Re: Psystar's legal reply brief in response to Apple

[David Kastrup]

RJack <user@example.net> writes:

> On 8/9/2010 3:45 PM, Hyman Rosen wrote:
>> On 8/9/2010 3:36 PM, RJack wrote:
>>> Not under a legally unenforceable license.
>>
>> The GPL is a legal license, but it is not "enforceable".
>
> The the record show Hyman found the truth and the light.
> Allelujah! Lux et Veritas!

Nothing new here.  The license says so itself.  It is the recipients'
choice to accept the license or not.  If they don't accept it, it is not
part of the court case.

>> Copyright law is enforceable, and the GPL is a license that someone
>> may claim to accept in order to carry out certain actions that
>> copyright law does not permit
>
> It is the party accused of copyright infringement who will claim the
> GPL is unenforceable by the owner of the copyright.

That is fine.  They need not accept it.  Then the case defaults to
copyright law.

> The party accused will claim promissory estoppel and effortlessly win.

Too bad that copyright law does not constitute a promise to create and
redistribute copies.

A legal strategy that requires whacking the judge with a baseball bat
after the first half of the trial in order to make him forget what one
was pleading there, is not what I call "effortlessly".  After all, you
need to get the bat in place.

Defendants need a clear answer to "Do you want to make use of the GPL as
a license?".  For claiming promissory estoppel, the answer needs to be
"yes".  And then they have to explain in what respect they considered
themselves in compliance (for promissory estoppel, they need to explain
why they had good reason to believe to be in compliance).

Hardly surprising that defendants instead choose to come into compliance
and settle.

-- 
David Kastrup