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Re: The SFLC dismissals should be coming soon


From: Hyman Rosen
Subject: Re: The SFLC dismissals should be coming soon
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:32:56 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

On 2/18/2010 12:46 PM, RJack wrote:
They're *your* unverified claims. Neither myself nor, I doubt, anyone
else is going to foolishly carry *your* burden and produce *your*
"facts" for you.

Your "facts" require the belief that after settling the lawsuits,
the defendants set up the ability for customers to obtain GPLed
sources, but then provide sources that do not match the binaries
being distributed. (For it is incontrovertible that those GPL
download sites exist.) That beggars belief.

The "sequence" you postulate is simply an unverified string of events.

Only anti-GPL cranks find this to be true.

You should either produce a verifiable copy of a settlement agreement

Settlement agreements are often held private between the
settling parties, there being no particular reason that
both sides should want them to be public. Instead, we look
at outcomes. First there is a suit for copyright infringement,
then there is a settlement, then the defendants come into
compliance with the GPL. Non-cranks see this as evidence of a
successful outcome of the cases. Cranks twist and spin to avoid
the obvious.

The central topic of the discussion in this group has always been the
legal enforceability of the GNU GPL adhesion contract. Nothing short of
a *ruling* by a judge in a federal court will establish the legal effect
of the GPL. The SFLC will NEVER, NEVER allow this to happen -- they are
perfectly aware that the GPL is preempted by 17 USC 301(a). The only
hope the SFLC and Free Softies can rely upon is that the gullible public
will believe the logical fallacy that "correlation proves causation".

The GPL is a straightforward copyright license, and anyone who seeks
to copy and distribute GPL-covered software must abide by its terms,
or else be guilty of copyright infringement. It is so straightforward
that when companies are put on notice that they are in violation (and
sometimes this notice takes a lawsuit, because sometimes people are
like that), they quickly come into compliance. Courts rule on disputes
where the parties cannot agree. Waiting to believe that the GPL is a
valid copyright license until a court rules it so is like waiting to
believe that the sky is blue until a court rules it so.


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