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From: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
To: "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@mail.gadugi.org>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jmerkey@gadugi.org
Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.9 and the GPL Buyout
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 19:04:32 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1103655872.6111.118.camel@localhost.localdomain> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20041220212723.GA8634@mail.gadugi.org>

On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 15:27 -0600, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> We are adopting Federal Copyright and Trademark law, and Federal Patent
> law into our courts.  We are also enacting trade secret laws that make it
> easier for folks to claim trade secrets on Open Source code for 
> individual authors.  

Why? You're not a signatory to the Berne Convention and thus surely you
don't need to honour it? You can just re-use the GPL'd code without our
permission, and make your law permit it. You could adopt US copyright
law with exceptions for the Linux kernel. There's precedent for such
exceptions -- see what the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
has to say about Peter Pan, for example:
http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880048_en_28.htm#sdiv6

And enacting the US patent law is absurd -- why would you want to copy
something as broken and abusable as that?

-- 
dwmw2


  parent reply	other threads:[~2004-12-21 19:11 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2004-12-20 21:27 Linux 2.6.9 and the GPL Buyout Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-20 21:42 ` Timothy D. Witham
2004-12-20 21:47   ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-21  9:25     ` Bernd Petrovitsch
2004-12-21 16:11       ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-21 18:05         ` Bernd Petrovitsch
2004-12-20 22:26 ` Jesper Juhl
2004-12-20 22:18   ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-20 23:03     ` Jesper Juhl
2004-12-20 22:57       ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-21  2:40         ` Gene Heskett
2004-12-21 16:26           ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-21 19:31             ` Zwane Mwaikambo
2004-12-21  9:56 ` William Lee Irwin III
2004-12-21 16:14   ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-21 12:34 ` Horst von Brand
2004-12-21 16:19   ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-21 16:51     ` Henning P. Schmiedehausen
2004-12-21 17:19       ` Jeff V. Merkey
2004-12-21 19:04 ` David Woodhouse [this message]
2004-12-21 21:11   ` Jeff V. Merkey

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