Re: Irrevocability and intellectual property

On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 09:28:26PM -0400, Peter D. Ward wrote:
> Jay Maynard wrote:
> > I was considering open source licenses only because closed-source licenses
> > typically carry no redistribution rights at all. For those few cases where
> > the user does have the right to freey redistribute OCO programs, my comments
> > apply as well.
> Your equivalencing these two fact situations tends to confirm in my mind
> that a license to property granted without authority is the THE issue, and
> not whether or not Hercules is open source.  There is nothing special
> about it --- If IBM has no legal interest, then they have nothing
> distribution-wise to say about Hercules, open or otherwise.

Uhm...huh? I don't understand the point you're making.

The open source nature of Hercules makes it impossible for me to stop
everyone from distributing any putatively infringing version of the program.

> > In any case, how am I supposed to stop someone redistributing Hercules?
> > Especially when he has no reason to believe his right to do so may have been
> > invalidated? Especially when I have absolutely no way of knowing who has it,
> > or where they got it?
> Seems to me if there were a misappropriation matter, then its nothing special
> just because the errant grant is one of open source.  Perhaps good examples are
> counterfit cases, knock-offs,  illegal copying, etc.    In some sense all
> counterfit dollars come "open source" -- copy it, embellish it, pass it on., but
> it may turn out you shouldn't use it in certain ways!

Perhaps. If you go back to my earlier message on this subject, I said the
court could impose sanctions on me were I to distribute a version of
Hercules that violates intellectual property rights of others. They could
not, however, force me to remove it from all public distribution, any more
than they could force me to fly Porcine Airlines to Pago Pago. They could
try, but any such attempt is doomed to failure.

> > Because that doesn't answer the question. Whether or not some people are
> > running the software without a license has no bearing on whether or not IBM
> > will issue such a license.
> A good existance proof would do wonders to improve the dialectic on this.

I'd do it myself, but I don't have a few million bucks to wave under IBM's
nose. Do you?

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