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From: Andreas Leitgeb on 22 Jun 2010 06:09
Arne Vajhøj <arne(a)vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> They lawyers may find it very problematic.

IANAL, but sometimes playing devil's advocate:

A company could write some useful code, and donate it to
public domain. Later, when others have started using it,
the company could be taken over, and the new owners may
point out, that that previous act of pd-izing was illegal
from the beginning and furtheron demand license-fees ...

From: Andreas Leitgeb on 22 Jun 2010 11:09
Lew <noone(a)lewscanon.com> wrote:
> Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> They lawyers may find it very problematic.
> Andreas Leitgeb wrote:
>> IANAL, but sometimes playing devil's advocate:
>> A company could write some useful code, and donate it to
>> public domain. Later, when others have started using it,
>> the company could be taken over, and the new owners may
>> point out, that that previous act of pd-izing was illegal
>> from the beginning and furtheron demand license-fees ...
> They would lose. Adverse possession.

Your word in ${user.preferred.deity}'s ear. :-)

From: ClassCastException on 22 Jun 2010 20:37
On Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:30:38 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 31-05-2010 06:37, ClassCastException wrote:
>> Anyone who clings to a theory despite a growing weight of contrary
>> evidence has ceased to practice science and has become a
>> pseudoscientific quack at best and a religious nut at worst.
>
> Bullshit.

So, climate change deniers, creationists, etc. are not pseudoscientific
quacks and religious nuts?

That's news to me.

> All the serious economic science expect there to be some effect but
> consider it very difficult to estimate it.

There have been studies, by e.g. Boldrin and Levine. The measured effects
are negative, i.e. patents actually make things worse.

>>>> The moral of the story: the GPL absolutely is NOT incompatible with
>>>> profiting from selling software, NOT EVEN if you restrict your
>>>> business model to selling copies.
>>>
>>> Companies making monet on GPL usually do it by selling support
>>
>> Correction: usually have at least *one* revenue stream be selling
>> support. It need *not* be the *only* one.
>
> No. But it is by far the largest for most of the wellknown open source
> companies.

Define "wellknown open source companies". If it's only companies like Red
Hat whose sole product is software, you're probably right; widen it to
include companies like IBM that are involved heavily with open source but
do other things as well ...

>>> The GPL license does not prohibit it, but the terms of GPL plus basic
>>> economics do that you need something other than selling copies to
>>> prosper.
>>
>> If that were true, then Aquafina would have to sell more than just
>> bottled water to prosper.
>
> You can probably sell GPL software for the same price as a bottle of
> bottled water.
>
> But that will not make the software industry prosper.

Define "prosper"? Thinner margins doesn't equate to losses. So if by
"prosper" you mean companies like Microsoft laughing all the way to the
bank and pocketing billions, making people like Bill Gates the richest on
the planet, then no, probably not. If by "prosper" you mean "positive
growth, however small", then it's another story.

In practice, though, I would expect selling support to become more
lucrative than selling copies.
From: ClassCastException on 22 Jun 2010 20:59
On Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:55:29 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

> On 31-05-2010 06:46, ClassCastException wrote:
>> On Sat, 29 May 2010 22:10:56 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> So the existence of open source does not prove that copyright is not
>>> necessary.
>>
>> I don't think so. Open source with the BSD or Apache license has so
>> little restriction on distribution that if all software code was public
>> domain, the BSD license and Apache license using development/business
>> models would pretty much be unaffected.
>
> They seem to think otherwise, because they chose their licenses over
> public domain.

As Bent pointed out elsethread, it's not apparently a sure bet to
dedicate a work to the public domain. Legally astute open source
developers may choose super-permissive licenses as a legally-sure-bet
alternative that carries most of the same benefits.

>> If copyright disappeared tomorrow, the whole software industry would
>> eventually reorganize along the lines of such projects.
>
> Unlikely.
>
> Apache is getting a lot of money from IBM.
>
> IBM making less money => less resources to Apache, Eclipse etc..

Why would IBM be making less money? Selling copies of Apache and Eclipse
is not IBM's primary revenue stream. The last time I checked, selling
hardware was, or was one of them.

>>> Given that you do not provide links or names or anything, then the
>>> teenager guess is as good as any.
>
>> Now, since you seem to need some real hand-holding here, I'll post the
>> links:
>>
>> http://www.againstmonopoly.org/
>> http://www.techdirt.com/
>
> The top story right now is a speech by a biochemist and something about
> T-shirts respectively.

Wait a few hours.

>> Most open source licenses do not actually enforce anything crucial to
>> the business model, so to the ability to profit from the software
>> development. Arguably even the GPL doesn't, but particularly most of
>> the non-"copyleft" ones just ask for attribution and maybe one or two
>> other minor things. Trademark law and laws against misrepresentation
>> and fraud could probably be used to cover such needs, and they can
>> probably be done without.
>
> Apparently they believe otherwise, because they chose their licenses.

As Bent pointed out elsethread, it's not apparently a sure bet to
dedicate a work to the public domain. Legally astute open source
developers may choose super-permissive licenses as a legally-sure-bet
alternative that carries most of the same benefits.
From: ClassCastException on 22 Jun 2010 21:13
On Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:52:42 -0400, Jeff Higgins wrote:

> On 5/27/2010 10:58 PM, ClassCastException wrote:
>> In dealing with Java,
>
> Throughout this rambling discussion there has been no citation of case,
> regulatory, or statutory law from any jurisdiction.

No one jurisdiction covers all software development (or even all Java
software development); there have been mentions of the present laws of
Norway and the United States, though.
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