Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 04:03:18PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> > Lawsuits are not intrinsically bad for free software. Prohibiting
>> > lawsuits is significantly limiting and imposes real, significant
>> > costs.
>>
>> It's fairly obvious that a requirement that you not sue the licensor
>> doesn't impose any costs on you.
>
> This is fairly obviously wrong. It grants the licensor a carte blanche
> license to do anything they like
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
No, to infringe your bogus software patent.
> and you have no legal recourse
> against them.
Yes, you do; give up using their patent-violating software, then sue.
Just like SCO *really* should have stopped distributing under the GPL
*before* it initiated its lawsuit. (That they didn't indicates their
incompetence.)
> That's clearly a significant cost; you have signed over
> all legally protected rights to them.
All legally protected rights to *enforce your patent against my software
program*.
If my license required you to give up your "legally protected rights" to
claim falsely that my program was written by you in order to use my
program, that would be free as well. Luckily that isn't a "legally
protected right", unlike the "right" to control any program implementing
overlapping windows.
>> It blocks various revenue streams, but
>> so does the GPL.
>
> Geez, what is with this SCOish attitude that lawsuits are revenue
> streams? That's *abuse* of the legal system.
That's what software patent lawsuits are, yes.
> Only if you define "free software authors" to not include anybody who
> deserves to be sued.
...for infringement of "software patents".
Nobody deserves to be sued for infrignment of bogus patents which shouldn't
exist, right?
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