Posted on 06/03/2008 12:15:33 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
Has GPL actually been challenged in the courts? It seems like the whole system rests on pretty shaky ground; I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to redefine the boundaries of copyright, contract law, and public domain.
He's paranoid like many zealots on either side. The term just grew out of a desire to lump several things together in two convenient words. But there are two real problems with the term:
First, it's misleading. Nothing covered by it is actual property. Patent, trademark and copyright are all limited granted monopoly rights that can be leveraged for profit. Trade secrets are generally covered under equitable, not property law.
Second, it's confusing. Patent and copyright are authorized by the same clause in the Constitution and thus governed by its limitations, and they are covered by two different sets of law. Trademark is is basically consumer protection law designed to prevent marketplace confusion, and not covered by that clause. Trade secrets have punishment for disclosure or theft, but no protection once revealed to the world (patent protection is the incentive to reveal trade secrets), and are covered under state law.
They are all very different concepts covered by very different laws, so use of the term leads to confusion. A good percentage of the time I see the term "Intellectual Property" being used just on FR the poster is mixing up the concepts of those four things under it.
Thus I prefer to use copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret to keep things clear.
Yes, and it survived. The terms are a lot less over-reaching than most proprietary licenses out there, three of which I know have had terms deemed unenforceable by the courts (Autodesk and Network Solutions, and IIRC Adobe).
Never, never never use any code licensed under GPL.
I like the Apache License
I think you're right in the context of people making their money off of support and services for open source. OTOH, people have made billions using the benefits that open source provides.
You're using it right now. But if you meant inclusion of the code into your applications, I'd suggest ensuring you are comfortable with any license before doing so.
So--you're leaving FR, then?
Don’t fall for antiRepublic’s Stallman-like attacks against the term “intellectual property” or claims the GPL has been specifically validated in US courts. He’s their number one proponent on this board and as you can see will make outlandish claims and circle talk ad-infinium.
The Apache License is effectively like the BSD license, where code can be made non-free. I like the MPL because it retains the give-back feature, keeping the code free, but it is clear that only changes to the actual MPL code must be MPL (IOW, a direct derivative work). Static linking to MPL libraries, shipping it as the core of your proprietary application, etc., don’t necessarily require the release of one line of code. Thus it is very business-friendly while remaining free. Sun decided to write their CDDL after the MPL, likely for these reasons.
No it doesn't, any more than the term "property rights" is confusing. I agree that copyright, patent, and trademarks are all quite different sets of laws that have little to do with each other, but that's not the issue.
I have read Stallman's views on "intellectual property" and his complaints go far beyond definitional terms, although he tries to wish away the whole concept on definitional terms. First of all, he wants to deny the institution of intellectual property even exists and that it is purely a lump term of certain laws. Nice try. What we have are three separate sets of laws which reflect the social institution of intellectual property. Private property ownership is governed by disparate sets of laws as well. Does that mean that private property does not exist? Secondly, he states the the free software movement is a political movement. Not a business model, not a legal model, but a political movement. Then you have to ask yourself, what is that political movement? It's quite obvious that the purpose of his political movement is the destruction of existing copyright law as it relates to software.
The subsequent license provision says:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Emphasis added. It is effectively dual licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv3, so it is safe for use on secure hardware.
There are very few ways the courts could grant somebody the right to modify or redistribute the covered work in violation of the copyright holder's wishes. This is why the GPL is generally considered to be airtight.
I might have to use it on occassion but no way would I ever mix any of it in with a software development project. As it sounds like you already know, due to Stallman's tricky "copyleft" provisions GPL code is commonly referred to as "viral-like" and can easily end up taking your control of your own software away from you and giving it to Stallman's leftist groups.
I know SO MANY “open source” programmers who work on their so-called ‘free’ software on company time.
They are like liberals in that the think everything should be free for the masses. (a LOT of them ARE liberals)
Someone has to pay to feed the children of programmers so they can write software, but they dismiss this argument by saying that people would pay ‘for support’.
When does “Open Support” come?
Who is the copyright holder in the case of source code that has been modified and redistributed by multiple unaffiliated parties? And when settlements are negotiated in the case of CPL copyright infringement, who gets the cash?
Yes Lotus Cymfony is good, but they are reduced to giving away their software for free- Remember when they used to charge tens of thousands of dollars for (God help us) “Lotus Notes”
somebody is ALWAYS is paying... somewhere... for ‘Open Source’
The ultimate plan listed on Stallman's website is after all proprietary software companies are destroyed, they want to impose a "software tax" to pay the programmers. As another poster mentioned, those that either don't know this or defend Stallman anyway are properly categorized as "useful idiots".
Good question, but more importantly in my mind, what do they want provided to them "for free" via a "tax" next? Medicine seems to be their next target, but it won't stop there.
God Help Us if we are reduced to government employees writing software.
The patronage jobs will have your former garbageman or parks employees writing code because they memorized the answers from the last civil service tests and their uncle is county executive or something....
Don't say it wont happen, I know of an actual case of that. we had a database administrator who could not start the database. An installer who had to ask someone whenever an install program said: <-Back Next->
The administrators SISTER(~!~) got that job and was promoted above the only person in a 12 man department who could actually do anything. When he finally quit in disgust (for a job paying 3 times as much) they could not do anything for a year.
They ordered a $50,000 disk drive that stored 100 gigabytes of data a few years back. By the time they figured out how to turn it on and set it up(years- literally - after putting a full time employee on this task) on you could buy a 100 gigabyte external drive for $80
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