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Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- Bentley: "Here We Go Again: Microsoft Inks


From: rjack
Subject: Re: GPLv3 comedy unfolding -- Bentley: "Here We Go Again: Microsoft Inks Deal with Xandros"
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:29:23 -0500
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (Windows/20070326)

Alexander Terekhov wrote:
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/osb/?p=156

------
Here We Go Again: Microsoft Inks Deal with Xandros

Posted by Lora Bentley on June 4, 2007 at 4:32 pm

Why would any company deliberately defy license terms? Because it can.

Ms. Bentley obviously loves her *own* answer to her rhetorical question.

Here's the real answer:

The patent provisions in the GPL license are a delusional fantasy of
Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen.

This from the esteemed Columbia Professor of Law:

"Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised, but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the license permits."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html

This from the Supreme Court of the United States:

"No formal granting of a license is necessary in order to give it effect. Any language used by the owner of the patent or any conduct on his part exhibited to another, from which that other may properly infer that the owner consents to his use of the patent in making or using it, or selling it, upon which the other acts, constitutes a license, and a defense to an action for a tort. Whether this constitutes a gratuitous license, or one for a reasonable compensation, must, of course, depend upon the circumstances; but the relation between the parties thereafter in respect of any suit brought must be held to be contractual, and not an unlawful invasion of the rights of the owner."; DE FOREST RADIO TEL. & TEL. CO. v. UNITED STATES, 273 U.S. 236 (1927).

In the ensuing *eighty years* not *one* Federal Court decision has ever successfully overuled this contractual principle -- not even *one*. Yet as late as six months ago, Stallman and Moglen were still attempting to incorporate a term into the GPL3 declaring that it was not a contract.

Moglen has drafted absolutely moronic terms concerning patents into the text of the GPL -- *that* is why Microsoft ignores the GPL's terms.

Moglen has never attempted a principled defense to justify the blatant legal bullshit he has inserted into the GPL concerning patents. He never will... Moglen utters some legal nonsense concerning patents and the GPL and the well oiled "free" and open source blogs who feed off this legal tripe instantly spring into action.

Repeat FUD often enough and it assumes a halo-like aura of truth in the minds of the gullible.

The socialist open source movement in the EU has beaten their breasts and whined about "interoperability" and Windows for years. Microsoft is now complying with their pleas for "interoperability" by offering mutual patent covenants. So why don't they just STFU and admit their goal is Stallman's dream of abolishment of IP?. An alternative would be to obtain their own patents. If just 1% of their whining time was spent on learning to apply for patents, they could disarm Microsoft. Remember Eolas? *That* scares the crap out of Microsoft.


rjack











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