IP: more on Letter to Michael Robertson [LINDOWS]from Bruce Perens

[David Farber <dfarber () earthlink net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Nelson <nelson () crynwr com>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 10:02:06 
To: "David Farber" <dfarber () earthlink net>
Subject: Re: IP: more on  Letter to Michael Robertson [LINDOWS]
        from   Bruce Perens

Brett Glass <brett () lariat org> writes:
> There are serious questions about whether that requirement is, in
> fact, enforceable under contract law.
> <snip>
> And not all of the code in Lindows is covered by the GPL.
> <snip>
> It is when the license itself is anti-business, or when the goal is to
> harm the company or waste its developers' energies.

I should note that Brett Glass is NOT a Microsoft plant, even though
the only people actively dismissing the GPL are himself and Microsoft
employees.  He has his own legitimate reasons for disliking the GPL.

That does not give him license to misrepresent the GPL.  The GPL does
*not* form a contract, and so it's a moot point whether it is
enforcable under contract law.  The GPL provides instead licenses the
software under copyright law.  You have no permission to copy any
GPL'ed program absent a license.  Only compliance with the terms of
the GPL gives you permission.

Lindows certainly contains software which is not covered by the GPL.
That does not release them from the requirement to abide by the
copyright.  Roughly 80% of all Open Source software is covered by the
GPL.  You can go through the Freebsd ports collection, or audit the
Debian packages if you want to verify that number.

It is again unfair of Brett to misrepresent the intentions of Bruce
Perens and others who want source code, even of test releases.  Brett
has no cause for concluding that the desire for license compliance
translates into a desire to harm Lindows.  Perhaps the testers want to
do a source code audit?  A number of types of buffer overruns can be
found only by examining the source code.

Brett tries to defend Lindows failure to comply with the copyright
license by saying that it is a minimal violation of the GPL.  He may
be right, but it is not his judgement to make.  Only the copyright
holder gets to make that decision.  The FSF holds the copyright on
various bits that Lindows is distributing without source.  They have
said that they do not want even minimal violations of the GPL.

And so Lindows should release the entire source code, even for test
releases.

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