Re: License furor

On Mon, 24 May 2004, Vincent Stemen wrote:

> On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 07:52:59PM -0500, Dr. Rich Murphey wrote:
> > It's ludicrous to worry about legal threats from XFree86.  Vendors are
> > caught violating the GPL on a regular basis and face few legal threats other
> > than perhaps a cease and desist.   They might eventually abide by a cease
> > and desist if someone is willing to spend enough money and effort to
> > inconvenience them enough to make it worthwhile, but they never face any
> > financial demands let alone pay damages.
> 
> Never?  Come on! Are you even aware of the Caldera/SCO legal attack on
> Linux vendors?  Caldera is a Linux distributer who we all thought
> supported the open source movement.  Once they acquired SCO and
> thought they had a legal weapon, they sued IBM for $3 billion dollars!
> Then they turn around and sue Auto Zone, and DaimlerChrysler and are
> threatening everybody who distributes Linux.  If the new XFree86
> license infiltrated the whole industry and everybody ignored it, can
> you imagine what would happen if a dirty competitor was able to
> acquire The XFree86 Project, Inc. and most vendors were not in
> compliance with the license?
> 
> Not only that, you way under estimate the gravity of a cease and
> desist order in a case like this.  X is a major component of all open
> operating systems and major commercial Unix's as well.  It is not like
> having to stop distribution of some small application.  If a company
> such as Microsoft acquired such a critical component, they could
> devastate the Unix and open source world.  It could potentially run
> the Linux and BSD vendors completely out of business.
> 
> So you are saying to just ignore the license change and don't worry
> about legal threats?  That is what is ludicrous!  If there is no
> intention of ever enforcing this new license, then why change it in
> the first place?  X has been extremely successful for a very long
> time under the original license.  From what I have seen, most of the
> open source distributors agree with me.  

> I think we should object to and not accept any license that legally
> leaves our pants down.  The SCO/Caldera lawsuits prove that, if there
> any legal weaknesses, there is going to be somebody who is going to
> eventually take maximum advantage of it.

I am I the only nice guy with my head buried in the sand here ?
I thought this list was for people who give away their code, and
want to ensure that everyone gets to share the benefits of their
work, including spin-off ideas.

Given your position on lawyers, Vincent, I think you should get your
lawyers and XFree86's to talk to each other about working together.
This conversation is getting way too deep for mere geeks.

If your world picture is right, and if I'm a typical XFree86 developer,
then it *is* time someone like X.Org took over the torch; we aren't fit to
care for X anymore.
Why ? My reaction to lawyers is to say, well its my ball and I'll go
home and do something on my own. If we need lawyers, then the world
view I'm still going to hold on to doesn't match the real world. 

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison		Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[email protected]	http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna