Re: softwarecombinations paper Re: LGPL vs. GPL

[Hyman Rosen]

Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> It's up to the FSF/SFLC to proof their belief.
>
> Hyman Rosen wrote:
> > The plaintiffs have to prove their beliefs only to the extent that
> > the defendants challenge them.
>
> According to Hyman if I sue him and shortly dismiss the
> complaint prior ... then I'm surely has proven all allegations

No. You claim that the SFLC has to prove their claims. I said that
they just have to prove whatever they are challenged on. Anything
else is neither proved nor disproved. So far the SFLC has settled
its cases, so there has been no opportunity for the issues in their
cases to be decided by a court. The goal of the suits is to enforce
the source availability of programs distributed under the GPL, and
so far it is the case that after each lawsuit has ended, the source
code has become available from the distributors.

> How come that Verizon still doesn't make GPLed software available
> "as required" Hyman?

Even in the Verizon case, on the page to which you always point,
<http://www2.verizon.net/micro/actiontec/actiontec.asp>, the actual
URL for the firmware download is
<http://download.verizon.net/webdownload/firmware/upgrades/actiontec%20gateway/4.0.16.1.56.0.10.7-MI424WR.rmt>.
Note the "actiontec gateway" part of the URL - it's quite possible
that this link is getting software directly from Actiontec without
Verizon doing the distribution itself. In any case, I expect that
given that the source is available from the manufacturer, it's not
a good idea to try to pick a fight with Verizon - that's too fine a
detail to have to prove. However, as I've shown before, Actiontec
itself was not in compliance for most of 2007, at least through late
August, so it's false to leave the impression as you often try to do
that the suit was only about Verizon while Actiontec was in compliance
the whole time.