From cowan@ccil.org Tue Mar 27 17:58:59 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 28 Mar 2001 01:58:59 -0000 Received: (qmail 30153 invoked from network); 28 Mar 2001 01:58:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 28 Mar 2001 01:58:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta2 with SMTP; 28 Mar 2001 01:58:57 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14i5Ep-0005n0-00; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 20:59:07 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] jbofi'e version 0.36 released In-Reply-To: from "Robert J. Chassell" at "Mar 27, 2001 07:21:41 pm" To: bob@rattlesnake.com Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 20:59:07 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Robert J. Chassell scripsit: > So far, when threatened by legal action, every company that has tried > to sneak past the GPL has given in before going to court. Why? In > the cases I know of, and I suspect in all the others, their lawyers > have said: "You have two choices: to give up now or to lose later. It > is cheaper for you to give up now. So give up now." Not necessarily. It may just have been "Why risk being sued by these armadillos? *They* aren't in business, and have no stockholders to answer to. You can probably win, but only by spending lots of $$$$, so give up now." > *You*, I take it, are ready to spend 250,000 US dollars, and more > likely, four to eight times as much, and time out of your life, just > to defend *your* right to distribute code that you yourself have > written with no help or input from anyone else. That could happen no matter what license I used. Or will the FSF assist with any GPLed code, whether it is FSF-owned or not? > If you are not -- or if you are not allied with someone who is -- you > are `not real'. Of course, if your work is not considered > sufficiently worthwhile by profitable thieves, then the probability of > someone trying to steal it in a legal fashion is low. You are dealing > with a risk management issue. Just so. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter