Re: [!NEWS] The GNUtards Must Be Crazy

[Hyman Rosen]

Rjack wrote:
> The renumeration they demand is contractual control of other's
> exclusive copyrights -- which is clearly illegal.

You are, as usual, wrong. Copyright holders of GPLed software
require, in order for permission to copy and distribute to be
granted, that recipients of such distribution inherit the same
freedoms in the software that the distributors have - the right
to run, read, modify, and share the software. The distributors
have the completely free choice of distributing or not, but the
only rights they have to the GPLed software is what the rights
holders will grant them. If they don't like the terms, they need
not distribute the software.

The terms of the GPL are plainly not illegal. Alexander Terekhov
helpfully provided a link to a US court ruling which demonstrates
this:

<http://pacer.mad.uscourts.gov/dc/opinions/saris/pdf/progress%20software.pdf>
        With respect to the General Public License (“GPL”), MySQL
    has not demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the
    merits or irreparable harm. Affidavits submitted by the parties’
    experts raise a factual dispute concerning whether the Gemini
    program is a derivative or an independent and separate work under
    GPL ¶ 2. After hearing, MySQL seems to have the better argument
    here, but the matter is one of fair dispute. Moreover, I am not
    persuaded based on this record that the release of the Gemini
    source code in July 2001 didn’t cure the breach.

As you can see, the judge has read the GPL and understands that
the parties may have legitimate disputes about whether and how it
was properly followed, but she gives no indication that she finds
anything wrong with the license as a whole.