Thanks for the comments anyway.
Jeff
Rob Landley wrote:
>
> >All true, but he can still file a claim against anyone who
> >incorporates it into an OS the way it's worded.
> >
> >Jeff
>
> He can file a claim against you for breathing. What will hold up in
> court is another matter.
>
> Lawyers are paid to nit-pick and look for loopholes. Defense lawyers
> are paid to be nervous about other people nit-picking, and pre-emptively
> do the nit-picking for you. That said, we're talking civil court here,
> not criminal. Civil courts are also jammed solid, but they get to throw
> out frivolous lawsuits a lot more easily.
>
> As for the GPL not re-licensing other code, actually it forces the
> DISTRIBUTOR to re-license the other code if they want to use it with GPL
> code. It does this by refusing to allow itself to be used with any code
> that CAN'T be re-licensed in that way. (Convertability to GPL.)
>
> You can't distribute a binary containing GPL code unless you distribute
> the source code used to generate that entire binary. ("Complete
> product", and yes you could argue about it in court but the potential is
> fairly clear.) If the other code cannot be distriuted under a GNU Pubic
> License covering the entire body of code (I.E. the other code's license
> doesn't prevent it from being re-distributed under the GPL, meaning the
> original license is less restrictive in all respects and the additional
> GPL restrictions do not conflict with it), then the other code CANNOT be
> used with the GPL code to create a legally distributable binary, or
> distributed together with GPL code for the obvious purpose of creating a
> binary. Period.
>
> A license covers code AS DISTRIBUTED. You can get the exact same code
> under a different license from a different source (which is actually
> what Reiser is offering). So if the BSD license were covertable to GPL
> (whole 'nother can of worms there), I could give you a copy of a BSD
> variant which -I- have placed under the GPL. If you don't want to be
> entangled by the GPL, you can get the same code from elsewhere under a
> different license, and would be stupid to use the one I gave you.
>
> Thus his "additional restriction" -IS MEANINGLESS-, certainly with
> regard to the intent of the license (which is pretty darn important in
> court most of the time). The GPL already contains it.
>
> You could make the same argument about linking straight GPL code against
> the linux kernel, which is licensed under the GPL with one exception (a
> relaxation that allows non-gpl binaries to be linked to it as kernel
> modules, or runnable programs). That's a long-settled issue, and even
> the guy who created the GPL (Richard Stallman, and yes he hired one or
> more lawyers in the process) agrees it all works together.
>
> Cases won on technicalities that go against the clearly expressed intent
> may get most of the press coverage, and in criminal court where the
> constitutional presumption of innocence favors the defendant they may
> occasionally be enforceable. But we're talking civil court here. What
> are the damages you can show? They have this tendency to go through a
> six month trial for people who really insist and then award a total
> remedy of $1 damage if you try to push a technicality on them. And this
> is assuming you have an enforceable technicality, which I still don't
> see here.
>
> Reiser should still clean up his wording so his intent is more clearly
> expressed. I doubt his code will be distributed with the mainline
> kernel until then. But as for causing actual enforceable problems, I
> just don't see it.
>
> Rob
>
> -
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