Ok, .uk says it all... Sorry, but here in the US a hot cup of coffee gets you in court. An employee who works for you parttime gets involved in a traffic accident, and you go to work.
Maybe it's a case that won't win, so what? It costs a lot of money to defend yourself against a frivolous lawsuit. BTW, I don't like your attitude, so I'm suing you. Better go find you an attorney, cause I have ten or so bored to tears. Yeah, that's the attitude in the US these days. Lacy Moore, Project Administrator Moore & Moore General Contractors, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: Adam Williamson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Posted At: Thursday, November 28, 2002 11:37 AM Posted To: Cooker Conversation: [Cooker] Microsoft True Type Fonts for Contrib... Subject: Re: [Cooker] Microsoft True Type Fonts for Contrib... On Thu, 2002-11-28 at 16:23, David Walser wrote: > C'mon people, give it up. The difference between some > script that DLs them at install time and an RPM that > ships them directly is not immediately obvious to a > non-techie. What that means is, it's close enough for > Microsoft to sue, and MandrakeSoft to not be able to > get the case dismissed in a summary judgement. It > would have to go to full trial so you could explain to > the judge the difference between an RPM and an SRPM. > Full trial == $$$, money MandrakeSoft doesn't have. > Furthermore, you all are pressuring them to do > something unsafe, something which could cause them > they're livelihood, so understand their attitude. I just don't think this is either accurate or true, and I worry about the quality of Mandrake's legal advice. I thnik Mandrake is being way, way too timid in this case. It's a nice popular myth that big companies can force small ones into ruinous trials at the drop of a hat, and it's certainly true in some contexts, but I don't think it's true in this context at all. Whether the difference is immediately obvious or not is simply not an issue, because it can easily be explained. The legal system is sophisticated enough to draw a distinction between supplying the source code for a patent-infringing application (not illegal) and supplying a compiled binary of that source code (illegal), it's certainly sophisticated enough to draw a distinction between a package which includes some material and one which doesn't. I can't see any competent lawyer seeing a snowball's chance in hell of a positive outcome in an action against such a script, because such a script has absolutely rock-solid foundations. I really can't see such a case being pursued under the circumstances, because Microsoft would have absolutely nothing to gain. Let's not flatter ourselves here, Microsoft couldn't really give a damn about Mandrake - it wouldn't even care too much about putting Mandrake out of business, because it doesn't see Mandrake as a competitor. Microsoft is too short-sighted to consider a relatively small, desktop-directed (this is the perception of Mandrake) distro as a threat. Microsoft's perceived threats in the Linux arena are IBM, Red Hat and to a lesser extent UnitedLinux. Given that an action against Mandrake would be utterly unlikely to succeed, would generate an avalanche of bad press for Microsoft, and would give them absolutely no positive benefit, I can't see it happening. Hell, I wouldn't even bet against the possibility that, if someone actually *ASKED* Microsoft, they'd expressly say it was OK to include a download script for their web fonts. As someone pointed out, Microsoft WANTED those fonts distributed across the web, it wasn't trying to restrain their distribution at all. I'm sure Mandrakesoft have made their decision, I simply believe they're making a mistake and it's legitimate to continue to point out that mistake in the hope this will be considered more rationally and not in such a climate of fear at a later date. -- adamw
