Who better than ESR? How about my dog? She's really cute and everyone likes her. Seriously though, my vote goes to Eben Moglen (General Counsel of the FSF). That guy is fookin' amazing. And I don't think pairing up RMS and ESR is remotely fair to RMS. There's no comparing the two. RMS' contributions to free software are huge, both in terms of code donated and in terms of leadership and ideas. ESR comes nowhere close. The first thing he should do is forget that open source stuff, and join the free software movement.
Microsoft fighting for something that makes sense? Maybe, here's a quote from a Nation article about defense spending: Even our own Bill Gates was alarmed at the United States' apparent hubris: "People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us."
But from the letter to the MPAA I didn't get any sense that MS, or Intel, or any other major computer manufacturer was actually going to work against anti-consumer DRM, just that they didn't want Congress involved. In fact, if DRM happens without Congress it might be much worse. Congress at least makes a pretense of getting public input and conducting halfway fair and open hearings and publishes their policies freely in many cases. You can bet that if industry (think oligopoly) does this on their own, the public will have no say, get stuck with a less secure (for users) security, and lose any chance for Fair Use and/or DRM-expiration when current media copyright expires (which we all suspect it may never actually do again).
When I hear the phrase "digital rights management" why do I get the feeling the only people who will have any digital rights left to manage are major corporations? Either way, unless consumers get informed and actually stand firm, we all stand to get fooked pretty badly on this one. I have friends who get downright vituperative about a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn baby, but bring up copyright-related freedom issues and even if they do comprehend the issue they couldn't care less. That's the real problem we're facing here: no one understands how this affects them, and even if they do they aren't willing to act differently to prevent it.
The GPL doesn't say more than a few words about "use" of software and they are pretty much "use it all you want". The license is about distribution. I think you meant to say distribution, since that is the context of the discussion, but it seems to me the distinction is important.
No one is saying NuSphere can't *use* the software, what they're saying is that NuSphere intentionally violated the GPL and that in addition they're being fookin' annoying to MySQL AB so the AB folks are not going to just let them start *distributing* the software again, compliant or no.
As to some of the issues you mention, I think it's fairly obvious that "you" in the license means the person or entity involved. So conceivably NuSphere could engage in some old shell game and maybe become a different legal entity and then be able to distribute again-- but that's not easy, cheap, or likely to make much sense to their customers.
But the whole thing about sharing the code doesn't make sense at all. If you share the code, you are following the GPL. If you share binaries, eventually you're going to want to recompile (if you're a distributor) -- not possible without the code. Which throws that whole hypothetical paradox on its ear if you ask me.
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Who better than ESR? How about my dog? She's really cute and everyone likes her. Seriously though, my vote goes to Eben Moglen (General Counsel of the FSF). That guy is fookin' amazing. And I don't think pairing up RMS and ESR is remotely fair to RMS. There's no comparing the two. RMS' contributions to free software are huge, both in terms of code donated and in terms of leadership and ideas. ESR comes nowhere close. The first thing he should do is forget that open source stuff, and join the free software movement.
Microsoft fighting for something that makes sense? Maybe, here's a quote from a Nation article about defense spending: Even our own Bill Gates was alarmed at the United States' apparent hubris: "People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us."
But from the letter to the MPAA I didn't get any sense that MS, or Intel, or any other major computer manufacturer was actually going to work against anti-consumer DRM, just that they didn't want Congress involved. In fact, if DRM happens without Congress it might be much worse. Congress at least makes a pretense of getting public input and conducting halfway fair and open hearings and publishes their policies freely in many cases. You can bet that if industry (think oligopoly) does this on their own, the public will have no say, get stuck with a less secure (for users) security, and lose any chance for Fair Use and/or DRM-expiration when current media copyright expires (which we all suspect it may never actually do again).
When I hear the phrase "digital rights management" why do I get the feeling the only people who will have any digital rights left to manage are major corporations? Either way, unless consumers get informed and actually stand firm, we all stand to get fooked pretty badly on this one. I have friends who get downright vituperative about a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn baby, but bring up copyright-related freedom issues and even if they do comprehend the issue they couldn't care less. That's the real problem we're facing here: no one understands how this affects them, and even if they do they aren't willing to act differently to prevent it.
The GPL doesn't say more than a few words about "use" of software and they are pretty much "use it all you want". The license is about distribution. I think you meant to say distribution, since that is the context of the discussion, but it seems to me the distinction is important.
No one is saying NuSphere can't *use* the software, what they're saying is that NuSphere intentionally violated the GPL and that in addition they're being fookin' annoying to MySQL AB so the AB folks are not going to just let them start *distributing* the software again, compliant or no.
As to some of the issues you mention, I think it's fairly obvious that "you" in the license means the person or entity involved. So conceivably NuSphere could engage in some old shell game and maybe become a different legal entity and then be able to distribute again-- but that's not easy, cheap, or likely to make much sense to their customers.
But the whole thing about sharing the code doesn't make sense at all. If you share the code, you are following the GPL. If you share binaries, eventually you're going to want to recompile (if you're a distributor) -- not possible without the code. Which throws that whole hypothetical paradox on its ear if you ask me.