Re: Copyright Misuse Doctrine in Apple v. Psystar

[David Kastrup]

"amicus_curious" <ACDC@sti.net> writes:

> "Alan Mackenzie" <acm@muc.de> wrote in message
> news:gnq384$27ef$1@colin2.muc.de...
>>
>> You could make the same sort of argument about any "petty" peccadillo.
>> Why bother prosecuting a fare dodger for a 2 Euro fare?  Seems a bit
>> disproportionate, doesn't it?
>>
> Do they arraign and prosecute people for this in your town?

After a number of repetitive offenses, this actually happens.  Yes.  I
should be surprised if things are much different at your place.

>> It's straightforward enough that you barely even need to consult a
>> lawyer.  You need to put a tarball of your source code up on your
>> company's website.  Half a day's work to read the GPL, understand it,
>> create the tarball and put it on the site.
>>
>> And if, somehow, you manage to get even that wrong, you can put it
>> right on receiving that dreaded letter from the SFLC, or from the
>> copyright holders.
>>
> How big a deal is it to just ignore it?  Even less work.

Sure.  You can also ignore the rights of a supermarket owner when
visiting it, but you need not expect that either the workers or law
officers find that overly amusing.

Ignoring laws comes at a price.

>>> 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?
>>
>> Me.  David Kastrup, too.
>>
> Well, maybe you are that inefficient, but I think you are just
> bluffing.

Hm?  We _are_ the "manufacturers" for a lot of free software.  And yes,
I have patched proprietary software (drivers, Pascal runtimes and
others) in the binaries for removing bugs that were hampering my work
flow.  It is a nuisance to debug using only binaries.  It is not a
matter of efficiency: if you think you can tell somebody like Digital
Research to please fix a system call from some driver DLL, you are
simply deluded about your influence and their response time and response
style.

>>> Stallman is living in the 70s or worse.
>>
>> Yet, somehow, the GPL remains the most popular license, by an
>> overwhelming margin.  If your notions on the GPL were accurate, it
>> would by now have dwindled to unimportance and been superseded by a
>> BSD license, or whatever.  There're no signs of that happening.
>>
> Linux uses it, but not the latest version, apparently the copyright
> owner has some problems with that.

There are several thousands copyright owners if you are talking about
the kernel.  You need all their agreement for a license upgrade.  The
FSF has its own opinion about just how smart that was.  If you are
talking about the user land, a lot of it is migrating to GPLv3.  After
all, large portions are (c) FSF anyway.

> Apache has something else, I know.  Ditto PHP. I'm not so sure MySQL
> is even open anymore.  I don't bother with it, but Sun seems to be
> locking things down.

Hm?  I thought they were opening up the parts previously proprietary.

>> Have you compared the sort of "hassle" a user might get from SDLC
>> with what he might get on violating some other type of license, say a
>> proprietary one from Microsoft, or Oracle, or some other major
>> software maker?
>
> That is very hard to do, I think.  Other than illegally copying the
> binaries, how are you going to violate their licenses?  Certainly
> people have made illegal copies galore and generally get away with the
> act.  If they use it commercially, though, they are often found out
> and prosecuted. It is hardly a hassle, it is a serious amount of money
> whereas the need to post yet another copy of BusyBox is much more of a
> trivial irritation, particularly when offered as part of a lawsuit.

Serious amount of money when done commercially?  More likely serious
jail terms.  It is somewhat disconcerting that copyright violations tend
to get longer jail terms than manslaughter and rape.

-- 
David Kastrup