Re: Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone

[Brian Litzinger <brian@worldcontrol.com>]

> On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 03:17:25PM -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>  > Then their code could be removed from the snapshot, and the folks who 
>  > were more
>  > interested in being smart rather than being right would get the $$$. 
>  > That's easy.

On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 11:18:26PM +0100, Dave Jones wrote:
> If you want to spend god alone knows how many hours tracking down
> who wrote what and nuking the relevant bits, that's your time to throw
> away. If you want the same featureset a little faster however, I
> believe SCO are still selling Openserver licenses.

INAL, but some many years ago I was involved in intellectual property
rights goings on.

At least in New York and California the owner of intellectual
property has to defend his property.  Otherwise it becomes
abandoned. (just like real property)

So similar to the license change for Mozilla, one simply announces
their intent suitably loud enough, waits a while, and then it
yours.

Basically, Jeff pays $50,000 for right X.  Those who don't
want to participate have 1 year to announce their desire not
to participate and identify the code contribution that will
not be part of the license deal.

After a year everyone knows where they stand, and the untold
millions of contributors who did not stand up to be counted
are irrelavent.

(well not entirely irrelavent, they could after the year is up
file a claim, but they'd probably lose individually.  On the other
hand, Jeff isn't going to get an injunction against them all
and litigating and winning a million IP cases is likely to be
quite a money loser, at least in the US)

As to international goings on I have no idea.

-- 
Brian Litzinger