d 1081, 1087 (9th Cir. 1989); Nimmer on Copyright , S 1015[A] (1999).
Yeah, I'm not sure they need a contract. If I receive the software from you and you receive the software from the licenser, then you might have a contract with the licenser, but I don't. If the licenser wasn't making an exclusive agreement with you and gave you redistribution rights, then I've done nothing wrong, you've done nothing wrong and I'm in no way bound by any contract you might have with the licenser. Look, let's put it another way. Say you bought a copy of Redhat Linux. You signed a contract with them to receive support. If you were to give me a copy of your software, that wouldn't entitle me to receive support, would it? Say you made some agreements to receive that support, like you wouldn't slag off Redhat in public forums.. I wouldn't be bound by that agreement anymore than they would be bound to give me support. It's clear that I can have a license to distribute Redhat Linux but not be bound by any contract to Redhat. Now, if what these people are saying is true, apparently Redhat can't sue me for copyright violation in this situation because they issued a non-exclusive license. Sounds absurd to me, but if it is true then we've all be labouring under a false assumption for years.
Yeah, obviously the whole concept of judging a person by their clothing being, I don't know, shallow hasn't occured to you guys. But hey, you're Mac users, you can't even get paste the "Ohh, shiny" phase.
WTF is uncivilized about buying something is underpriced and selling it for a profit? WTF is uncivilized about hiring people who are homeless? Man, you people have some fucked up values.
Huh? He said the guy appeared to be average. I said he isn't, he's a hippie. He said he's not a hippie just because he wears jeans and a sweatshirt. I draw the obvious conclusion that this guy judges people based on what clothing they wear and chastise him for it. What's your problem?
Here's the wildcard, or the advantage that Novell has. You are correct that as soon as Microsoft sues somebody for patent infrigement, everybody, including Novell, must immediately cease distributing any GPL covered works that infringe that patent.
No, I did not say that, and that is not true. You only have to cease distributing if you're worried Microsoft is going to sue you. Even if you do stop distributing that doesn't mean Microsoft can't sue you for what you distributed in the past.
However, Microsoft may be able to get an injunction during the patent litigation to stop all non-Novell users from *running* Linux.
Yeah, and how are they going to get that? Judges don't have the power to make laws ya know. You can't get an injuction against people you havn't even sued and you can't sue "all non-Novell users". Can you please think before you say shit like that?
Now, what are the odds a judge would grant Microsoft an injunction that brought the economy to a grinding halt? Nill, I'm guessing.
Yeah, imagine instead of crashing Linux with one powerful blow of Microsoft's patent war hammer they decide to, I don't know, make money from it.. how would you go about doing that? Hmm, well, you'd want to try to license those patents right? But this damn section 7 of the GPL says you can't do the usual non-transferable patent license, you have to do infinite and implicit transferance (much like the GPL itself). Bummer, can't make money off it, no wait! There is a way. What if we were to sell the licenses directly to the customer? See, if Microsoft doesn't threaten to sue the distributors of Linux and, instead, threatens to sue their customers, directly, then the distributors are not restricted from distributing the software under section 7. Thing is though, why would the customers pay Microsoft? They already have paid Novell right? Well, what if Novell was to pay Microsoft for the customers? That'd work, but why would Novell agree to pay for their customers? Ahhh, because if they don't Microsoft will sue them. Tangled. Web. We. Weave.
Ok, there's two possibilities here, the GPL licensed software that Novell distributes:
1. doesn't violate any Microsoft patents; or 2. does violate some Microsoft patents.
If it's the first then, great, no problems, this whole deal between Microsoft and Novell (as far as the patents go) is just FUD. But, if it is the second, oh boy, things get bad then. First of all, if Microsoft decides to enforce their patents, no-one has the right to distribute this software. That means we all have to pull together and remove any patented stuff from the software, or bust the patents. But Novell thinks they have a wild card.. this deal they've signed. They think that because Microsoft will be giving Novell's customers a license to use the patents they will be able to keep distributing the software, if Microsoft allows them to. What Eben Moglen is likely to say, however, is that Novell is wrong. If Microsoft has patents that cover GPL licensed software that Novell wants to continue distributing, Novell must secure a license for anyone who receives the software from Novell not only to use the software, but also to redistribute the software. If they don't, they are in violation of the GPL and can therefore not distribute the software. Sure, no-one else will be able to distribute the software either but Novell is not in some privledged position, which they think they are.
Q9. Did you sell us all up the river for 80 pieces of gold?
Novel has always been willing to sell the open source community and its works to anyone who is willing to pay us. We do not see Microsoft's evil undead army of lawyers any differently than we do our own customers. If you all end up in the galley of a ship pulling oars we wouldn't be suprised, but hey, you're the dickheads who keep assigning copyright to our corporate entity and that's what makes it all possible. Fuck you very much.
I often get email that contains no advertising, contains no links, has no attachments, but is definitely not written by a human and does not convey any useful information. Often this is in the form of a short story. Sometimes it is in the form of an essay. In either case, it looks like it is generated with simple probablistic markov chaining. As such, my spam filter accepts it and I have to manually delete it. Is this just nuisance spam? What does the sender get out of it? Seems pointless, and that's pretty scary to me. I can understand being annoying so you can sell more of your product to idiots on the internet, but being annoying just for the sake of it?
Slashdot Mirror
Every day we're for freedom. Copyright is just a sword, you can wield it for good or you can wield it for bad. The vast majority of people wield it for their own personal richification at the expense of freedom, but the GPL doesn't.
I hate to say, "if you read the article" but the key part is not money, it's the "non-exclusive" license.
Yeah, I'm not sure they need a contract. If I receive the software from you and you receive the software from the licenser, then you might have a contract with the licenser, but I don't. If the licenser wasn't making an exclusive agreement with you and gave you redistribution rights, then I've done nothing wrong, you've done nothing wrong and I'm in no way bound by any contract you might have with the licenser. Look, let's put it another way. Say you bought a copy of Redhat Linux. You signed a contract with them to receive support. If you were to give me a copy of your software, that wouldn't entitle me to receive support, would it? Say you made some agreements to receive that support, like you wouldn't slag off Redhat in public forums.. I wouldn't be bound by that agreement anymore than they would be bound to give me support. It's clear that I can have a license to distribute Redhat Linux but not be bound by any contract to Redhat. Now, if what these people are saying is true, apparently Redhat can't sue me for copyright violation in this situation because they issued a non-exclusive license. Sounds absurd to me, but if it is true then we've all be labouring under a false assumption for years.
Or at least we might get dtrace on Linux :)
Sony prices the boxes at twice the fair price for the first two weeks of the release.
Yes, that's EXACTLY what they should do.
Yeah, obviously the whole concept of judging a person by their clothing being, I don't know, shallow hasn't occured to you guys. But hey, you're Mac users, you can't even get paste the "Ohh, shiny" phase.
WTF is uncivilized about buying something is underpriced and selling it for a profit?
WTF is uncivilized about hiring people who are homeless?
Man, you people have some fucked up values.
These Japanese businessmen should be ashamed!
Huh? He said the guy appeared to be average. I said he isn't, he's a hippie. He said he's not a hippie just because he wears jeans and a sweatshirt. I draw the obvious conclusion that this guy judges people based on what clothing they wear and chastise him for it. What's your problem?
People making profit from a high demand for a low supply of items? Shock!
Uhh, you judge a person by what they are wearing? You must be a Mac user.
As someone who's never seen the ads, this sounds like the biggest load of crap I've ever read. What a typical Mac user.
Maybe you should stop hanging out with your Mom's friends if you're starting to consider hippies == average.
as I remember it was something like "you can't possibly write a virus for this operating system". Go get em boys.
Here's the wildcard, or the advantage that Novell has. You are correct that as soon as Microsoft sues somebody for patent infrigement, everybody, including Novell, must immediately cease distributing any GPL covered works that infringe that patent.
No, I did not say that, and that is not true. You only have to cease distributing if you're worried Microsoft is going to sue you. Even if you do stop distributing that doesn't mean Microsoft can't sue you for what you distributed in the past.
However, Microsoft may be able to get an injunction during the patent litigation to stop all non-Novell users from *running* Linux.
Yeah, and how are they going to get that? Judges don't have the power to make laws ya know. You can't get an injuction against people you havn't even sued and you can't sue "all non-Novell users". Can you please think before you say shit like that?
Now, what are the odds a judge would grant Microsoft an injunction that brought the economy to a grinding halt? Nill, I'm guessing.
How did your mind even learn human speech?
Yeah, imagine instead of crashing Linux with one powerful blow of Microsoft's patent war hammer they decide to, I don't know, make money from it.. how would you go about doing that? Hmm, well, you'd want to try to license those patents right? But this damn section 7 of the GPL says you can't do the usual non-transferable patent license, you have to do infinite and implicit transferance (much like the GPL itself). Bummer, can't make money off it, no wait! There is a way. What if we were to sell the licenses directly to the customer? See, if Microsoft doesn't threaten to sue the distributors of Linux and, instead, threatens to sue their customers, directly, then the distributors are not restricted from distributing the software under section 7. Thing is though, why would the customers pay Microsoft? They already have paid Novell right? Well, what if Novell was to pay Microsoft for the customers? That'd work, but why would Novell agree to pay for their customers? Ahhh, because if they don't Microsoft will sue them. Tangled. Web. We. Weave.
Ok, there's two possibilities here, the GPL licensed software that Novell distributes:
1. doesn't violate any Microsoft patents; or
2. does violate some Microsoft patents.
If it's the first then, great, no problems, this whole deal between Microsoft and Novell (as far as the patents go) is just FUD. But, if it is the second, oh boy, things get bad then. First of all, if Microsoft decides to enforce their patents, no-one has the right to distribute this software. That means we all have to pull together and remove any patented stuff from the software, or bust the patents. But Novell thinks they have a wild card.. this deal they've signed. They think that because Microsoft will be giving Novell's customers a license to use the patents they will be able to keep distributing the software, if Microsoft allows them to. What Eben Moglen is likely to say, however, is that Novell is wrong. If Microsoft has patents that cover GPL licensed software that Novell wants to continue distributing, Novell must secure a license for anyone who receives the software from Novell not only to use the software, but also to redistribute the software. If they don't, they are in violation of the GPL and can therefore not distribute the software. Sure, no-one else will be able to distribute the software either but Novell is not in some privledged position, which they think they are.
Q9. Did you sell us all up the river for 80 pieces of gold?
Novel has always been willing to sell the open source community and its works to anyone who is willing to pay us. We do not see Microsoft's evil undead army of lawyers any differently than we do our own customers. If you all end up in the galley of a ship pulling oars we wouldn't be suprised, but hey, you're the dickheads who keep assigning copyright to our corporate entity and that's what makes it all possible. Fuck you very much.
GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out, for all you people who shouldn't even be reading this site.
Yeah, it must be hard to rename the table and create it with a bigger field.
Do you setup timebombs on people's computers so they break later in the month and you get called back out to "help" people some more?
that's just what I heard.
I often get email that contains no advertising, contains no links, has no attachments, but is definitely not written by a human and does not convey any useful information. Often this is in the form of a short story. Sometimes it is in the form of an essay. In either case, it looks like it is generated with simple probablistic markov chaining. As such, my spam filter accepts it and I have to manually delete it. Is this just nuisance spam? What does the sender get out of it? Seems pointless, and that's pretty scary to me. I can understand being annoying so you can sell more of your product to idiots on the internet, but being annoying just for the sake of it?
Need we say more?