Re: SCO laying an ambush for the GPL?

[Jason Clifford]

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Steve Firth wrote:

> OTOH my legal chum thinks that a correctly constructed license will
> stand up in court. The problem is that anyone wishing to challenge GPL
> or GPL-like licensing will be able to throw more money at it than the
> copyright owner will.

All of these suggestions re invalidating the GPL miss out of a fundemental 
fact that is central to the issue:

If the GPL is declared unlawful or unenforcable the only person(s) having 
any right to the software is the author(s) and anyone who chooses to 
accept the terms as a contract.

Without the consent of the author in such a case anyone who seeks to 
distribute (and possibly even use if you believe some commercial abusers 
of copyright) the GPL'd product in the course of business is commiting a 
criminal offence.

Not too many orgnisations are going to be stupid enough to persue that 
course.

Jason Clifford
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