Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Conflicts in .arch-ids

[Robin Green]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 09:03:25AM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-08-15 at 11:33, Robert Collins wrote:
> > Heck, the kernel tla using folk could even run a 'pre-merge' tree where
> > files being submitted for official inclusion are visible.
> 
> A good start would be a public Linux mainline BK->arch gateway (one way)
> but this probably cannot be achieved with the free BK because of its
> license,

Cannot be achieved legally, maybe. But if someone were to release such a
gateway anonymously via a friend, and took care not to protect their anonymity,
I don't see what BitMover could do about it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a
product made using information obtained by breaking the license would not
itself be illegal, right?

Since such so-called "piracy" is solely for the purposes of interoperability,
and doesn't fund drugs or terrorism, I personally don't have a moral problem
with it.

Besides, the anti-competitive clause might be unenforceable in some
jurisdictions. If, say, it was unenforceable in Japan, a developer in Japan
could develop the gateway and no-one could be sued for using the gateway.
I know of no intellectual property statute that restricts products that are
based on information which _happened_ to be obtained illegally, but is
available to anyone who can afford to pay, legally. In any case, by hypothesis,
the information would _not_ have been obtained illegally in the scenario I just
described.

IANAL, etc.

-- 
Robin

Weblog: http://lrp.greenrd.org/

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