Re: The SFLC dismissals should be coming soon

[David Kastrup]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:

> On 2/18/2010 12:46 PM, RJack wrote:
>> They're *your* unverified claims. Neither myself nor, I doubt, anyone
>> else is going to foolishly carry *your* burden and produce *your*
>> "facts" for you.
>
> Your "facts" require the belief that after settling the lawsuits,
> the defendants set up the ability for customers to obtain GPLed
> sources, but then provide sources that do not match the binaries
> being distributed. (For it is incontrovertible that those GPL
> download sites exist.) That beggars belief.
>
>> The "sequence" you postulate is simply an unverified string of events.
>
> Only anti-GPL cranks find this to be true.

Let's not forget that the Cisco(?) case was mainly about Cisco "dragging
its feet" with regard to compliance, namely _not_ timely making
available the _corresponding_ sources to new versions.

So it would appear that verifying the matching version is easy enough
for legal purposes.

Also, providing non-matching sources intentionally in order to _feign_
license compliance is fraud, which is a criminal offense.

While our local cranks have no qualms assuming that companies will
happily commit fraud just to let our court jesters here hop in glee,
that is hardly to be expected in reality.

After all, the main point of the GPLed sources is to let people inclined
to do so make their local changes.  If that renders the router
unfunctional even without the local changes, that would be rather
obvious.  If it _does_ not render the router unfunctional, where is the
point in providing different functional sources?

Sure, it is work to diligently verify actual compliance, but there is
nothing to be gained by the company providing different sources.

-- 
David Kastrup