rjack wrote: [...] > Once a federal court reviews the GPL on its legal merits the propaganda > ploy of dismissal without prejudice and subsequent claims of "the GPL > won in court" will end -- abruptly.
You mean that PJ of Groklaw would stop blathering that http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007120713435029 "two principal developers already successfully sued Monsoon Media" ??? I can believe that. :-) BTW, on Groklaw, for the brief time, there was a reply to PJ's comment ------ The GPL is not a contract. It's a license, a copyright license. ------ reply: ------ > The GPL is not a contract. Eh? http://www.jbb.de/judgment_dc_frankfurt_gpl.pdf "On behalf of the people JUDGMENT ... The GPL grants anyone who enters into such contract... contractual relationship between the authors and Defendant ... incorporated into the contract by virtue of the preamble of the GPL ... Plaintiff, or the licensors from whom Plaintiff derives his right, have not violated any contractual obligations themselves ... Defendant, who violated contractual obligations" > The GPL is not a contract. It's a license, a > copyright license. "Whether this constitutes a gratuitous license, or one for a reasonable compensation, must, of course, depend upon the circumstances; but the relation between the parties thereafter in respect of any suit brought must be held to be contractual, and not an unlawful invasion of the rights of the owner." De Forest Radio Tel. & Tel. Co. v. United States, 273 U.S. 236, (1927) "Whether express or implied, a license is a contract 'governed by ordinary principles of state contract law.'" McCoy v. Mitsuboshi Cutlery, Inc., 67. F.3d 917, (Fed. Cir. 1995) The highly respected Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2003: "If a breach of contract (and a copyright license is just a type of contract)..."; In re Aimster, 334 F.3d 643 (7th Cir. 2003). This licensing principle--that all intellectual property licenses are a type of contract--was explained to Richard Stallman by Professor Micheal Davis in 1999. See: http://lists.essential.org/upd-discuss/msg00131.html ------ and now it's been censored out. Amazing. "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech..." regards, alexander. -- "Plaintiffs copyrights are unique and valuable property whose market value is impossible to assess" -- SOFTWARE FREEDOM LAW CENTER, INC. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
