Re: Why

[John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org>]

Colin writes:
> It seems to me that there are two plausible routes to breaking the GPL.
> The first is to demonstrate that the licence is not binding. No
> commercial software organization is going to go down that route; it would
> be suicide.

I assume that by "not binding" you mean "legally equivalent to public
domain".  How would establishing that be suicide for a company that wanted
to use GPL code free of the GPL requirements?

> The second is to demonstrate that the licence is invalid.

Which would mean that all GPL code would become unlicensed: anyone who
wanted to copy any of it would have to go to all the authors and negotiate
new licenses.  Why would any company spend money to bring that about?

On another forum an actual lawyer (sorry: I don't have a citation)
expressed the opinion that the courts actually pay attention to industry
practice in such things as licensing.  As I understand it, the longer the
software industry goes on behaving as if the GPL is enforceable, the more
likely it is that a court will find it to be so, even if it would not have
done so had the document been presented the day after RMS came up with it.
-- 
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI