From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Feb 23 5:39:27 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from post.mail.demon.net (finch-post-11.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.39]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD4C611122 for ; Tue, 23 Feb 1999 05:39:19 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from marko@uk.radan.com) Received: from [158.152.75.22] (helo=uk.radan.com) by post.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 10FI3N-000O0j-00; Tue, 23 Feb 1999 13:39:15 +0000 Organisation: Radan Computational Ltd., Bath, UK. Phone: +44-1225-320320 Fax: +44-1225-320311 Received: from beavis.uk.radan.com (beavis [193.114.228.122]) by uk.radan.com (8.6.10/8.6.10) with SMTP id NAA03215; Tue, 23 Feb 1999 13:38:39 GMT Received: from uk.radan.com (gppsun4) by beavis.uk.radan.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA09620; Tue, 23 Feb 99 13:38:36 GMT Message-Id: <36D2AF58.A2FB5E82@uk.radan.com> Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 13:38:32 +0000 From: Mark Ovens Organization: Radan Computational Ltd X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.3_U1 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en-GB Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Brett Glass Cc: dyson@iquest.net, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The GPL and the Robinson-Patman Act References: <4.1.19990222155920.0404e9d0@mail.lariat.org> <4.1.19990223010632.00b594b0@mail.lariat.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Brett Glass wrote: > > At 03:02 AM 2/23/99 -0500, John S. Dyson wrote: > > >RMS's lawyers are likely bigger than a reasonable size of us could pool > >together and afford to hire. > > Why? Does he have huge amounts of cash? If so, why does he live in > a cubicle at MIT? > I've been following the threads about the GPL with interest, but one thing puzzles me, and now that someone has mentioned lawyers it seems an appropriate time to ask. Surely the only way to enforce the terms of either the GPL or Berkeley licence is through the courts, but could any organization in the free software world actually afford such litigation (which I imagine would run into millions of dollars in the US)? If FreeBSD Inc. were to take GPL'd code and add it to the source tree under a Berkeley-style licence what could the FSF do about it? The 2 comments quoted above suggest that the FSF could possibly afford legal action against FreeBSD, but what if it was Sun, IBM, M$ etc. I can't believe that they could afford to take on a company of that size. In other words does this not mean that the GPL etc. relies on other people being honourable and observing the terms of the licence even though they may not agree with those terms? -- FreeBSD - The Power To Serve http://www.freebsd.org My Webpage http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~markov _______________________________________________________________ Mark Ovens, CNC Apps Engineer, Radan Computational Ltd. Bath UK CAD/CAM solutions for Sheetmetal Working Industry mailto:marko@uk.radan.com http://www.radan.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message