From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S271892AbTGRWP1 (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Jul 2003 18:15:27 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S271886AbTGRWPN (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Jul 2003 18:15:13 -0400 Received: from smtp.bitmover.com ([192.132.92.12]:56516 "EHLO smtp.bitmover.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S271824AbTGRWMO (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Jul 2003 18:12:14 -0400 Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 15:27:02 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: David Schwartz Cc: Larry McVoy , Richard Stallman , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Bitkeeper Message-ID: <20030718222702.GC658@work.bitmover.com> Mail-Followup-To: Larry McVoy , David Schwartz , Larry McVoy , Richard Stallman , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20030718204405.GA658@work.bitmover.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1058563409.19511.74.camel@dhcp22.swansea.linux.org.uk> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam (whitelisted), SpamAssassin (score=0.5, required 7, AWL, DATE_IN_PAST_06_12) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 02:08:32PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote: > My understanding of the relevant case law in the United States is that > these types of restrictions are not allowed under copyright law itself. On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 10:23:30PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > Actually your license is simply irrelevant in most of thre world. You > aren't allowed to forbid reverse engineering for interoperability. "Judge, I want to violate this license on this product that I got for free because it's not free enough". "Judge, we give it out for free and we also developed technology to transfer the data out of our product and into a GPLed product, we do that at our expense and even host the competing GPLed repos for free and they still want to violate the license" Who do you think is going to win that one? Besides, have you considered that it is that license you appear to dislike so much which provides for the product, the hosting, the free public machines, the support, all of that? It's a pile of money and time and I don't see RMS steppng forward with an open checkbook. The license means we have a revenue stream. We use a significant portion of that revenue stream to help Linux. If the revenue stream goes away then so do the services we provide to you for free. They obviously have value or you wouldn't be using them. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm