"Jeremy Sliwinski (mailing list account)" <listbox@unix-boy.com> writes:
> "In addition, it is asking the court to make Cisco turn over any
> profits from the products covered by the software dispute."
>
> To whom, the authors of the software? Nope, doesn't sound like
> it. It sounds like it is going to the FSF.
If the FSF owns the copyright on software and someone is abusing their
license of the software, then the FSF is entitled to compensation.
>From the FSF's site: (http://www.fsf.org/news/2008-12-cisco-suit)
The FSF's complaint alleges that in the course of distributing
various products under the Linksys brand Cisco has violated the
licenses of many programs on which the FSF holds copyright,
including GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library.
To put it another way, if you make a profit on something I own by
violating the rules of use I gave you, I have every right to seek
compensation.
The FSF knows they cannot claim compensation for anything they don't own
the copyright to. However, the FSF requires that copyright be assigned
to them for any work you do on the GNU project. (I have a copyright
assignment on file with the FSF for my contributions to Emacs.)
> This is the reason why I actively discourage companies and developers
> from using the GPL; creat your own license so that you control the
> software and can grant the users the rights you want.
You encourage confusion when you ask people to “create” their own
license. If you don't like the GPL, fine, but use one of the existing
licenses out there instead of creating a new one.
An un-enforced license is a license without teeth. You're right that
the GPL is not “free” in the same sense that the BSD or MIT licenses are
free. The GPL does require something from you if you decide to modify
the software and distribute your changes.
And there are commercial advantages to the GPL that BSD-like licenses
don't have. Sun chose the GPL for Java so that they would be the only
entity that could create proprietary versions of Java. If you want a
custom, non-GPLed version of Java, you pretty much have to go to Sun.
Note that if Sun did not own the copyright for all parts of Java, they
could not do this.
One reason programmers like myself assign copyright to the FSF is
because they have the resources to pursue violations of the GPL that we
don't have. I am personally very glad that the FSF is willing to take
legal action against Cisco and I'm sure they wouldn't have done it if
they did not feel confident they had a good case.
(Subject changed since the FSF represents more programmers than just RMS.)
Mark.
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Received on 12/12/08
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