Re: EASTERBROOK's "quick look" on the GPL and Wallace's claim

[Alexander Terekhov]

David Kastrup wrote:
> 
> Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:
> 
> > Hey dak, groklaw crowd is loudly complaining about "Horrible
> > interpretation of the GPL" by EASTERBROOK.
> >
> > What's your take on that?
> 
> I did not bother with the details of what was an open-and-shut case,
> anyway.  And IIRC, Easterbrook did not too much, either.  His job was
> not to interpret the GPL, but ...

But he did.

----------
Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and EVANS, Circuit Judges.
EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Does the provision of
copyrighted software under the GNU General Public
License (“GPL”) violate the federal antitrust laws? Authors
who distribute their works under this license, devised by
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., authorize not only
copying but also the creation of derivative works—and the
license prohibits charging for the derivative work. People
may make and distribute derivative works if and only if
they come under the same license terms as the original
work. Thus the GPL propagates from user to user and
revision to revision: neither the original author, nor any
creator of a revised or improved version, may charge for the
software or allow any successor to charge. Copyright law,
usually the basis of limiting reproduction in order to collect
a fee, ensures that open-source software remains free: any
attempt to sell a derivative work will violate the copyright
laws, even if the improver has not accepted the GPL. The
Free Software Foundation calls the result “copyleft.”
----------

And then compared it to "a flourishing market in legal 
treatises and other materials, plus reference databases 
such as LEXIS and Westlaw, even though courts give away 
their work (this opinion, for example, is not covered by 
copyright and may be downloaded from the court’s web site 
and copied without charge). And so it is with operating 
systems."

Now tell me with a straight face that he wasn't drunken 
(i.e. moronized by the RMS' pseudo legal writing known as 
the GNU GPL).

Can you?

regards,
alexander.