Re: TomTom, the GPL and patents

[Hyman Rosen]

Rjack wrote:
> GPL developers wish to steal the 17 USC sec. 106 rights of innocent
> developers who have exclusive rights to charge for their individual
> contribution to a derivative work.

No. They wish those innocent developers will choose to allow their
even more innocent users to have the freedom to run, read, modify,
and share the code they receive, and to encourage them to do so,
they make available a significant body of code that will shorten
the development times of those innocent developers. It is entirely
up to those innocent developers to use the GPLed code or not, but
if they do, they must pay in the currency that the copyright holders
demand, namely freedom for their users.

> This theft attempt by GPL developer's is a violation of copyright
> misuse doctrine

It is not.

> and 17 USC sec. 301(a).

Your baffling obsession with preemption continues. Preemption has
nothing to do with the GPL.

> These people who use an illegal GPL copyright license in an attempt
> to steal others rights are an example of the old adage that "Some
> rob with a gun, others rob with a pen".

But of course no one is obliged to accept the GPL. Doing so is
voluntary. The GPL works best in the way Microsoft does - through
ubiquity. The goal is to make not using GPLed work difficult by
improving the lot of developers who do use it, and by making such
use so common that people who fail to do so are at a fatal
disadvantage. But that is not theft, that is competition.

And of course the GPL is legal; Alexander helpfully provided proof
<http://pacer.mad.uscourts.gov/dc/opinions/saris/pdf/progress%20software.pdf>
containing the comments of a US judge who clearly finds the GPL to
be legitimate, since she decides the dispute hinges on details of
compliance with it.