On 04/26/2010 07:41 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
On 04/26/2010 11:23 AM, Mark Mielke wrote:
Personally, this whole issue is problematic to me. I really can't see
why I would ever sue somebody for using software that I had declared
free.
Because (a derivative of) it is being made nonfree?
How does this hurt me? Instead of being concerned how people might try
to exploit my code, why shouldn't I be spending effort making sure that
the best solution for all parties, including greedy corporations, is to
work with me, to make sure the code is kept in a small number of
branches all available in the free and open source community? Why can't
I demonstrate the merits of free software in such a way that even the
most stubborn of CEOs will understand what I am offering to them?
It wouldn't be worth my time and I have trouble understanding how
I could demonstrate personal loss making the law suit worth persuing in
the first place.
Perhaps because you know the code better than anyone else, so you
could provide paid support on that derivative as well.
This is true whether the code is GPL or truly free.
Or maybe because you have to. There was a case of a free software
project (JMRI) being sued for patent infringement by a proprietary
software company. It turned out that the proprietary software
included source code from the free software project without
attribution (copyleft was not even necessary, as the project was under
the Artistic License!). In this case, the possibility to counter-sue
saved the free software programmer from having to pay millions of
dollars.
I think this might be an over simplification. There were many statements
in this history (new to me - just read it all - good read) that
demonstrate that the patents were incorrectly granted. The copyright
issue was involved, and the defense of free / open source copyrights was
involved, but it looks pretty clear to me that JMRI wanted to shut down
*all* violations. They wanted the incorrectly granted patents dropped,
and they wanted their copyrights held intact. Was the latter required
for the former victory, or was that just how things played out?
I'll also note that even if it was required, it was the Artistic
License, and it was demonstrated as being valid in a court of law. So,
the GPL was not really part of this equation, and therefore not really
part of this discussion, as off topic as it has gone. From my
perspective, licenses like the Artistic License, the Apache license, or
the BSD license, are great choices for free software projects.
I see your point that the possibility to counter-sue is valid, but I
think the scope is the scenario provided is limited to the scope of
ensuring that the copyright is valid at all, rather than any additional
restrictions that the GPL defines. I think, though, that this is
somewhat self-evident, and that the case really shows how a clever
lawyer can confuse judges into providing poor judgements. This will
always be a risk, and copyright is not the ultimate defense against this
risk. It was an option in the case you listed, but I think there were
other options. It's unfortunate that persuing options in court can cost
large amount of money, but that's the society we live in. The best
direction to take from the above case is to attack the problem at the
source. 1) Patents, at least under the current system, are evil, and
provide a lot of risk for what is becoming a questionable amount of
value. 2) The courts need a better way to figure out when somebody is
lying in their court room.
As demonstrated, there exists adequate laws to protect copyrights. No
changes required on this front, at least for this scenario.
Cheers,
mark
