Re: "GPL requirement could have a chilling effect on derivative distros"

[David Kastrup]

Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
> [...]
>> Can't be all, or you'd be lecturing all over the landscape instead of
>> venting off your frustration here about your theories getting trounced
>> in the courts.
>
> And to which theories of mine/court actions are you referring?

Your GPL theories, of course.  The very few cases where people indeed
go before court in relation to the GPL (instead of settling) end up in
ways where you all bristle about how the judges must have been drunk.

Whether it be Wallace, SCO (who had most of their infringement claims
just thrown out of court, though in fairness due to stupidity not
really connected to the GPL as such, but just their general failure to
make a case in spite of having far better legal representation than
Wallace), or the settlements and injunctions in connection with the
netfilter code.

You pick out a few irrelevant quotes from such cases and blow them out
of proportion while ignoring the actual verdicts.

It is actually sort of a pity that the SCO case is primarily a case of
lies and hyperbole and corporate mispolicies with subsequent denial
(Caldera bought out SCO and its assets among which it claims Unix
heritage, put a lot into Linux, then renamed itself to SCO and sued
IBM because IBM must be somehow responsible for the stuff appearing in
Linux).  While it is pretty obvious that SCO's case will go down in
flame eventually, this actually says very little about the GPL itself.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum