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Re: Copyright Misuse Doctrine in Apple v. Psystar


From: Hyman Rosen
Subject: Re: Copyright Misuse Doctrine in Apple v. Psystar
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:17:01 -0500
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (Windows/20081209)

amicus_curious wrote:
Do you suggest that is being compliant with the GPL?

The person who copies and distributes the software must
comply with the GPL. Someone who gets a legal copy may
redistribute that copy without needing any license, no
GPL compliance required. That's the first sale doctrine.

The source was always available. Actiontec uses source obtained directly from the BusyBox site, so why should they have to re-publish it?

The basic answer is that making the source available is a
requirement of the license. Microsoft has plenty of money,
but you still have to pay them when you want a copy of
Office. The complete answer is that only the manufacturer
knows what he's giving out. You know that it's an unchanged
copy of BusyBox because he made the source available. If he
simply shipped a binary without making the source available,
users would not know what version of BusyBox they had, or if
it had been changed, or where to get it.

Verizon get source directly from Actiontec and they don't have to re-publish it. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth.

If Verizon purchases routers (physical boxes with software
installed) from Actiontec, they may redistribute those without
requiring a license because of the first-sale doctrine. If
Verizon gets code from Actiontec and copies it and distributes
the copies, that must be done under the GPL. We do not know
what it is that Verizon does when its website offers a link to
download firmware upgrades from an "actiontec gateway" URL.

 The GPL could not be defended in this case and cannot be
defended in general in regard to the re-publishing of unmodified source. That is the only thing that the SDLC ever tried to litigate and as soon as they came up against a real corporation, they had to surrender. Their posturing is near an end, I think.

In every single case filed by the SFLC, the defendants or their
agents made the source code available. That is not posturing,
that is winning.


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