Re: Help to pick a license for my free source code project

[mike3]

On Oct 15, 10:10 am, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <r...@1407.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 11:20:20AM -0400, rjack wrote:
> > John Hasler wrote:
> > >KomsBomb writes:
> > >>2, The source code can't be used in commercial program.  That's to say,
> > >>the source code can't be used to make any profit in both source code or
> > >>binary form.
>
> > >Then it isn't Free Software and so you are off-topic here.
>
> > Since the GPL is unenforceable under US law, GPL'd code isn't
> > "Free Software" either. See:
>
> > 'Professor Robert P. Merges of the Berkeley Law School noted some
> > of the problems in his "The End of Friction? Property Rights and
> > Contract in the 'Newtonian' World of On-Line Commerce" (12
> > Berkeley Tech. L.J. 115), in which he describes the GPL as
> > "informal (i.e., not legally enforceable) restrictions on digital
> > content."'
> >http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/2000/1/
>
> Nice of you to *not* quote the rebuttal from Eben Moglen, on the same
> article.
>
>         If you sell someone a book she has a right to give it to whomever
>         she pleases. That's the first-sale rule. But the donee of the book
>         may not copy it and give away copies. You can enforce your copyright
>         against that donee, even though you are not in any contractual
>         privity. In the case of the GPL, no one is bound to anything in
>         particular unless she redistributes the software, modified or
>         unmodified. Because copying and redistribution, or the making of
>         derivatives, are never authorized in the absence of a license,
>         undertaking to redistribute is clear acceptance of our terms for
>         redistribution. There's nothing unorthodox about that, and no
>         barrier to enforcement."
>
> Sorry, but Eben Moglen has been in courts about the GPL, and virtually
> all cases have been settled, with the infringing party agreeing to
> comply or desist.
>

Good rebuttal.