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PJ of Groklaw tells a story... (celebrating CAFC's utter nonsense rulin


From: Alexander Terekhov
Subject: PJ of Groklaw tells a story... (celebrating CAFC's utter nonsense ruling)
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:48:41 +0200

(Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit Overturns Jacobsen v. Katzer -
Ruling as text)

http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=2008081313212422&title=I%27m%20confused...&type=article&order=DESC&hideanonymous=0&pid=718795#c718819

--------
I'm confused... 

Authored by: PJ on Thursday, August 14 2008 @ 12:24 PM EDT 

You are correct to be ccnfused, in that licenses
are, in law books, often put in the chapter on
contracts. If you read the article I wrote about
the GPL being a license, not a contract, linked
in the article, you'll find a footnote about that
topic.

And I'll tell you a story. When I was working on
one of the committees in the GPLv3 revision process,
I mentioned in passing that the GPL is a license,
not a contract, and that there are enemies of the GPL
trying to make it a contract instead, so they could
force policing infringement into state courts.

There were a number of lawyers on the committee. They
laughed. They had never heard of such a thing, and
to a man/woman (other than the FSF folks) they thought
I was wrong ("just a paralegal", I am guessing was the
internal thinking). They literally
mocked such a concept, and when I pointed out that
it was Eben Moglen that said so, they fell into a
stunned silence, and then repeated their objections.

It's a very creative thing the GPL does. And because
it's so contrary to what lawyers are used to, they
could not see it as even being conceivable. I am sure 
they do now, of course, after this ruling.

So you are not the only one confused. 
--------

ROFL.

regards,
alexander.

-- 
http://gng.z505.com/index.htm 
(GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can 
be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards 
too, whereas GNU cannot.)


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