That Notorious Suit (Slightly OT)

[Nathan Kelley]

To Daniel Carrera <dcarrera at math.umd.edu>,

>>> From: Nathan Kelley <digitaleon at runbox.com>,
>> From: Daniel Carrera <dcarrera at math.umd.edu>,
> From: Nathan Kelley <digitaleon at runbox.com>,

>>> 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?

Nope. Whenever I see that name attached to an article I skip it.

There are others making these claims, and what's odd is they seem to 
believe them. The odd part is where you don't see these claims, or even 
inquisition, on proprietary licenses hidden in the shrinkwrap. They 
assume that proprietary licenses hidden in the shrinkwrap were crafted 
by people who know what they're doing and don't need to be challenged, 
and that open-source licenses are by definition not. As Zak pointed 
out, this is not a logical or cohesive argument.

So, we end up with analysts not asking the tough questions, online 
publications such as those above giving said analysts airtime, and the 
wrong idea gets conveyed; the association between the GnU General 
Public License and Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt. This is why you keep 
seeing very odd opinions and ideas of what the GPL represents, versus 
what it actually does.

But since declaring a license invalid out-of-hand will cause an analyst 
to be subject to extreme ridicule on the grounds they're straying from 
their field of expertise, they also claim that, were the GPL to be 
tested in court found meritorious, that would be proof absolute that 
you could rely on it not to land you, your colleagues and your 
customers in a nasty spot.

It all sounds very silly, doesn't it? But I've read it enough times to 
know how the story goes. And each time I see it, I remain surprised at 
how short-sighted some of these people can be. I believe it will reduce 
further as Linux-distributions and other technologies become more 
mainstream, and thus a fact of life.

>> 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.

Unfortunately, yes. I was surprised though, at my current workplace, to 
find a distinct lack of PHB's in IT areas. It only means that silly 
decisions and sillier convictions are less per month than the average, 
though :-(

>>> 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.

Zak made good points here about Apache, Perl and PHP. I'll just add 
that the reasons for not choosing to go with the GPL are as much 
ideological - from what I've seen, having been close to some projects - 
as they are with choosing the GPL for the reasons the FSF intends... 
despite what RMS says about open-source.

Cheers, Nathan.
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