The purpose of a license is to prevent the visit to a judge. Therefore
most of the discussions around licenses elaborated by comitee revolve
around what a judge *would* do and not around what he will do.
Because the chances to win a lawsuit are directly related to the depth
of the parties pockets and their endurance measured in years, legal
recourse is not such a good idea in most cases. Look at the kafkaesque
SCO/IBM/Novell lawsuit: 3 years and still going strong.
The us licensing and patent system is not consistent with itself and it
is not such a good idea to adopt is as is, or to use it as a benchmark.
USA is litigation country. No other system could withstand the
continuous I-sue-you that takes place there, nor the kafkaesque lawsuits
that take place from time to time (see SCO/IBM/Novell for one). That
system works by precedent and it seems to take pride in creating
precedents by breaking its own precedents (imho this is only advancing
in the direction of greater entropy). Interested people can read a
little about some of these things:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Lexmark_v_Static_Control/
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/ACRA_v_Lexmark/
(read noly the rulings if you are inpatient, see right sidebar for more).
You will see that in both cases a license that stipulated what can or
cannot be done after sale (or distribution) with a product defined by an
API (the cartridge) was striken down. The GPL is such a license. I don't
think that there is any similarity with the cartridges, I just want to
point out that one would seek consequence and logic in vain in the
courts. What one could seek and find, would be financial ruin and wasted
years.
A sheduler is a more essential part of a timesharing machine than a
kernel. A scratch-written sheduler aggregated with a kernel is not a
derivative work, it is an aggregation. The GPL stipulates rules for
aggregation but in doing so it may exceed the limits of what a license
can stipulate. Incidentally, so does the EULA on certain software
products when it stipulates what emulators they can run on or not, and
on whether aftermarket resale is possible, among other things.
Speaking of sheduler, RTLinux took out some patents on just such a
sheduler and restricted RTLinux distribution based on that, and that is
definitely definitely an aggregate work of the kernel:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5791
This is 'solved' in that the RTLinux code is dual licensed. But when it
is not dual licensed, then how come it can be aggregated with a GPL
codebase ? Because while RTLinux then becomes a non-GPL licensed piece
of code, it is still aggregated with the remainder of the kernel source
tree, which is GPL, and then *IT* forbids this aggregation. Huh ?
I am not a legally trained person but most of what is going on there
defies my logic, the same logic which I use to solve technical problems
in electronics and programming. They do not have a consistent system.
The only thing that is consistent is the constant suing, and the legal
costs.
Peter
=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
