May I suggest that you at least look at the languages I suggested before going off the deep end? They've all solved at least one of the ambiguity problem, the default argument problem, the nested function call problem and the named argument problem.
So has Java: it solves them all by using parens around the argument list and commas between its elements.
If you really want to do things the Haskell, Lisp, or Smalltalk way on the JVM, there is no reason to change Java—there are implementations of all three languages for the JVM. What does eliminating parens for function calls (and/or commas between elements in the argument list) get Java except aesthetic appeal to a certain subset of the programming community that is offset by the aesthetic appeal it loses for a different subset of the programming community?
So GPL critics are right, and it is a viral license that should be avoided by commercial software interests?
Not really. While lots of Free Software zealots see the GPL as a way to "stick it to the man", from a commercial point of view the more GPL software is in the marketplace, the bigger the commercial advantage to whoever has the most well-established support organization. If the best "starting points" to build new applications from are available under the GPL, so that it is much more costly to build software to be released under a different license, you can't really compete on software quality, since competitors can take your source and provide the same software quality, the main avenue of competition is support.
So if you are IBM, Oracle, etc. or another "commercial software interest" with extensive support organization, the GPL is potentially great for you.
Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on their copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!
As I understand it, they're likely right. Insofar as their work is a new work they, as its creator, own the copyright. If you were posting just your original work, this wouldn't be an issue.
The question of whether their creation of that work violated your copyright, or is a fair use for commentary, is another issue. You could try to go to Viacom and offer to not go after them for it if they let you post the clip, but the success of that rather depends on your ability to credibly threaten effective legal and PR action.
If I'm not going to hold my own copyright, why not just specifically disavow copyright and let it enrich everybody via the public domain?
Works for SQLite.
This is the root of my problem with GNU in general: why show everybody how you achieved and developed a certain technological capability, without letting people actually use that method?
The GPL (conceptually); lets people use the software freely, but requires that they "pay" you if the change and distribute the software. Now, they don't pay in money, they pay by doing something you want, that is, making their own changes available under the same terms you've made your work available.
There are licenses (BSD/MIT style licenses) that provide more freedom to modify and distribute than the GPL, and there is always the option of the public domain.
Prior to the dominance of the internet, I would say that a major advantage of the GPL was that, given the more limited routes many users had of getting software and information about software, letting people wrap "open" software up inside a commercial blob, whether modified or not, without source would substantially reduce the ability of people to know that the source was available and find it and use it themselves. I don't think that's as true now, though.
I don't think the summary is misleading at all. The implication is that free software writers are less likely to notice when their code is used in violation of the license when the violation occurs in a Windows application instead of in an application written for an OS such an author is more likely to use him/herself.
I would expect that software authors (free or not) are more likely than most people to use multiple operating systems, and free software authors probably as likely, or nearly so, to use Windows as the general public (far less likely to use it exclusively, but that's not really relevant.)
Sure, some free software authors may also be free software zealots that refuse to use non-free systems at all, but then there are plenty of those that aren't software authors of any kind, too.
Suppose someone posts a comment criticizing a Google top executive? Google could modify that.
Yes, they could. There's really no practical way to right the TOS so that it would be reasonably clear, reasonably flexible, and rule out those kinds of modifications. Of course, Google could also simply refuse to carry the critical content, with or without the "modify" term. So what?
Suppose a whistle-blower catches a Google employee doing something illegal? Google is leaving itself open to criticism of possibly suppressing testimony.
Uh, no, its not. First, because the TOS doesn't obligate them to do anything nefarious; second, because the fact that something is allowed by the TOS (and thus users don't have any cause of action), doesn't mean it is allowed by Google internal policy, so that the user doesn't have an enforceable right to no changes or rejection of content by Google doesn't mean that Google actually is going to open itself up by "suppressing testimony", and last, but not at all least, because "testimony" isn't something that is done through Google's public services in the first place.
If it is so unlikely that they would ever make use of the ability to re-write and re-use something you wrote, then why did they write the contract that way?
"Modify" doesn't have to mean "rewrite".
It can mean "apply an XSLT stylesheet to the XHTML content to render it into XSL:FO and then convert the resulting document to PDF".
It can mean "display your Google Docs document as a static HTML document".
Yes, "modify" could be used to do nefarious things. But even if Google has no nefarious intent, its a lot easier (and more future-proof for them) to use "modify" in their TOS rather than trying to list out all the non-nefarious ways they might choose to modify content now or in the future.
Moglen disagrees, particularly in the case of the vouchers, and he does have actual legal qualifications.
The public statements of lawyers for parties involved in a disagreement are not generally the best places to go for fair, balanced, impartial, and accurate analysis of the legal issues. Notiwithstanding that those lawyers invariably have "actual legal qualifications".
The pledge was a mutual agreement not to sue each other's customers for patent infringement.
Very good.
What makes you think that there was any restrictions on what license the software could be sold under?
I'm not the one claiming that Microsoft positively anticipated and implicitly agreed to Novell licensing the software under the (not yet existent at the time of the agreement) GPLv3, whose terms themselves expressly forbid distribution of software covered by an agreemnent like the Microsoft-Novell one.
That's a pretty hard case to make.
There are plenty of 'helping you get it' provisions in contract and criminal law. Estoppel. Unclean Hands. Waiver. Entrapment.
None of which apply to the kind of "helping you get it" that might arguably be at issue here. Estoppel, specifically promissory estoppel, is the closest one, but even it isn't very close.
If Microsoft gives you a voucher for one copy of SuSE, then sues people who take the permissions therein at face value, do you really think that they're 100% in the clear?
The issue isn't about people who use the vouchers, its about the FSF's claims that the Microsoft pledge to Novell's paying customers is magically extended to the public at large because the GPLv3, which didn't exist at the time of the pledge, makes it illegal for Novell to distribute software under that license with only that pledge. There is no legal theory on which that argument even makes sense, not under promissory estoppel (since the people involved are not reasonably relying on a promise made to them), not under contract theory (since Microsoft has no contract with anyone that might be enforced by restraining them in this way), not under license theory with the GPL as the controlling license (that might provide a ground for copyright action against Novell in distributing GPLv3-licensed works in violation of the terms of the license, but can't expand the scope of Microsoft's promise.)
Again, what makes you think the pledge is limited?
As even you've claimed, the pledge is limited in who it applies to, and does not include the people whom Moglen claims it does, who are not Novell's customers.
If this really is a case of 'We'll help you spread SuSE, and we promise not to sue your customers' then Novell's customers are safe, because of the patent pledge, and the downstream users of Novell's customers are safe, because of the estoppel-type clauses in law.
What "estoppel-type clauses"? Promissory estoppel, the only theory that appears even remotely related to the scenario, doesn't seem likely to protect downstream users. It requires that the promise was known to the person relying on it, that that reliance by that person was intended by the person making the promise, and that reliance on the promise was reasonable for the person relying on the promise. And, even then, it doesn't necessarily provide an absolute bar to legal action, only a discretionary bar that is applied to the extent necessary to avoid "injustice" in the eyes of the court.
Now there's two things here that give the FSF leverage.
You are wrong in both cases, IMO, about the leverage.
One is that Microsoft agreed that Novell should release software under a 'GPLv2 or later' license.
If true, that allows redistributors to choose to use the GPLv2 or a later license. Of course, redistributors receive no patent pledge from Microsoft unless they negotiate it themselves, and without negotiating a universal pledge, any using the GPLv3 would be violating its terms. But that's a separate issue.
Except that Novell has confirmed that it's going to go ahead and distribute GPLv3 software anyway.
Which, given the content of the Microsoft pledge, is a clear violation by Novell of the GPLv3, since the GPLv3 expressly prohibits them from doing so. This may have consequences as to their rights to the software involved. OTOH, its not a violation of anything by Microsoft.
Note that agreeing that Novell use the "GPLv2 or later" term which allows redistributors to use some later version of the GPL is not the same as agreeing to Novell using the GPLv3.
The other is that the SuSE vouchers did NOT have an expiration date. Meaning if someone has one of those vouchers, they can wait until GPLv12 to cash it in.
They can wait and hope that Novell releases SUSE under the GPLv12, but there is nothing in the agreement that permits Novell to release SUSE under terms incompatible with Microsoft's patent pledge.
If Alice comes along with a voucher, supplied to her by Microsoft, and gets GPLv3 software from SuSE, and then reads her GPL, happily offers that software to Bob, who gets sued by Microsoft for patent infringement, who is at fault?
Alice, if Microsoft's pledge (that she received) did not cover Bob, and she represented to Bob that he was protected, explicitly or implicitly.
Novell is at fault for violating the GPLv3, but probably not liable to Alice or Bob for the specific problem here unless, despite the specific content of Microsoft's pledge, the GPLv3 could reasonably have misled them.
Microsoft isn't at fault at all.
Microsoft can't sue Bob, because Microsoft helped Bob (via Alice) get his software with all the GPL guarantees and whatnot.
There is no "helping you get it" provision of the GPL, and no legal basis for it being enforceable even if there was.
And if Microsoft DOES have the right to sue, then Novell is guilty of copyright infringement for not providing a secure enough GPLv3 guarantee along with the code it supplied.
Novell is clearly guilty of that if they release GPLv3 software with a patent guarantee more limited than that required by the GPLv3 whether or not Microsoft has the right to sue. That's unquestionable.
What is FUD is the suggestion by Moglen than Microsoft's patent pledge magically becomes universal if Novell chooses to violate the GPLv3 by distributing software for which it has received a limited patent pledge for its customers from Microsoft under the GPLv3 which prohibits distribution with such a limited pledge.
The FSF DOES believe the vouchers are a substantial issue
The fact that the FSF believes, or at least publicly proclaims, many (some of them mutually contradictory) things about the legal consequences of the GPL does not make them true.
The other is that the SuSE vouchers did NOT have an expiration date. Meaning if someone has one of those vouchers, they can wait until GPLv12 to cash it in. There's no way that Microsoft can plead ignorance of the 'GPLv2 or later' language in the code it was distributing, there's no way it can complain about the lack of the expiration date, since it clearly agreed to the voucher system, and Microsoft must surely have been aware that the GPLv3 was being drafted. How can Microsoft suddenly be surprised that it was going to help supply the world with GPLv3 software?
Due to the isolation between multiple VMs running atop a hypervisor, it seems like this architecture could allow companies to build Linux-based devices, such as mobile phones or set-top boxes (think TiVo), that can't be upgraded by their users without authorization, thereby circumventing the GPLv3's 'anti-tivoization' clauses.
Except that even the GPLv2 required separate software delivered with a GPL program and required for it to be used to be considered part of the same "work" and licensed under the GPL, as well, which would mean the anti-TiVo clause still applies to the hypervisor.
The GPLv3's "aggregate" clause is different than the corresponding clause of the GPLv2, and may allow some things that the GPLv2 doesn't, but only allows such "aggregate" software where "the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit", so using a non-GPL hypervisor distributed with a combination of hardware and GPL software to limit or subvert the user's effective freedom to replace the GPL software under the GPL would, itself, seem to be a violation of the GPL.
I don't know who modded this up, but the question doesn't make any sense. People who make GPL software aren't bound by the GPL with regards to their own software.
Uh, yeah, they are. In fact, under the FSF's "GPL is a gratuitous license, not a contract" argument, the only people who are "bound" by the GPL (that is, the only people whose legal rights, privileges, remedies, etc. are constrained by the GPL) are copyright holders who offer their software under the GPL.
Other people benefit from the grants of privileges in the GPL, and benefit only so far as the GPL allows, but since it doesn't restrict any pre-existing rights or privileges, it is inaccurate to portray them as being "bound" by it.
If it wasn't so unclear we'd not be discussing all the possibilities.
It is not valid to conclude that the law in a particular area is murky from the fact that people on Slashdot discuss widely divergent "possibilities" (using the term "possibilities" loosely to refer to things individual Slashdotters perceive, reasonably or not, to be possible.)
Don't think 'copyright violation'. Think along the lines of estoppel.
Yeah, it doesn't work under those terms, either.
The threat here isn't that the FSF sues Microsoft for a GPLv3 breach; the FSF is making clear that there's a defence to a patent infringement lawsuit, namely that Microsoft aided and abetted the distribution of software under GPLv3 terms.
Except that, well, they didn't. They issued vouchers when SUSE was (as it still is) distributed under GPLv2 terms, under an agreement with Novell, with very specific limitations on where the patent guarantee applies that are inconsistent with the GPLv3 (which didn't, IIRC, exist at the time the agreement was made.)
And the patent provisions of GPLv3 make clear under what conditions this software is allowed to be distributed.
Yeah, they do. And, under the terms of the GPLv3, Novell is not permitted to distribute software under the GPLv3 with only the guarantees Microsoft has provided, which are not as broad as the GPLv3 requires. The result is not that Microsoft's guarantees would be legally treated as broader than they are if Novell changed the licensing on SUSE, the result is that (1) if Novell choose freely (because the software was GPLv2 or later and they wanted to use v3) to use the GPLv3, Novell may be liable to downstream redistributors and users not protected by Microsoft's guarantee for implicit or explicit misrepresentations, particularly if they induced the decision to spend money on SUSE, or (2) if Novell incorporated some else's GPLv3 software into SUSE and thus was compelled to distribute it only under the GPLv3, Novell would be prohibited from honoring the SUSE vouchers and would be liable to Microsoft for breach of contract and/or to the voucher holders as third-party beneficiaries, or, if they chose to distribute despite the terms of the GPLv3, would themselves be in violation of the GPLv3 and liable for copyright infringement.
Most likely, though, what it really means is that Novell doesn't move SUSE to GPLv3 until and unless the vouchers aren't a substantial issue and they are willing to absorb the costs associated with doing so, and if they want to put out a GPLv3 Linux product in the meantime, they do it under a different name, and don't make it eligible for the vouchers.
If Novell does not include any GPL v3 products in their SuSE and people then redeem them Microsoft is not bound. But if Novell does decide to include a GPL v3 product and someone redeems then the license applies to Microsoft (just as the GPL v2 would apply).
Nothing in the text of either the GPLv2 or GPLv3 would apply to Microsoft in that situation and, furthermore, even if there was text that did, and even if the GPL was (contrary to the FSF's usual claims on the question) a contract rather than a gratuitous license, there is no offer and acceptance to form of a contract between Microsoft and the copyright owners of the GPL-licensed software Novell would be distributing which would bind Microsoft.
Novell could refuse to accept the redeemed coupons in order to protect the agreement between themselves and Microsoft and then the redeemer could then go back to Microsoft and ask for a refund.
No, assuming the GPL prohibited the transaction, Novell could refuse to honor the vouchers to protect their (Novell's) status under the GPL; this would, almost certainly, violate their agreement with Microsoft, rather than protecting it.
But to say that a product that is covered by the GPL v3 that becomes included in the SuSE products it does make at least Novell bound to the GPL v3.
Sure, Novell's permission to distribute software that for which they have received the GPL as a license offer is governed by the GPL, because Novell received the GPL software and decided to include it in a product they distribute, and the GPL is the only thing that gives them permission to do so. But Novell is not Microsoft. (But Novell is not, under the FSF's own characterization of the GPL, "bound" by the GPL, since the GPL is not, per the FSF, a contract, and thus the licensee is not "bound" at all, they merely are given certain limited privileges out of the goodness of the licensor's heart without being bound to anything by the licenses. Of course, the law of gratuitous licenses is not consistent with the kind of security that the FSF likes to pretend that the GPL provides for licensees, but that's a different problem.)
What some are trying to say is that Microsoft is not bound by the GPL v2 either.
Except insofar as as Microsoft is themselves distributing GPL software in either source or binary form, any limitations in the GPL are simply inapplicable to them.
They are trying to say that only Novell is. What the FSF is saying is that Microsoft is as much bound by the GPL as anyone is.
Most other people are also not "bound" (even loosely, in the sense that Novell is) by the GPL, either.
It would be completely wrong to allow for agreements between two parties for the purpose of allowing them the benefits of the software developed under the GPL without that company being bound by the terms of the GPL.
Whether it would be "completely wrong" to do so or not, neither copyright law, the law of contracts or of gratuitous licenses, nor the text of the GPLv2 or v3 actually prevents companies from entering into agreements where one of them provides vouchers that the other has agreed to honor with distribution of GPL-licensed software without the voucher-providing company being acquiring any obligations under the GPL. Of course, the company actually distributing the software is bound by the GPL, and may be put in a lose/lose situation (since the vouchers are themselves a legally-enforceable obligation) if the vouchers are open-ended and it wants to switch from GPLv2 to GPLv3 and it can't provide the necessary patent-freedom guarantees when it does so.
But to me it seems that, at worst, Microsoft may have put them in a position of being liable to Novell for some share (or all) of the damages Novell might owe for failing to honor vouchers if Microsoft refus
I'm not so sure paying others to distribute works in this manner is an infringement of copyright.
AFAIK, it would only be if it was an infringement of copyright for the person paid to distribute the works in the first place, and even then it might not be without some other knowledge on the part of the person paying.
If Novell is following the terms of the GPL and is somehow getting paid by Microsoft to distribute software, Microsoft is neither bound by the license (which they never agreed to, which is the only way they could be "bound" by it), nor are they covered by the license (a gratuitous license, as the FSF claims the GPL is, doesn't "bind" anyone, it only conditionally allows you to do things), nor are they violating the license, nor are they violating copyright law. At least as I see it.
If Novell is not following the terms of the GPL, it would be very hard to make anything stick against Microsoft, anyway, though Novell would be vulnerable. The GPL doesn't somehow create obligations for third parties engaged in business with people who are directly distributing GPL software, and, really, that's the kind of anti-GPL FUD that is usually spread by GPL opponents trying to create fear legal risk to discourage GPL adoption, so its kind of weird if the FSF is now embracing that idea.
IIRC the GPL3 would apply to MS as soon as someone redeems a SUSE voucher that they received from MS.
This is inconsistent with the FSF's contention that the GPL is a copyright license but not a contract in which the licensee gives up pre-existing rights, since no rights under copyright are necessary to distribute the vouchers and therefore a pure license of the type the FSF claims the GPL is would be completely irrelevant.
That contention aside, even viewing the GPL as a contract (or, rather, a contract offer), the argument seems to fail since there is no evidence of agreement by Microsoft to be bound by the contract, and thus no contract formed that is binding on Microsoft in the first place.
It's never ambiguous as far as the computer is concerned, because there will always be operator precedence.
Well, sure, if one views "function call" as an implicit, invisible operator. Still, with multiple argument functions (particularly with variable length argument lists) parsing becomes tricky, at least for humans. I mean, if you ditch parens in those cases, you can end up with things like
If my_func and other_func take variable length argument lists (as printf does), how do you parse that? Sure, you can define rules for how a parser handles it through precedence between the (invisible) "function application operator" and the (",") "argument separation operator", but there's a reason that even Ruby stops short of that madness.
I don't believe OOXML should be a standard, but it seems to me to be pretty nit-picking to complain that numeric values are stored with "rounding errors" since that is inherent in converting between ASCII values and any binary format, including IEEE-standard floats.
It is inherent in converting between text (ASCII or otherwise) formats and IEEE-standard floats, to be sure, or between text and any fixed-length floating point representation more generally, but there are "binary formats" that can take arbitrary precision decimal reals and store them without rounding errors.
Also, ditch the requirement to have function arguments in brackets. They are just more clutter. The computer can work out for itself how many arguments belong to a function.
Sure, its easy when you talk about changing sin(theta) to sin theta, but when you have ln(sqrt(x))+y and ln(sqrt(x+y)) and ln(sqrt(x)+y) and they all map to ln sqrt x+y, you start needing parens anyway to enforce sequence, whether explicitly to specify function arguments or to denote expression precedence.
When you've got nested function calls each of which takes more than one argument, as well, the opportunities for ambiguity expand even further.
The Ruby way of making parens optional where unambiguous for function application might be doable for a revised Java, but it doesn't really offer any clear benefit, and is a kind of TMTOWTDI approach that make make it harder for people other than the original author to read code.
Nobody really belive in god not existing, just pointing out there is no proof and it makes psychologically sense to invent a superbeing who'll love you.
No, really, there are people who do, in fact, believe that God does not in fact exist, as well as those that merely believe that the question of God existing or not is neither useful nor necessary to answer since God is not, in their view, necessary or useful in explaining any observed phenomenon.
Presumably, you don't, but presuming everyone who is not an believer in God differs from believers in the exact same way that you do is extraordinarily arrogant.
Slashdot Mirror
May I suggest that you at least look at the languages I suggested before going off the deep end? They've all solved at least one of the ambiguity problem, the default argument problem, the nested function call problem and the named argument problem.
So has Java: it solves them all by using parens around the argument list and commas between its elements.
If you really want to do things the Haskell, Lisp, or Smalltalk way on the JVM, there is no reason to change Java—there are implementations of all three languages for the JVM. What does eliminating parens for function calls (and/or commas between elements in the argument list) get Java except aesthetic appeal to a certain subset of the programming community that is offset by the aesthetic appeal it loses for a different subset of the programming community?
Wouldn't Lisp without parens be REBOL?
Not really. While lots of Free Software zealots see the GPL as a way to "stick it to the man", from a commercial point of view the more GPL software is in the marketplace, the bigger the commercial advantage to whoever has the most well-established support organization. If the best "starting points" to build new applications from are available under the GPL, so that it is much more costly to build software to be released under a different license, you can't really compete on software quality, since competitors can take your source and provide the same software quality, the main avenue of competition is support.
So if you are IBM, Oracle, etc. or another "commercial software interest" with extensive support organization, the GPL is potentially great for you.
So? People have both moral and, in many cases, legally enforceable (at least, notionally) rights that apply against private parties acting badly.
Actually, you do. What do you think, e.g., consumer protection laws are?
Commentary doesn't automatically make fair use, though it can be a factor in finding fair use.
As I understand it, they're likely right. Insofar as their work is a new work they, as its creator, own the copyright. If you were posting just your original work, this wouldn't be an issue.
The question of whether their creation of that work violated your copyright, or is a fair use for commentary, is another issue. You could try to go to Viacom and offer to not go after them for it if they let you post the clip, but the success of that rather depends on your ability to credibly threaten effective legal and PR action.
A major purpose of the GPL is to serve as a lever to get other people to provide their own work under similar terms.
Other OSS licenses may have very different purposes.
Works for SQLite.
The GPL (conceptually); lets people use the software freely, but requires that they "pay" you if the change and distribute the software. Now, they don't pay in money, they pay by doing something you want, that is, making their own changes available under the same terms you've made your work available.
There are licenses (BSD/MIT style licenses) that provide more freedom to modify and distribute than the GPL, and there is always the option of the public domain.
Prior to the dominance of the internet, I would say that a major advantage of the GPL was that, given the more limited routes many users had of getting software and information about software, letting people wrap "open" software up inside a commercial blob, whether modified or not, without source would substantially reduce the ability of people to know that the source was available and find it and use it themselves. I don't think that's as true now, though.
I would expect that software authors (free or not) are more likely than most people to use multiple operating systems, and free software authors probably as likely, or nearly so, to use Windows as the general public (far less likely to use it exclusively, but that's not really relevant.)
Sure, some free software authors may also be free software zealots that refuse to use non-free systems at all, but then there are plenty of those that aren't software authors of any kind, too.
I have.
Yes, they could. There's really no practical way to right the TOS so that it would be reasonably clear, reasonably flexible, and rule out those kinds of modifications. Of course, Google could also simply refuse to carry the critical content, with or without the "modify" term. So what?
Uh, no, its not. First, because the TOS doesn't obligate them to do anything nefarious; second, because the fact that something is allowed by the TOS (and thus users don't have any cause of action), doesn't mean it is allowed by Google internal policy, so that the user doesn't have an enforceable right to no changes or rejection of content by Google doesn't mean that Google actually is going to open itself up by "suppressing testimony", and last, but not at all least, because "testimony" isn't something that is done through Google's public services in the first place.
"Modify" doesn't have to mean "rewrite".
It can mean "apply an XSLT stylesheet to the XHTML content to render it into XSL:FO and then convert the resulting document to PDF".
It can mean "display your Google Docs document as a static HTML document".
Yes, "modify" could be used to do nefarious things. But even if Google has no nefarious intent, its a lot easier (and more future-proof for them) to use "modify" in their TOS rather than trying to list out all the non-nefarious ways they might choose to modify content now or in the future.
The public statements of lawyers for parties involved in a disagreement are not generally the best places to go for fair, balanced, impartial, and accurate analysis of the legal issues. Notiwithstanding that those lawyers invariably have "actual legal qualifications".
Very good.
I'm not the one claiming that Microsoft positively anticipated and implicitly agreed to Novell licensing the software under the (not yet existent at the time of the agreement) GPLv3, whose terms themselves expressly forbid distribution of software covered by an agreemnent like the Microsoft-Novell one.
That's a pretty hard case to make.
None of which apply to the kind of "helping you get it" that might arguably be at issue here. Estoppel, specifically promissory estoppel, is the closest one, but even it isn't very close.
The issue isn't about people who use the vouchers, its about the FSF's claims that the Microsoft pledge to Novell's paying customers is magically extended to the public at large because the GPLv3, which didn't exist at the time of the pledge, makes it illegal for Novell to distribute software under that license with only that pledge. There is no legal theory on which that argument even makes sense, not under promissory estoppel (since the people involved are not reasonably relying on a promise made to them), not under contract theory (since Microsoft has no contract with anyone that might be enforced by restraining them in this way), not under license theory with the GPL as the controlling license (that might provide a ground for copyright action against Novell in distributing GPLv3-licensed works in violation of the terms of the license, but can't expand the scope of Microsoft's promise.)
As even you've claimed, the pledge is limited in who it applies to, and does not include the people whom Moglen claims it does, who are not Novell's customers.
What "estoppel-type clauses"? Promissory estoppel, the only theory that appears even remotely related to the scenario, doesn't seem likely to protect downstream users. It requires that the promise was known to the person relying on it, that that reliance by that person was intended by the person making the promise, and that reliance on the promise was reasonable for the person relying on the promise. And, even then, it doesn't necessarily provide an absolute bar to legal action, only a discretionary bar that is applied to the extent necessary to avoid "injustice" in the eyes of the court.
You are wrong in both cases, IMO, about the leverage.
If true, that allows redistributors to choose to use the GPLv2 or a later license. Of course, redistributors receive no patent pledge from Microsoft unless they negotiate it themselves, and without negotiating a universal pledge, any using the GPLv3 would be violating its terms. But that's a separate issue.
Which, given the content of the Microsoft pledge, is a clear violation by Novell of the GPLv3, since the GPLv3 expressly prohibits them from doing so. This may have consequences as to their rights to the software involved. OTOH, its not a violation of anything by Microsoft.
Note that agreeing that Novell use the "GPLv2 or later" term which allows redistributors to use some later version of the GPL is not the same as agreeing to Novell using the GPLv3.
They can wait and hope that Novell releases SUSE under the GPLv12, but there is nothing in the agreement that permits Novell to release SUSE under terms incompatible with Microsoft's patent pledge.
Alice, if Microsoft's pledge (that she received) did not cover Bob, and she represented to Bob that he was protected, explicitly or implicitly.
Novell is at fault for violating the GPLv3, but probably not liable to Alice or Bob for the specific problem here unless, despite the specific content of Microsoft's pledge, the GPLv3 could reasonably have misled them.
Microsoft isn't at fault at all.
There is no "helping you get it" provision of the GPL, and no legal basis for it being enforceable even if there was.
Novell is clearly guilty of that if they release GPLv3 software with a patent guarantee more limited than that required by the GPLv3 whether or not Microsoft has the right to sue. That's unquestionable.
What is FUD is the suggestion by Moglen than Microsoft's patent pledge magically becomes universal if Novell chooses to violate the GPLv3 by distributing software for which it has received a limited patent pledge for its customers from Microsoft under the GPLv3 which prohibits distribution with such a limited pledge.
The fact that the FSF believes, or at least publicly proclaims, many (some of them mutually contradictory) things about the legal consequences of the GPL does not make them true.
The other is that the SuSE vouchers did NOT have an expiration date. Meaning if someone has one of those vouchers, they can wait until GPLv12 to cash it in. There's no way that Microsoft can plead ignorance of the 'GPLv2 or later' language in the code it was distributing, there's no way it can complain about the lack of the expiration date, since it clearly agreed to the voucher system, and Microsoft must surely have been aware that the GPLv3 was being drafted. How can Microsoft suddenly be surprised that it was going to help supply the world with GPLv3 software?
Except that even the GPLv2 required separate software delivered with a GPL program and required for it to be used to be considered part of the same "work" and licensed under the GPL, as well, which would mean the anti-TiVo clause still applies to the hypervisor.
The GPLv3's "aggregate" clause is different than the corresponding clause of the GPLv2, and may allow some things that the GPLv2 doesn't, but only allows such "aggregate" software where "the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit", so using a non-GPL hypervisor distributed with a combination of hardware and GPL software to limit or subvert the user's effective freedom to replace the GPL software under the GPL would, itself, seem to be a violation of the GPL.
Yeah, it doesn't work under those terms, either.
Except that, well, they didn't. They issued vouchers when SUSE was (as it still is) distributed under GPLv2 terms, under an agreement with Novell, with very specific limitations on where the patent guarantee applies that are inconsistent with the GPLv3 (which didn't, IIRC, exist at the time the agreement was made.)
Yeah, they do. And, under the terms of the GPLv3, Novell is not permitted to distribute software under the GPLv3 with only the guarantees Microsoft has provided, which are not as broad as the GPLv3 requires. The result is not that Microsoft's guarantees would be legally treated as broader than they are if Novell changed the licensing on SUSE, the result is that (1) if Novell choose freely (because the software was GPLv2 or later and they wanted to use v3) to use the GPLv3, Novell may be liable to downstream redistributors and users not protected by Microsoft's guarantee for implicit or explicit misrepresentations, particularly if they induced the decision to spend money on SUSE, or (2) if Novell incorporated some else's GPLv3 software into SUSE and thus was compelled to distribute it only under the GPLv3, Novell would be prohibited from honoring the SUSE vouchers and would be liable to Microsoft for breach of contract and/or to the voucher holders as third-party beneficiaries, or, if they chose to distribute despite the terms of the GPLv3, would themselves be in violation of the GPLv3 and liable for copyright infringement.
Most likely, though, what it really means is that Novell doesn't move SUSE to GPLv3 until and unless the vouchers aren't a substantial issue and they are willing to absorb the costs associated with doing so, and if they want to put out a GPLv3 Linux product in the meantime, they do it under a different name, and don't make it eligible for the vouchers.
Nothing in the text of either the GPLv2 or GPLv3 would apply to Microsoft in that situation and, furthermore, even if there was text that did, and even if the GPL was (contrary to the FSF's usual claims on the question) a contract rather than a gratuitous license, there is no offer and acceptance to form of a contract between Microsoft and the copyright owners of the GPL-licensed software Novell would be distributing which would bind Microsoft.
No, assuming the GPL prohibited the transaction, Novell could refuse to honor the vouchers to protect their (Novell's) status under the GPL; this would, almost certainly, violate their agreement with Microsoft, rather than protecting it.
Sure, Novell's permission to distribute software that for which they have received the GPL as a license offer is governed by the GPL, because Novell received the GPL software and decided to include it in a product they distribute, and the GPL is the only thing that gives them permission to do so. But Novell is not Microsoft. (But Novell is not, under the FSF's own characterization of the GPL, "bound" by the GPL, since the GPL is not, per the FSF, a contract, and thus the licensee is not "bound" at all, they merely are given certain limited privileges out of the goodness of the licensor's heart without being bound to anything by the licenses. Of course, the law of gratuitous licenses is not consistent with the kind of security that the FSF likes to pretend that the GPL provides for licensees, but that's a different problem.)
Except insofar as as Microsoft is themselves distributing GPL software in either source or binary form, any limitations in the GPL are simply inapplicable to them.
Most other people are also not "bound" (even loosely, in the sense that Novell is) by the GPL, either.
Whether it would be "completely wrong" to do so or not, neither copyright law, the law of contracts or of gratuitous licenses, nor the text of the GPLv2 or v3 actually prevents companies from entering into agreements where one of them provides vouchers that the other has agreed to honor with distribution of GPL-licensed software without the voucher-providing company being acquiring any obligations under the GPL. Of course, the company actually distributing the software is bound by the GPL, and may be put in a lose/lose situation (since the vouchers are themselves a legally-enforceable obligation) if the vouchers are open-ended and it wants to switch from GPLv2 to GPLv3 and it can't provide the necessary patent-freedom guarantees when it does so.
But to me it seems that, at worst, Microsoft may have put them in a position of being liable to Novell for some share (or all) of the damages Novell might owe for failing to honor vouchers if Microsoft refus
AFAIK, it would only be if it was an infringement of copyright for the person paid to distribute the works in the first place, and even then it might not be without some other knowledge on the part of the person paying.
If Novell is following the terms of the GPL and is somehow getting paid by Microsoft to distribute software, Microsoft is neither bound by the license (which they never agreed to, which is the only way they could be "bound" by it), nor are they covered by the license (a gratuitous license, as the FSF claims the GPL is, doesn't "bind" anyone, it only conditionally allows you to do things), nor are they violating the license, nor are they violating copyright law. At least as I see it.
If Novell is not following the terms of the GPL, it would be very hard to make anything stick against Microsoft, anyway, though Novell would be vulnerable. The GPL doesn't somehow create obligations for third parties engaged in business with people who are directly distributing GPL software, and, really, that's the kind of anti-GPL FUD that is usually spread by GPL opponents trying to create fear legal risk to discourage GPL adoption, so its kind of weird if the FSF is now embracing that idea.
This is inconsistent with the FSF's contention that the GPL is a copyright license but not a contract in which the licensee gives up pre-existing rights, since no rights under copyright are necessary to distribute the vouchers and therefore a pure license of the type the FSF claims the GPL is would be completely irrelevant.
That contention aside, even viewing the GPL as a contract (or, rather, a contract offer), the argument seems to fail since there is no evidence of agreement by Microsoft to be bound by the contract, and thus no contract formed that is binding on Microsoft in the first place.
Well, sure, if one views "function call" as an implicit, invisible operator. Still, with multiple argument functions (particularly with variable length argument lists) parsing becomes tricky, at least for humans. I mean, if you ditch parens in those cases, you can end up with things like
printf format_str, val1, val2, my_func val3, val4, val5, other_func val6, val7
If my_func and other_func take variable length argument lists (as printf does), how do you parse that? Sure, you can define rules for how a parser handles it through precedence between the (invisible) "function application operator" and the (",") "argument separation operator", but there's a reason that even Ruby stops short of that madness.
It is inherent in converting between text (ASCII or otherwise) formats and IEEE-standard floats, to be sure, or between text and any fixed-length floating point representation more generally, but there are "binary formats" that can take arbitrary precision decimal reals and store them without rounding errors.
Sure, its easy when you talk about changing sin(theta) to sin theta, but when you have ln(sqrt(x))+y and ln(sqrt(x+y)) and ln(sqrt(x)+y) and they all map to ln sqrt x+y, you start needing parens anyway to enforce sequence, whether explicitly to specify function arguments or to denote expression precedence.
When you've got nested function calls each of which takes more than one argument, as well, the opportunities for ambiguity expand even further.
The Ruby way of making parens optional where unambiguous for function application might be doable for a revised Java, but it doesn't really offer any clear benefit, and is a kind of TMTOWTDI approach that make make it harder for people other than the original author to read code.
No, really, there are people who do, in fact, believe that God does not in fact exist, as well as those that merely believe that the question of God existing or not is neither useful nor necessary to answer since God is not, in their view, necessary or useful in explaining any observed phenomenon.
Presumably, you don't, but presuming everyone who is not an believer in God differs from believers in the exact same way that you do is extraordinarily arrogant.
Because a laptop that doesn't do fullscreen video playback is still useful.