Re: [ros-dev] Pissoff hotlix

[Quandary]

I'll take the opportunity to kill two birds with one
stone on this one.

On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 08:25:49PM +0200, Oliver
Schneider wrote:
>   > Quandary wrote:
>  > 
>  > > 2.c says that an *appropriate* copyright notice
>  > > must be displayed. It does not define what
>  > > appropriate means. It does *not* say, anywhere, 
>  > > that the copyright notice cannot be modified.
>  > 
>  > we as the copyright holders decide what's
>  > appropriate 
See below...

>   
>  Not only this. I believe that the meaning of this
>  paragraph *implies* that the copyright information
>  cannot be removed or replaced by anyone except the
>  copyright holder(s). And if you come and add some
>  code that you can add you copyright *without*
>  removing other's copyright(s). But I am not a lawyer
>  :o)
>  
And that's my point exactly -- you'd need a lawyer to
interpret that, and ultimately it's the judge who
makes the final decision as to what the "real"
interpretation or meaning is (at least it's that way
in the US). The more legal precidence and explicit
laws you can find to support an interpretation, the
better chance you can convince a judge to take your
point of view. Really, the lawyers job is to give you
a best guess as to what he thinks he can convince that
judge of -- but I for one lack the experience required
to make such a guesstimate ;).

In any case, the basic premise still holds: until we
can *prove* (or have a high chance of convincing a
juge) that the copyright change isn't appropriate, it
should be considered appropriate by default.
Defaulting to saying it's inappropriate means that we
could implicitly terminate any of these licenses even
on suspicion (i.e., guilty until proven innocent), and
that just doesn't make sense.


-- Travis

Always err on the side of caution


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[Royce Mitchell III]

Quandary wrote:

>  
> And that's my point exactly -- you'd need a lawyer to
> interpret that, and ultimately it's the judge who
> makes the final decision as to what the "real"
> interpretation or meaning is (at least it's that way
> in the US). The more legal precidence and explicit
> laws you can find to support an interpretation, the
> better chance you can convince a judge to take your
> point of view. Really, the lawyers job is to give you
> a best guess as to what he thinks he can convince that
> judge of -- but I for one lack the experience required
> to make such a guesstimate ;).
>
> In any case, the basic premise still holds: until we
> can *prove* (or have a high chance of convincing a
> juge) that the copyright change isn't appropriate, it
> should be considered appropriate by default.
> Defaulting to saying it's inappropriate means that we
> could implicitly terminate any of these licenses even
> on suspicion (i.e., guilty until proven innocent), and
> that just doesn't make sense.
>   
>  
Sounds to me the most prudent course of action would be a new version of 
the GPL license which clarifies this particular bit of confusion.

[KJKHyperion]

Quandary wrote:

>    And that's my point exactly -- you'd need a
> lawyer to interpret that,  
and ultimately it's the judge who makes the final
decision

nope. In these matters, the copyright holder basically owns your ass. We 
can revoke all rights to anyone we please. Copyleft is just good 
manners, copyright is the law. Remember this already happened: a fork of 
OpenBSD was killed by license termination in response to copyright 
misrepresentation - and, boy, does it take a special brand of stupidity 
to manage to violate a BSD license

That said, the Hostilix people have no shame and no fear; they are 
well-known copyright violators (their WinuxOS was a repackaged Windows 
2000, wasting SourceForge's bandwidth too) and are doing their best to 
alienate us; they are a bunch of loser punk posers who embarass the 
whole OS-development scene. Let them get away with it, they are 
do-no-good hacks and nothing can punish them worse than simply existing. 
Hostilix will die naturally from the complete lack of any form of skill 
on the part of the pathetic clowns who conceived it