SFLC will love the 7th Circuit

[Alexander Terekhov]

On 10/13/07, dlw <danw6144 at insightbb.com> wrote:
> "Although the United States Copyright Act, ... grants exclusive jurisdiction
> for infringement claims to the federal courts, those courts construe
> copyrights as contracts and turn to the relevant state law to interpret
> them. Kennedy v. Nat'l Juvenile Det. Ass'n, 187 F.3d 690, 694  (7th
> Cir.1999)"; Automation by Design, Inc. v. Raybestos Products Co., 2006 WL
> 2636454 (7th Cir. 2006)

I suspect that Eben and his underlings will simply dismiss it from
consideration as totally meaningless dicta from yet another crazy
judge in the 7th Circuit and stick to the claim that "The GPL is a
License, Not a Contract, Which is Why the Sky Isn't Falling".

Exactly same type of totally meaningless dicta as the following
observations by the 7th Circuit of the United States:

1.) [FOSS contributors can't charge -- no software commerce] "Thus
the GPL propagates from user to user and revision to revision:
neither the original author, nor any creator of a revised or
improved version, may charge for the software or allow any
successor to charge. ... Linux and other open-source projects have
been able to cover their fixed costs through donations of time"

and

2.) [FOSS is junk] "People willingly pay for quality software even
when they can get free (but imperfect) substitutes. Open Office is
a free, open-source suite of word processor, spreadsheet and
presentation software, but the proprietary Microsoft Office has
many more users. Gimp is a free, open-source image editor, but the
proprietary Adobe Photoshop enjoys the lion's share of the market."

and

3.) [FOSS is doomed] "The number of proprietary operating systems
is growing, not shrinking, so competition in this market continues
quite apart from the fact that the GPL ensures the future
availability of Linux and other Unix offshoots."

EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

regards,
alexander.

--
"PJ points out that lawyers seem to have difficulty understanding the
GPL. My main concern with GPLv3 is that - unlike v2 - non-lawyers can't
understand it either."
                                 -- Anonymous Groklaw Visitor