RE: tlug: RMS and Amazon...

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "FB" == Frank Bennett <bennett@example.com> writes:

    >> You think they might pay attention to a "poison pill" clause
    >> that revokes their license to use free software?

    FB> Who is going to enforce it?  When viewed in terms of the
    FB> interests they are intended to protect, open source licenses
    FB> like the GPL should be widely enforceable, by parties with an
    FB> interest in seeing the line toed.  But because they are cast
    FB> in terms of a central rights holder (as they must be to work
    FB> within the legal framework that they rely upon), they must be
    FB> enforced by a particular party (like the FSF).

The FSF has most of the necessary assignments.  It would be
interesting to see what would happen with Linux eg.

    FB> This may lead to underenforcement.  I don't know of any
    FB> instances in which the GPL has been litigated.  I wrote to
    FB> Stallman for information about a year or so ago, and he said
    FB> that a warning had always been enough to get compliance.
    FB> Maybe ...

I don't see any reason to doubt RMS's statement, in the U.S.  The NeXT
case is pretty persuasive.

Remember, by the nature of open source software, there's not all that
much profit to redistribution there.  (And if there is, there is very
little open source software that is not replaceable by some
alternative which admits proprietary distribution of derivatives,
perhaps for fee.)  The main opportunity for profit from open source
derivatives is not restricted by the GPL: making improvements that
allow you to scale an application up to large-scale in-house
processing, so that the derivative application itself is never
redistributed (and thus is not restricted by any license satisfying
either RMS's definition of "free" or the Open Source Definition of
Perens et al).

On the other hand I am told that there is blatant infringement of the
GPL in Israel, and that Stallman refused to pursue it.

    FB> Amazon may say "So what?" to your face, and appeal to the
    FB> general public that a bunch of geeks are trying to bully them
    FB> out of legitimate gains from trade.

I wish them luck on that, given that (1) Amazon is attempting to
_restrain_ trade and thus reduce gains---the general public is rarely
very sympathetic to would-be monopolists, and (2) the geeks gave their
software away for free in the first place.  And don't forget (3) if it
goes to court, they will probably lose, whatever public opinion.

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