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Re: Help to pick a license for my free source code project


From: Rui Miguel Silva Seabra
Subject: Re: Help to pick a license for my free source code project
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:10:30 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.14 (2007-02-12)

On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 11:20:20AM -0400, rjack wrote:
> John Hasler wrote:
> >KomsBomb writes:
> >>2, The source code can't be used in commercial program.  That's to say,
> >>the source code can't be used to make any profit in both source code or
> >>binary form.
> >
> >Then it isn't Free Software and so you are off-topic here.
> 
> Since the GPL is unenforceable under US law, GPL'd code isn't 
> "Free Software" either. See:
> 
> 'Professor Robert P. Merges of the Berkeley Law School noted some 
> of the problems in his "The End of Friction? Property Rights and 
> Contract in the 'Newtonian' World of On-Line Commerce" (12 
> Berkeley Tech. L.J. 115), in which he describes the GPL as 
> "informal (i.e., not legally enforceable) restrictions on digital 
> content."'
> http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/2000/1/

Nice of you to *not* quote the rebuttal from Eben Moglen, on the same
article.

        If you sell someone a book she has a right to give it to whomever
        she pleases. That's the first-sale rule. But the donee of the book
        may not copy it and give away copies. You can enforce your copyright
        against that donee, even though you are not in any contractual
        privity. In the case of the GPL, no one is bound to anything in
        particular unless she redistributes the software, modified or
        unmodified. Because copying and redistribution, or the making of
        derivatives, are never authorized in the absence of a license,
        undertaking to redistribute is clear acceptance of our terms for
        redistribution. There's nothing unorthodox about that, and no
        barrier to enforcement."

Sorry, but Eben Moglen has been in courts about the GPL, and virtually
all cases have been settled, with the infringing party agreeing to
comply or desist.

Rui

-- 
Wibble.
Today is Pungenday, the 69th day of Bureaucracy in the YOLD 3173
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?




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