That Notorious Suit (Slightly OT)

[Daniel Carrera]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 06:58:09AM +1100, Nathan Kelley wrote:

> >I had never heard of this stumbling block (not to say that it wasn't 
> >there). But I've never heard of someone not wanting to use a GPL 
> >product because they weren't sure if the license would stand in court.
> 
> It's a point commonly brought up by analysts when handing out advice 
> through c|net, BusinessWeek, InfoWorld, and friends.

Are those analysts all called "Rob Enderle" by any chance?

Don't waste your time with him.  Before I knew better, I actually thought 
to engage in discussion with im to see his point of view.  He doesn't 
actually have a degree on either IT or Law, but considers himself an 
expert in both.  He doesn't actually have any backing for his arguments, 
but that doesn't deter him.  In our conversation I made an effort to be 
polite and I got the distinct impression that he was TRYING to make me 
mad (by being condescending or misrepresenting what I had said).


> They don't put 
> stock into the GPL apparently because a high-priced team of lawyers 
> didn't create it. That is, of course, a silly point to make, but they 
> make it anyway. And people listen, including The People Who Matter™ at 
> any given workplace.

Sigh...
Typical PHB.


> >If Linux were BSD there would be no suit, simply because there would 
> >be no competition.
> 
> I agree wholeheartedly with this point. And there wouldn't be thousands 
> of volunteers if they thought they were providing free labor for 
> others, particularly development houses that then released products 
> only for the Windows platform. Fortunately, we're not in that 
> dimension.

I hadn't thought of that.  That might be part of the reason why the 
GPL-based projects are so much larger than the BSD-based projects.

Cheers,
-- 
Daniel Carrera    | OpenPGP KeyID: 9AF77A88
PhD grad student. | 
Mathematics Dept. | "To understand recursion, you must first
UMD, College Park | understand recursion".
--
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