Re: Copyright Misuse Doctrine in Apple v. Psystar

[amicus_curious]

"David Kastrup" <dak@gnu.org> wrote in message 
851vtr64ch.fsf@lola.goethe.zz">news:851vtr64ch.fsf@lola.goethe.zz...
> "amicus_curious" <ACDC@sti.net> writes:
>
> > "David Kastrup" <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> > > "amicus_curious" <ACDC@sti.net> writes:
> > >
> > > > but that is meaningless to me.
> > >
> > > Laws don't depend on you seeing a meaning in them.
> > Who is talking about the law?
>
> The judges, and you can read in the subject title that this thread is
> about laws and their interpretation in court.
Well that subject line was long ago.  What I am saying is the the SFLC and 
its client BusyBox are just wasting the world's time.  Perhaps they have a 
legal right to do that, but it is still nonsense and at the end of the day 
they will be remembered as being egotistical fools who just wasted the 
people's time.

> > I was talking about whether or not the lawsuit helps mankind and it
> > plainly does not.
>
> Definitely.  That's why it would be better if the defendants complied
> with the license without the necessity to take this to court.
>
> No lawsuit helps mankind since defendant and plaintiff could have right
> away acted in the manner that the court sets forth.
>
> But that's humanity.
>
> > It is just an ego trip for the authors and a quick buck for the
> > shysters.
>
> Again, you are confused.  GPL lawsuits are not primarily about
> attribution (you could sue for that equally well using the BSD license),
> but about the provision of source code from _different_ authors, clearly
> marked as such.  How can it be an "ego trip" if you tell somebody else
> to show _his_ parts of the code with _his_ signature?
I could accept that, if it were true, but the people being sued by BusyBox 
and subsequently posting the BusyBox source have not made any modifications 
to it.  Different companies are posting different releases of BusyBox, 
Actiontec, for example, posts version 0.5 and Monsoon has 1.0.  The BusyBox 
site is up to 1.3 or such.

So the authors are only looking for their name in lights since there is no 
other earthly use for these obsolete revs.

> And how can it be a "quick buck" if, as you pretend to claim half of the
> time, the cases are dismissed with unsavory conditions for the
> plaintiff?
>
> So get a grip and a clue and try to make coherent sense instead of
> merely foaming at your mouth.
You have a hard time with context and keeping individual claims associated 
with the one that made them.  I have never said the SFLC was obtaining 
unsavory conditions for their clients other that the fact that the Verizon 
suit was dismissed with predjudice after absolutlely no concessions on the 
part of Verizon.  I think that everyone who reads this stuff can see where 
the SFLC press release was just nonsense and a poor attempt to save face by 
saying they really didn't mean to sue Verizon, they just wanted Actiontec to 
do something (which Actiontec apparently already had done prior to the suit 
being filed agains Verizon.)

I am saying, instead, that the filing of a lawsuit can only make the logical 
users of FOSS pause and consider whether or not they want to risk using a 
FOSS program or library when clowns like BusyBox are out in the wild preying 
on those who might make a misstep.


> > > Pathetic is not the worst description of your self-contradictory
> > > ill-informed ill-judged postings.
> > Oh, you loonies just don't like to admit that your cause is
> > fundamentally worthless in this day and age.
>
> So what happened to the quick buck again?
That is only accruing to Moglen and his cronies at the SFLC.  They get their 
attorney's fees paid by the victim.  That is the way the RIAA works, too, 
holding up the huge cost of a litigation, if lost, over the head of their 
prey who can escape by paying a few thousand bucks to the shysters instead. 
Few fight when the penalties and rewards are so lopsided.

> > No one takes apart complex applications in order to change them, there
> > is no value in having all those restrictions as posed by the GPL.
>
> So where do the lawsuits come from if nobody actually makes use of the
> software in question?
>
> From the guys who have the GPL copyright, of course.  That is only BusyBox, 
it seems.  For example in the Actiontec suit there were about 20 GPL source 
packages eventually listed on the Actiontec website, but they were only sued 
for the BusyBox stuff.  The old idea that Sallman had about those who 
received software downstream needing to understand it so that they could 
modify it is rather passe'.  If OpenOffice or Linux doesn't work exactly the 
way I want, I am not going to fool around re-writing the damn thing.  No one 
does that.  They just complain to the manufacturer and maybe their needs are 
taken care of in a subsequent release, maybe not.  Who can afford to learn 
enough about Linux or OO or any other big program to the point where they 
can effectively make modifications?

Stallman is living in the 70s or worse.


> > The actions of the SDLC prove that it is only viable as a way to
> > harass those who might want to take advantage of FOSS.  With that kind
> > of trouble, the users will be fewer than otherwise.
>
> Free software does not benefit from users who won't contribute anything
> back.  So there is no loss here.
Exactly.