PJ comes to her senses -- finally

[Rjack]

Over at Groklaw, Pammy Jo has finally come to her senses and admitted
that an idiot plaintiff like SCO can't attempt to license code under
the GPL to the general public and then later sue that purported class
of licensees for copyright infringement. She refers to Eben Moglen's
comment:

"From the moment that SCO distributed that code under the GNU General
Public License, they would have given everybody in the world the right
to copy, modify and distribute that code freely," he said. "From the
moment SCO distributed the Linux kernel under GPL, they licensed the
use. Always. That's what our license says."
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/2207791

To see her admit that a GPL plaintiff cannot release code under a
non-enforceable license like the GPL and then evade the consequences
of promissory estoppel claims by a defendant is a breath of fresh air.


Sincerely,
Rjack

[High Plains Thumper]

Post by Rjack
To see her admit that a GPL plaintiff cannot release code under a
non-enforceable license like the GPL and then evade the consequences
of promissory estoppel claims by a defendant is a breath of fresh air.

Then why does your stench still linger here?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Post by Rjack
Over at Groklaw, Pammy Jo has finally come to her senses and admitted
that an idiot plaintiff like SCO can't attempt to license code under
the GPL to the general public and then later sue that purported class
of licensees for copyright infringement. She refers to Eben Moglen's

This has been PJ's position all along - that code licensed under the GPL
is code licensed under the GPL. SCO's argument was that, because they
"weren't fully aware" of what they were doing, they hadn't truly licensed
their code, therefore people using it according to its licence's terms
were thus violating that code's copyright. Or something like that.

Post by Rjack
"From the moment that SCO distributed that code under the GNU General
Public License, they would have given everybody in the world the right
to copy, modify and distribute that code freely," he said. "From the
moment SCO distributed the Linux kernel under GPL, they licensed the
use. Always. That's what our license says."
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/2207791
To see her admit that a GPL plaintiff cannot release code under a
non-enforceable license like the GPL and then evade the consequences
of promissory estoppel claims by a defendant is a breath of fresh air.

To everybody else, this is pure sophistry. The GPL most certainly is
enforceable - it has been enforced. If he could actually write what he
meant in plain English, in a concise readable fashion, we'd see just how
silly it was.

Post by Rjack
Sincerely,
Rjack

[David Kastrup]

Post by Alan Mackenzie

Post by Rjack
Over at Groklaw, Pammy Jo has finally come to her senses and admitted
that an idiot plaintiff like SCO can't attempt to license code under
the GPL to the general public and then later sue that purported class
of licensees for copyright infringement. She refers to Eben Moglen's

This has been PJ's position all along - that code licensed under the
GPL is code licensed under the GPL. SCO's argument was that, because
they "weren't fully aware" of what they were doing, they hadn't truly
licensed their code, therefore people using it according to its
licence's terms were thus violating that code's copyright. Or
something like that.

More like "somebody snuck code into their GPL distribution without
permission". Say, in a mall somebody peels off a price tag from a cheap
article and sticks it to an expensive article. An unrelated customer
picks the item up and carries it to the cash register. He pays the lump
sum of $10 by credit card for an article worth $5000, the cashier does
not notice the discrepancy. His supervisor later recognizes what has
happened, the customer has left the shop already.

A camera has recorded the act of moving the price tag and the person
doing it identified. It is clear that this was the doing of somebody
not authorized to do anything in the shop.

Can the shop reclaim the article?


That's more or less the theory underlying SCO's claims. The problem
with that view is that there is abundance evidence that the price tag
was "moved" by shop personnel, not just authorized to do this sort of
thing in general, but explicitly in the course of a business strategy.

SCO is merely in possession of some UNIX rights as the legal successor
of Caldera, an explicit Linux company with a Linux strategy. In fact,
the company still _is_ Caldera. It merely renamed itself into "SCO
Group" for the purpose of making the most of this schizophrenic lawsuit.
And it only could do so because it happened to have acquired the rights
to the _name_ "SCO" as part of its previous business as Caldera.

They are just sheep in a wolf's clothing cheaply acquired, for the sake
of shedding crocodile tears before the court. "Oh, my poor little
cubs!"

[Rjack]

Post by Alan Mackenzie
To everybody else, this is pure sophistry. The GPL most certainly
is enforceable - it has been enforced.

Not under any U.S. jurisdiction where Pammy lives -- that claim's a
figment of your fertile imagination Alan.

Post by Alan Mackenzie
If he could actually write what he meant in plain English, in a
concise readable fashion, we'd see just how silly it was.

Sincerely,
Rjack

[David Kastrup]

Post by Rjack

Post by Alan Mackenzie
To everybody else, this is pure sophistry. The GPL most certainly
is enforceable - it has been enforced.

Not under any U.S. jurisdiction where Pammy lives -- that claim's a
figment of your fertile imagination Alan.

Well, you can't enforce a unilateral _grant_. The court cases boil down
to "Dear defendant, do you want to make use of the GPL by heeding its
conditions, or would you rather go with the standard permissions granted
to you by copyright?" You can't enforce a license which explicitly
tells you

9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.

You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or
run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work
occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission
to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However,
nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate
or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you
do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating
a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do
so.

The "indication" is, as far as I can see, nothing but an indication and
does not get you into any deeper pickle than you are in, anyway.

[Rjack]

Post by Alan Mackenzie
If he could actually write what he meant in plain English, in a
concise readable fashion, we'd see just how silly it was.

You probably want Shakespeare's works translated into Pig Latin but it
ain't gonna' happen Alan.

Sincerely,
Rjack

[JEDIDIAH]

Post by Rjack

Post by Alan Mackenzie
If he could actually write what he meant in plain English, in a
concise readable fashion, we'd see just how silly it was.

You probably want Shakespeare's works translated into Pig Latin but it
ain't gonna' happen Alan.

...probably already been done. Along with Klingon and Romulan.