Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?

[Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>]

Rob,

You know, I would have to say you just waxed my arse all over the mailing
list and left it in the mop bucket for cooling off.  The beauty is I can
now laugh about it, and see you are so raw over the issue.  Have a case of
chapstick to help smooth over the burn.

It is kind of cool you had an atomic bomb to fry me, if I cared I would
respond in the old ugly manners, but hey I asked for it.  Feels like the
the dude in the Memorex commerial.

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Rob Landley wrote:

> On Thursday 11 December 2003 16:42, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> > Rob,
> >
> > > The fact you personally were off in a corner talking about little green
> > > men from mars is remarkably irrelevant to what I wrote to Hua Zhong (who
> > > I'm fairly certain is not you.  His english is better.)
> >
> > Gee, I love the insults.  I seriously doubt you have ever paid a lawyer
> > to even have the knowledge to allow you to pump out the bovine piles you
> > are spraying in the air.
> 
> I've noticed that you love insults, yes.  I believe you've finally found a 
> statement that we can both agree on.
> 
> > Correct, I am not a lawyer, and you admit you are not one.
> 
> Two.  Wow.  Progress.
> 
> > I have paid lawyers for advice and some damn good ones.
> >
> > Can you say the same?
> 
> I have paid lawyers for advice.  I have been paid BY lawyers.  I have hung out 
> socially with lawyers.  I have studied law for years, although not with the 
> aim of acquiring credentials.
> 
> Here's a week-long series on intellectual property I wrote for The Motley Fool 
> a few years ago.  It was reviewed by TMF's legal department, and we went back 
> and forth on a couple minor things before it got published.
> 
> http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000501.htm
> http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000502.htm
> http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000503.htm
> http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000504.htm
> http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker000505.htm
> 
> I've since spotted a couple more minor points that crept past the lawyers who 
> reviewed it.  I have learned since then.  I learned doing it: I still have 
> some of the literature I picked up visiting the PTO in washington DC doing 
> research for that series.  And I learned a lot years before doing it.  That's 
> just one example that's still online.
> 
> I have been paid to explain the standard community interpretation of the GPL 
> by at least three different companies' lawyers now.  (I started studying the 
> GPL and LGPL specifically in 1996, which is really what got me into this 
> whole hobby...)
> 
> A few years ago I had some fairly extensive email discussions with Richard 
> Stallman about copyright and the GPL (even driving to boston to interview him 
> in person once).  I've had considerably more extensive discussions with Eric 
> Raymond (whose wife is a lawyer, and who as president of OSI has been asked 
> to review licenses by companies like Apple and IBM...)
> 
> Heck, Eric and Cathy are _friends_ of mine.  Try "dig www.landley.net" and 
> "dig www.thyrsus.com": I'm still borrowing space on the machine in Eric's 
> basement because I've been too lazy to arrange a hosting box here in Texas.  
> (It's on my to-do list...)  I'm mentioned in the introduction of Eric's new 
> book because I went to Pennsylvania and crashed on his couch for a month to 
> edit the thing.  (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/pr01s06.html 
> paragraph 2. The "walkthrough" in 0.2 and 0.3 of the revision history was 
> _ME_.)
> 
> I'm the one who arranged to have a panel at Penguicon on intellectual property 
> issues with a real lawyer (Cathy) explaining what the various open source 
> licenses mean to attendees (See 
> http://penguicon.sourceforge.net/programming.shtml sunday, 10 am, north 
> belle).  This year's Penguicon will probably have another one, although I'm 
> much less involved...
> 
> And what I've learned from ALL of that (and far more that's not worth listing 
> here) is that there's a reason it's called a legal OPINION, and what you 
> generally say isn't "you're wrong" but "I disagree, and here's why".  Judges 
> give rulings, not lawyers.  (And judges' rulings get overturned, don't apply 
> to a given case, vary by jurisdiction, etc...)
> 
> Lawyers no more universally agree on interpretations of the law then techies 
> agree on kernel optimizations.  And open source licensing (as a subset of 
> intellectual property) is every bit as much a specialty area of the law as 
> virtual memory page replacement strategies (a subset of kernel development) 
> is a specialty area of programming.  (Most lawyers don't really know much 
> about it at all, they just know where to look it up.  Hence a couple lawyers 
> asking me what the community thinks the GPL means.  Obviously they don't take 
> my opinion as gospel: they go and read the thing themselves, and the law, and 
> as much relevant case law as they can find (which ain't much), and then we 
> have a back and forth...)
> 
> I don't know much about estate planning, tax law, insurance law, or civil 
> administrative procedure.  I keep forgetting what latin terms like "res 
> judicata" mean (god bless Google), and I had to look up "barratry" at the 
> start of the SCO thing.  But yes, I consider myself competently informed 
> about my little niche.
> 
> These days, with resources like http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ out 
> there, it's not nearly as hard to be up to speed on this as it used to be.  
> (You used to have to go to the LIBRARY.  And get out BOOKS.  And send money 
> to Nolo Press every time they got sued.  Uphill.  Both ways.)
> 
> > Can you say the same?
> 
> Why would I want to?
> 
> I've seen experts in this area.  Eben Moglen 
> (http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/) and Lawrence Lessig 
> (http://www.lessig.org/blog/) come to mind.
> 
> I am not an expert here.  I am an educated layman.  I read things like "Legal 
> battles that shaped the computer industry" (by Lawrence D. Graham, 
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567201784/026-4037783-2541254 ) for 
> fun.  Yes, I am weird.
> 
> You obviously aren't even an educated layman if you think that simply having 
> spoken to a lawyer means that legalness somehow rubbed off on you and gave 
> you an aura of absolute truth.  Every time I talk to a lawyer, the concept of 
> absolute truth in law gets farther and farther away...
> 
> Feel free to take that as a suggestion.
> 
> Rob
>