Re: Is the GPL all encompassing?

[amicus_curious]

"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message 
news:YZbCk.244$2t1.190@fe103.usenetserver.com...
> amicus_curious wrote:
> > The test would be where an infringing vendor is ordered by the court to 
> > either disclose the changes made to the GPL source or cease distributing 
> > the program entirely.  I would also be interested in any case where the 
> > infringer was ordered to pay statutory damages.
>
> Relatively few companies are interested in becoming martyrs
> to try to destroy the GPL. The JMRI case is about the closest
> that I can think of in that respect. Most cases of GPL violations
> happen through laziness and stupidity. Those violators generally
> agree to come into compliance. So you might have to wait a long
> time before you find a case where the GPL is addressed definitively.

I think that there are reasons beyond fear for this lack of occurrence.  For 
one thing, there does not seem to be any future in a company's ever doing 
that.  Regardless of whether or not they are detected as having violated the 
GPL, they cannot make any profit doing it, so it is not done.  There is 
nothing really worth stealing.  That was my original point as to why the GPL 
was not very useful to anyone.
> What you do have industry-wide are companies and individuals
> behaving as if the GPL works in the way it means to. Even companies
> like Microsoft who are presumably hostile to its goals act as if it
> is valid. They carefully write their own licenses to make sure that
> their code doesn't get tangled up with GPLed code. If a case does
> finally get into the courts in the way you envision, that existence
> proof will help support the GPL.

It is hard to understand just what you are getting at here.  As far as I am 
aware, most sensible companies that develop software for sale are indeed 
aware of the GPL and have policies internally to ensure that their employees 
refrain from its use.  I know that mine does.  They have the same sort of 
attitude that the OSSers often voice, i.e. if there is some infringement, 
they will simply replace the infringing code with non-infringing code.

I would further believe that any copying that did occur would be 
substantially obscured to the point that the copying was not detectable 
unless it were revealed by the person doing the copying.  The cases featured 
to-date involved a public admission of the GPL product use and centered on 
failure to provide the  unmodified source per the rules laid down in the GPL 
documents.