OT - GNU Contract Law Theory: ANTICIPATORY REPUDIATION

[Alexander Terekhov]

On 8/28/07, Alexander Terekhov <alexander.terekhov at gmail.com> wrote:
> Breaking news!!! Well, at least now the world knows that the GPL is a
> contract. :-)
>
> http://www.fsf.org/news/microsoft_response

ROTFL!  Enjoy:

Groklaw member's reply to

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070828105447144
(FSF to Microsoft: "You Can't Declare Yourself Exempt from GPLv3")

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FSF to Microsoft: "You Can't Declare Yourself Exempt from GPLv3"

Authored by: Alan(UK) on Tuesday, August 28 2007 @ 04:23 PM EDT

I know we have been around and around this, but I am still doubtful.

If it came to a court case between RMS (a hairy man) and Bill Gates and his
company (all very smooth men), what would a judge do? If it were a case of
Microsoft causing some harm to RMS's person by their actions, then a fair judge
would decide according to the evidence. But in this case, the plaintive is
telling the judge that the defendant has to hand over his constitutional rights
to himself and all hairy men everywhere. And the reason for this? RMS has come
up with a clever licence that means that Microsoft is bound to it because of
something that it did before the licence was even applied to any software. There
then follows a long but entirely logical argument to prove it.

I cannot help thinking that the judge faced with a very clever hairy man who
wants to circumvent all the laws that smooth men have paid good money for, would
find in favour of the smooth men even if an appeal is certain. There is just too
much at stake here to let the hairy man win. If this one wins then the case will
be used to help other hairy men to win. Feudalism would collapse.

---
Microsoft is nailing up its own coffin from the inside.
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Man oh man. Open Source is real fun. :-)

regards,
alexander.