Public domain mistake?

[Russell McOrmond]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, daniel wallace wrote:

> Anyone who could show they had invested time and effort in reliance on
> promised copyright permissions could claim promissory estoppel to
> continue developing and expanding projects into the future.

  I've been trying to wrap my head around this and I'm thus far not able 
to.


  The GPL is an example of a copyright permission.  If a third party (such 
as a patent holder) tried to revoke the promise of the GPL, would this not 
be an area of law that would protect us against this?  We are building an 
entire economy around copyleft and non-copyleft free software and patent 
filers are attempting to harm that economy by creating legal "landmines".


> RMS would be rather disappointed. Microsoft would be happy.

  Sounds like RMS would be happy, Microsoft/SCO/IBM would be disappointed.

  What am I missing here?  What is a situation where a
monopoly-rent-seeker would gain benefit from this area of law, but a
non-monopoly-rent-seeker (FLOSS movement) would not?

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than 
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/

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