[Asterisk-Users] SysMaster and GPL Violation

[Joe Greco]

> Joe Greco wrote:
> > The GPL is fundamentally flawed in that it's never been functionally tested
> > and challenged in court, and many IP lawyers believe that there are 
> > challenges that it would not survive.  The fact that some lawyers may have 
> > found further legal loopholes to exploit is not shocking, given the holes 
> > in the current implementation.
> 
> Actually, this is not true. The GPL was tested in a Germen court and 
> survived very well thank you very much.

I'm not so worried about courts where a straightforward reading of a license
may be interpreted without many complications by an impartial judge.  (I
apologize for having forgotten that large parts of the rest of the world
have a sane legal system.  Look at us, we finally got rid of Ashcroft...)

I'm much more interested in the U.S. system, where case law often has an
unexpected and interesting effect on rulings, and frequently the party with
more money to throw at a problem can win anyways.

IOW, I wouldn't want IBM to try breaking the GPL in a courtroom, because I
believe there'd be a large chance that they'd find a way to succeed.

> But this is not the most improtant point. The important point is this:
> 
> The target of a good license (or any legal document for that matter) is 
> not to "survive" in court. The purpose of a good license is to be so 
> iron clad clear that it never ever gets into court in the first place.
 
Well, there, that's the BSD license for you.  Short.  Sweet.  Ironclad.

That's *not* the GPL, which is a myriad maze of twisty turns and various
requirements and obligations, all of which represent attack vectors
against the litigants and against the license itself.  Until they've all
been tested in court, I'm not really convinced that it is ironclad.

> And this, my friend, is something the GPL has done *very well*.

Mostly because people have been afraid to bring it to court, because their
IP lawyers are staring at it in horror.

Things like the preamble are completely stupid, because it talks about the
goals of the license.  A court is allowed to consider that additional data
when evaluating a case, and if there were to be a conflict between that and
the actual "license terms", it is ambiguous (and up to the court) which
of the preamble and the terms would actually win out.

Yuck.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.