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Re: SCO laying an ambush for the GPL?


From: Chris Croughton
Subject: Re: SCO laying an ambush for the GPL?
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 14:43:17 +0100
User-agent: slrn/0.9.7.4 (Linux)

On 20 Jul 2004 12:05:15 +0200, David Kastrup 
   <dak@gnu.org> wrote:

> However, your problem is not that RMS tries to hide and downplay
> consequences of the GPL, but that he purportedly overinterprets
> copyright laws.  That is not "copyright misuse", but at best an
> invalid assumption.  He does not hide his intent in any manner in
> advance.  If he is mistaken in his legal opinions, this does not mean
> that he _misused_ copyright, but that he misunderstood or
> overestimated it.

In other words, he makes it sound as though it's more limited than it is
in law?  That could well be true, the impression I've had from RMS's
writings (and other FSF people) is that they would like to convince
people that using anything GPL will mean that you have to release
everything you have under the GPL, whereas cooler heads say it's not
that drastic.  But if you actually have more rights than you were led to
believe, that's not misuse (unless the owner tries to prosecute you for
them), as you said misuse comes when you are led to believe that you
have rights which are then found to be not there.

The latter is of course also the big problem with software patents, the
programmer can go ahead creating something and then find some years
later that a patent has now been granted covering that code.

Chris C

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