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Re: PJ comes to her senses -- finally


From: Alan Mackenzie
Subject: Re: PJ comes to her senses -- finally
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:43:02 +0000 (UTC)
User-agent: tin/1.6.2-20030910 ("Pabbay") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/4.11-RELEASE (i386))

In gnu.misc.discuss Rjack <user@example.net> wrote:
> Over at Groklaw, Pammy Jo has finally come to her senses and admitted 
> that an idiot plaintiff like SCO can't attempt to license code under 
> the GPL to the general public and then later sue that purported class 
> of licensees for copyright infringement. She refers to Eben Moglen's 
> comment:

This has been PJ's position all along - that code licensed under the GPL
is code licensed under the GPL.  SCO's argument was that, because they
"weren't fully aware" of what they were doing, they hadn't truly licensed
their code, therefore people using it according to its licence's terms
were thus violating that code's copyright.  Or something like that.

> "From the moment that SCO distributed that code under the GNU General
> Public License, they would have given everybody in the world the right
> to copy, modify and distribute that code freely," he said. "From the
> moment SCO distributed the Linux kernel under GPL, they licensed the
> use. Always. That's what our license says."
> http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/2207791

> To see her admit that a GPL plaintiff cannot release code under a
> non-enforceable license like the GPL and then evade the consequences
> of promissory estoppel claims by a defendant is a breath of fresh air.

To everybody else, this is pure sophistry.  The GPL most certainly is
enforceable - it has been enforced.  If he could actually write what he
meant in plain English, in a concise readable fashion, we'd see just how
silly it was.

> Sincerely,
> Rjack

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).



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