Re: Fw: [FSF] FSF Settles Suit Against Cisco

[David Kastrup]

Ciaran O'Riordan <ciaran@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Rjack <user@example.net> writes:
>> The case was dismissed WITH PREJUDICE against the FSF.
>
> Wait a minute.  Did the court dismiss it IN ALL CAPS!!!! Well that changes
> things.
>
> But seriously, "with prejudice" is a legal term with whatever range of
> meanings in the USA.  I don't know all the range of meanings, and
> most/all people on this list don't know all the range of meanings, but
> we see from today's announcement that FSF was clearly in a very strong
> position.  So, as nasty as "dismissed with prejudice" sounds, we now
> know that it's just a legal term, it seems it's legal meaning is
> actually quite tame.

It isn't tame.  It means that the same suit cannot be brought again
given the same circumstances.  Since Cisco and the FSF now have a
written agreement with regard to the GPL adhereance procedure, the
circumstances _are_ different.  So the next time the FSF takes Cisco to
court for the same behavior, they need to make the non-heeding of this
agreement part of the suit and can't just restart from scratch.

Other than that, nothing has changed.

-- 
David Kastrup