On 08/05/2013 09:16 AM, luke.leighton wrote:
now why the %$#@ didn't his defense lawyer spot that at the time, and
have the case thrown out, on the basis that goldman sachs were
criminally infringing copyright?? they even *said* in court that the
two identical pieces of code were held up, side-by-side, one
criminally-infringing of copyright by having the original authors
copyright removed, and the original showing the correct authors.
The only reason I can think of is that it was not relevant to the case.
It sounds like the case was about misappropriation of Godlman's
copyrighted work, which might have been Aleynikov's work-for-hire. If he
took work that he had done for Goldman - or that someone else had -
outside of the company, potentially to distribute to the Free Software
community without Goldman's permission, that's actionable. If Goldman
was not exercising its due diligence regarding GPL compliance, this may
have incented Aleynikov to take the code outside and to attempt to
rectify the GPL violation on his own. But he didn't have the right to do
that. Only a properly-authorized officer of Goldman or the court would
have the right to do that.
We can't rectify GPL violations by stealing the offender's code, even if
our license potentially gives us rights over that code. We have to use
the courts to remedy the infringement, or convince the proper corporate
officer to do so without the courts.
Thanks
Bruce
