At 05:44 PM 2/9/2002, J.Brown (Ender/Amigo) wrote:
Sorry, let me clarify that point... the major work that was lost was done by a COMMUNITY project, not one of ID's in-house ones. His point is that as the xGPL forces the release of source code with any binaries, so any valuable work like this won't be lost to the community.
In that case, it seems to me that his remarks are a complete non sequitur. The source code of "community" projects that license their work under the MIT X or BSD license is every bit as publicly available as that of projects that use the GPL. In fact, the GPL would actually reduce the likelihood of recovering the code from someone's box, because commercial programmers such as myself won't look at it or download it. --Brett
Sorry, let me clarify that point... the major work that was lost was done by a COMMUNITY project, not one of ID's in-house ones. His point is that as the xGPL forces the release of source code with any binaries, so any valuable work like this won't be lost to the community.
In that case, it seems to me that his remarks are a complete non sequitur. The source code of "community" projects that license their work under the MIT X or BSD license is every bit as publicly available as that of projects that use the GPL.
No, they are not. On the basis that a developer is not required to pass on his code or make it available under X/BSD/etc licenses, whereas the main benefit of the xGPL liicenses are the very viral properties you appear to reject. Ask almost anyone who has licensed a project under the GPL, and you can guarantee the main reason is to ensure the viral licensing keeps the source in open distribution.
In fact, the GPL would actually reduce the likelihood of recovering the code from someone's box, because commercial programmers such as myself won't look at it or download it.
Brett, no personal offence, but commercial programmers such as yourself who are so damn close-minded to take this stand... do not count for but 1% of people who do meaningful work on community projects. MANY of the best programmers on GPL or GPL-like projects are commercial programmers in real life. Sure, you can say the GPL may taint your programming. But whats to stop you being fired because your COMMERCIAL work has influenced code you wrote for an open-source project? Several times I have stop working on a GPL project becaues my employer wanted me to work on some commercial project with some similarity. Did I stop because I thought the GPL would would taint me? No, although I was aware of that risk.... I stopped because I thought my commercial work would taint the open-source code. It is a simple fact that thousands upon thousands of commercial programmers work on open-source virally licensed projects. With no problem at all. As several people in this discussion keep asking for landmark cases to prove the effectiveness of then GPL - can you provide legal documentation pointing to GPL contamination of a commercial project? - James 'Ender' Brown
On Sat, Feb 09, 2002 at 09:15:31PM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
At 05:44 PM 2/9/2002, J.Brown (Ender/Amigo) wrote:
Sorry, let me clarify that point... the major work that was lost was done by a COMMUNITY project, not one of ID's in-house ones. His point is that as the xGPL forces the release of source code with any binaries, so any valuable work like this won't be lost to the community.
In that case, it seems to me that his remarks are a complete non sequitur. The source code of "community" projects that license their work under the MIT X or BSD license is every bit as publicly available as that of projects that use the GPL.
In fact, the GPL would actually reduce the likelihood of recovering the code from someone's box, because commercial programmers such as myself won't look at it or download it.
But no one really gives a hoot what commercial programmers such as yourself do. Your belief that LGPLed software contains cooties is your problem, not ours. I'm sure there may also be programmers who believe that the BSD license causes Ebola, but I don't foresee /that/ irrational fear influencing the licensing discussion, either. Incidentally, your arguments about proprietary vs. commercial software would be more compelling if you were capable of keeping the difference between the LGPL and the GPL straight for more than 5 minutes at a time. Very clever smokescreen that is, insisting on arguing about the dangers of a license that's not under consideration. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
At 11:18 PM 2/9/2002, Steve Langasek wrote:
But no one really gives a hoot what commercial programmers such as yourself do.
I beg to differ. WINE exists in the first place because of what a particularly unscrupulous group of commercial programmers -- i.e. Microsoft -- have done. If you'd like to see Microsoft's dominance fall by the wayside, you will not adopt licenses whose purpose is to hurt the more ethical commercial programmers who are attempting to compete with Microsoft.
Your belief that LGPLed software contains cooties is your problem, not ours.
Pooh-poohing or ignoring the issues won't make them go away. The fact is that both the GPL and the LGPL were written for the express purpose of destroying commercial software vendors and hurting ALL programmers' livelihoods.
Incidentally, your arguments about proprietary vs. commercial software would be more compelling if you were capable of keeping the difference between the LGPL and the GPL straight for more than 5 minutes at a time.
I know the difference very well. The dangers posed by reading the code are the same for both licenses. --Brett Glass
Brett Glass wrote:
At 10:37 PM 2/9/2002, winedev(a)admdev.com wrote:
MANY of the best programmers on GPL or GPL-like projects are commercial programmers in real life.
This puts them at very serious risk.
Sir, You have made this claim many times, and asserted various lawyers have told you it is true. Please explain the details. The GPL and LGPL specifically cover source code, * not* algorithms. How can the act of reading *GPL source code expose you to liability, any more than reading a novel can prevent you from writing your own? - Tony
At 12:21 AM 2/10/2002, Anthony Taylor wrote:
Sir,
You have made this claim many times, and asserted various lawyers have told you it is true. Please explain the details.
I've already done so in an earlier message, and don't want to clutter the list. But because this is an important issue, I'll give a more detailed explanation below.
The GPL and LGPL specifically cover source code, * not* algorithms. How can the act of reading *GPL source code expose you to liability, any more than reading a novel can prevent you from writing your own?
For the same reason that George Harrison was convicted for writing a song ("My Sweet Lord") that was similar, but not identical, to one he'd once heard, even though he was not conscious of doing any copying. For the same reason that the engineers who write the re-engineered code during "clean room" reverse engineering must never have seen the original code. (The engineers who implemented the Phoenix BIOS, for example, had never even programmed the x86 family of processors before. This was a specific requirement; anyone who had written a line of 8088 assembler was rejected for the job.) And for the same reason that movie producers such as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg will not read unsolicited scripts that are sent to them. (Lucas has been sued at least once by writers who claimed that elements of Star Wars -- such as the Ewoks -- were derived from scripts that had been submitted to him in the past.) J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was recently sued and accused of copying specific elements of other children's books. The books she was accused of copying are quite different from hers in most respects. However, it was pointed out that she used the same made-up word -- "muggles" -- in the same way and to mean the same thing. The court took the claim very seriously, because the odds of such a thing happening by accident are minuscule. Rowling may, in fact, have copied completely unconsciously, but this doesn't matter from the standpoint of copyright law. Having seen the original code (or heard the original song, or read the original book) whose copyright you have been accused of infringing can give rise to a claim that your work is a derivative of the original. Under copyright law, the burden is on you to prove that you didn't -- consciously or even unconsciously -- derive any part of your work from the original material. Copyright doesn't cover algorithms, but it does cover their expression as source code. If you implement an algorithm that appeared in the original code, and your implementation looks enough like it, it can be claimed that you're copying some or all of the way that the original author expressed the algorithm. What happens if you're accused? If you're a large, rich corporation, you may be able to defend the claim. But if you're an individual, or the owner or employee of a small company, the suit itself can be devastating. It's a good thing for J.K. Rowling that she made lots of money from her books, because if she were less successful she might well have been bankrupted by the costs of the lawsuit. And you MUST defend yourself. Copyright infringement isn't just a civil offense; it's a criminal offense. And the penalties are extraordinarily steep -- thousands of dollars per infringing copy. You can take a big hit even if the accusation is frivolous. This is why the FSF has been able to force people and small companies to back down when there's a mere accusation of violating the GPL or LGPL. People can't afford the disruption to their lives and businesses -- not to mention the cost -- of being sued. While the FSF gets free legal services from Eben Moglen and others, you'll have to pay hundreds of dollars per hour. If you're an individual programmer or a small business, it's easy to be wiped out. That's why there's such a danger here... and why we won't read GPLed or LGPLed code. We can't afford the accusation -- much less to be convicted. The MIT and BSD licenses, on the other hand, give you permission to derive code from the original and use it for any purpose. Thus, all of these issues do not come up. You can proceed with absolute confidence. You do not have to worry about being sued, or about possible ways in which a court might interpret the arcane legalese of the GPL or LGPL. So, you can see why, as programmers who don't want to wind up in court or be distracted by legal worries, we will not so much as read GPLed or LGPLed code. The only simple and sure way to avoid these potential problems is to stick with code that's licensed under what I call a truly free (TF) license. The definition of a truly free license is simple. A truly free license does not limit what you may do with the source code. The only thing it can limit is what you may do TO the author. It may, for example, prohibit you from using the author's trademarks (the Apache and Artistic licenses have this restriction) and/or from failing to give the author some credit for his or her work (the BSD license does this). And, like the WINE license, it may prohibit you from suing the author for damages if there are bugs. But it can't keep you from reading, using, learning from, or deriving something new from the original code. It thus has a property that the FSF's licenses do not: freedom from FUD. The current WINE License is truly free, and that is a very good thing for everyone. --Brett
On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Brett Glass wrote: [...]
For the same reason that George Harrison was convicted for writing a song ("My Sweet Lord") that was similar, but not identical, to one he'd once heard, even though he was not conscious of doing any copying.
Then you must object to the radios broadcasting hundred of thousands of non-free copyrighted materials on the air. Surely with so many songs being broadcasted any singer or musician must be at an awfully high risk of being sued. Especially since we all have been exposed to this non-free copyrighted material since before birth. The only possible conclusion is that most musicians must have lost their livelihoods and that lawsuits such as the above must abound. [...]
(The engineers who implemented the Phoenix BIOS, for example, had never even programmed the x86 family of processors before. This was a specific requirement; anyone who had written a line of 8088 assembler was rejected for the job.)
I hope you realize that what you are saying is that Wine is illegal since most contributors have been developping programs on Windows and have thus all had exposure to the Windows API and headers (similar to having written 8088 assembly before). [...]
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was recently sued and accused of copying specific elements of other children's books. The books she was accused of copying are quite different from hers in most respects.
Again, are you telling us that writers only read their own writings for fear of being sued? How many suits of these types have occurred? Your analogies are not convincing and seem based on annecdotes. I see them as insufficient to support your sweeping doomsday claims. -- Francois Gouget fgouget(a)free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/ The software said it requires Win95 or better, so I installed Linux.
At 02:37 PM 2/10/2002, Francois Gouget wrote:
Then you must object to the radios broadcasting hundred of thousands of non-free copyrighted materials on the air. Surely with so many songs being broadcasted any singer or musician must be at an awfully high risk of being sued.
If you write a song, and the melody is very similar to that of a song you have heard, you very well may be sued if your song becomes popular. Fortunately, this does not happen very often. However, the precedent of George Harrison shows that copyright infringement need not be conscious to be actionable. You can be sued if you were exposed to the original work and there's a substantial similarity.
(The engineers who implemented the Phoenix BIOS, for example, had never even programmed the x86 family of processors before. This was a specific requirement; anyone who had written a line of 8088 assembler was rejected for the job.)
I hope you realize that what you are saying is that Wine is illegal since most contributors have been developping programs on Windows and have thus all had exposure to the Windows API and headers (similar to having written 8088 assembly before).
Not hiring programmers who had worked with 8088 assembler before was probably not necessary. However, it demonstrates the extreme precautions Phoenix took to avoid lawsuits from IBM, which was litigious and had almost infinitely deep pockets. Phoenix wanted to be able to indemnify its customers against copyright infringement suits to encourage them to use its products. In the case of WINE, exposure to documentation of the APIs is likely to be OK. Why? Because application programs written by programmers exposed to these materials are generally not considered to be derivative works. However, exposure to the source code of a program whose copyright one could be accused of infringing (in the case of WINE, this would be the source of Windows itself) would definitely NOT be OK. This is why one cannot read (L)GPLed code and then write commercial programs. The FSF is likely to be a nasty litigant, and gets its legal services for free. It would gladly bankrupt you if it would mean wiping out a commercial developer.
Again, are you telling us that writers only read their own writings for fear of being sued?
No. But the author who sued J.K. Rowling had written books which featured creatures called "muggles" and a dark-haired boy named -- I'm not making this up! -- Larry Potter. If Rowling did NOT (consciously or unconsciously) copy this author's work, it would be an incredible coincidence.
How many suits of these types have occurred?
Quite a few. But even more often, threats are made and people who cannot afford to go to court are forced to back down. These cases seldom make the papers. --Brett Glass
On Sun, Feb 10, 2002 at 10:34:30PM -0700, Brett Glass wrote:
At 02:37 PM 2/10/2002, Francois Gouget wrote:
Then you must object to the radios broadcasting hundred of thousands of non-free copyrighted materials on the air. Surely with so many songs being broadcasted any singer or musician must be at an awfully high risk of being sued.
If you write a song, and the melody is very similar to that of a song you have heard, you very well may be sued if your song becomes popular. Fortunately, this does not happen very often. However, the precedent of George Harrison shows that copyright infringement need not be conscious to be actionable. You can be sued if you were exposed to the original work and there's a substantial similarity.
You can be sued for anything in this country. You don't have to have ever seen the LGPL code in question for the author to bring a lawsuit against you; frivolous lawsuits are a national pastime. I could, in theory, write a script that compares the source of all GNU software to the source of NetBSD in order to find the 5 largest sections of identical code that don't have the same copyright, and encourage the copyright holders of the GPLed code to sue over it. This seems as great a danger to me as being sued for writing code that's "similar" to LGPLed Wine code. Sure, you could be sued for writing code that looks like LGPLed Wine code; but to make it stick, your code would have to be both sufficiently similar to LGPLed Wine code and sufficiently DISsimilar to the established BSDesque Wine codebase. That doesn't leave much room for unconscious imitation.
However, exposure to the source code of a program whose copyright one could be accused of infringing (in the case of WINE, this would be the source of Windows itself) would definitely NOT be OK. This is why one cannot read (L)GPLed code and then write commercial programs. The FSF is likely to be a nasty litigant, and gets its legal services for free. It would gladly bankrupt you if it would mean wiping out a commercial developer.
FUD. I'm sure the FSF would be a nasty litigant, if you refused to settle after infringing the copyright of any of their source code. Since the FSF doesn't hold the copyright on any of the code in Wine, however, that objection isn't particularly relevant to the present case. Unless your forecast of gloom and doom also specifies that once the main Wine tree is under the LGPL, we'll be beset by FSF minions trying to enhance the Wine code as quickly as possible in order to ensure that the FSF holds copyright on substantial portions of the work. In which case, while I'll concede this would be bad for /you/, I don't really see how it's detrimental to the Wine community. If the FSF can successfully throw that much programmer time at the problem, it's a win for those of us whose primary interest is getting a Free implementation of the Windows APIs on Unix. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
At 09:06 AM 2/11/2002, Steve Langasek wrote:
I'm sure the FSF would be a nasty litigant, if you refused to settle after infringing the copyright of any of their source code. Since the FSF doesn't hold the copyright on any of the code in Wine, however, that objection isn't particularly relevant to the present case.
Yes, it is. The FSF also encourages OTHER litigants to be nasty, both via the propaganda in its licenses and by offering to bankroll them and give them free legal services. In short, the FSF hopes to turn programmers against their colleagues with the goal of destroying the industry. --Brett Glass
On 2002.02.13 01:08 Brett Glass wrote:
At 09:06 AM 2/11/2002, Steve Langasek wrote:
I'm sure the FSF would be a nasty litigant, if you refused to settle after infringing the copyright of any of their source code. Since the FSF doesn't hold the copyright on any of the code in Wine, however, that objection isn't particularly relevant to the present case.
Yes, it is. The FSF also encourages OTHER litigants to be nasty, both via the propaganda in its licenses and by offering to bankroll them and give them free legal services. In short, the FSF hopes to turn programmers against their colleagues with the goal of destroying the industry.
Once again Brett, you have stated the obvious. The FSFs stated goal, I believe, is to make all software "Free Software" and rid the world of the practice of treating software as intellectual property. This is not the goal of everyone who wishes to use the LGPL license for their software. In fact, I think the majority of people who use an FSF license don't buy into all of the rhetoric from the FSF. If Wine went LGPL and a developer wished to enforce the LGPL license I'm sure the FSF would be more than happy to help. And you are probably right that they would encourage it. But the bottom line is that it's still in the copyright holders' hands. Your notion that the Wine developers are the FSFs sheep is absolutely appalling. I for one, and I think everyone else on this list as well, have had enough of this blatant anti-FSF rhetoric of yours. I think everyone has gotten the point by now and by continuing your argument you are only serving to further distance yourself from the Wine developers. Nobody likes a troll. If you have something else to say other than Wine must stay with the X11 license because only then is it truly free software and the FSF must die, then please do so. If not, then please shut up. -Dave
On Sun, 10 Feb 2002 02:21, Anthony Taylor wrote:
Brett Glass wrote:
At 10:37 PM 2/9/2002, winedev(a)admdev.com wrote:
MANY of the best programmers on GPL or GPL-like projects are commercial programmers in real life.
This puts them at very serious risk.
Sir,
You have made this claim many times, and asserted various lawyers have told you it is true. Please explain the details. The GPL and LGPL specifically cover source code, * not* algorithms. How can the act of reading *GPL source code expose you to liability, any more than reading a novel can prevent you from writing your own?
Apple sued Microsoft based on "Look-and-Feel". In this case, it was fortunate that Microsoft won. Lawyers are not compared to sharks for the heck of it. Sean -------------- scf(a)farley.org
participants (7)
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Brett Glass -
David Elliott -
Francois Gouget -
Sean Farley -
Steve Langasek -
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