Re: Zonker on Open Source licenses ..

[Alexander Terekhov]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> 
> Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> > Go grep the busybox's sources for "Author:" and "Copyright"
> 
> The BusyBox plaintiffs can sue only for their own copyrighted
> works.  It's up to the other rights holders to step in and file
> complaints too if they want to maintain the automatic termination.

Read slowly, Hyman.

"you must request a reinstatement of rights from the copyright holders
before making further distributions, or else cease distribution and
modification of the software forever. Different copyright holders
condition reinstatement upon different requirements, and these
requirements can be (and often are) wholly independent of the GPL. The
terms of your reinstatement will depend upon what you negotiate with the
copyright holder of the GPL’d program. 

Since your rights under GPLv2 terminate automatically upon your initial
violation, all subsequent distributions are violations and infringements
of copyright. Therefore, even if you resolve a violation on your own,
you must still seek a reinstatement of rights from the copyright holders
whose licenses you violated, lest you remain liable for infringement for
even compliant distributions made subsequent to the initial violation."

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html

> The general attitude among GPL developers, including the FSF, who

See also

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/donate/2007-letter.html

"Our clients are talented and generous people who put their technical
virtuosity and hard work into making wonderful software everyone can
freely copy, modify, and share. Our practice on their behalf conforms to
their values: we try to create agreement and eliminate artificial
barriers to innovation and access to technology. Our goal is to
eliminate risks today, rather than to sue over them tomorrow.

In these last three years we are proud to have built a client list that
includes the Apache Software Foundation, the GNOME Foundation, the Free
Software Foundation, the Sakai Foundation, the Software Freedom
Conservancy and X.org to name just a few."

regards,
alexander.

-- 
http://gng.z505.com/index.htm
(GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can
be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards
too, whereas GNU cannot.)