On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 04:03:18PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > > Lawsuits are not intrinsically bad for free software. Prohibiting > > lawsuits is significantly limiting and imposes real, significant > > costs. > > It's fairly obvious that a requirement that you not sue the licensor > doesn't impose any costs on you. This is fairly obviously wrong. It grants the licensor a carte blanche license to do anything they like and you have no legal recourse against them. That's clearly a significant cost; you have signed over all legally protected rights to them. > It blocks various revenue streams, but > so does the GPL. Geez, what is with this SCOish attitude that lawsuits are revenue streams? That's *abuse* of the legal system. > >> > You cannot use a license to enforce your political position. > >>=20 > >> Why is copyleft other than the use of copyright to enforce a political > >> position (ie, that the source should always be available to people with > >> binaries)? > > > > It's the use of copyright to enforce a technical goal. It is vaguely > > similar to the political position of the FSF but does not actually > > enforce it. > > I think it's difficult to read the preamble to the GPL and gain any > impression other than that it's attempting to enforce a political > position. The preamble is not normative; it should be ignored. Anyway, "attempt" doesn't matter, only what actually happens matters. > > It is unarguably superior that source should always be available for a > > free software project. You cannot say the same for prohibiting > > lawsuits. > > I think it's fairly unarguable that a situation in which free software > authors are less likely to be sued for patent infringement is a better > situation than the alternative. Only if you define "free software authors" to not include anybody who deserves to be sued. If you define it to mean "any corporation" then no, it's not a better situation. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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