Re: BK kernel workflow

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>]

On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 04:46:19PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 08:51:11AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 02:35:34PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > > Note that German copyright lay doesn't differentiate whether you paid 
> > > > or not - it only requires that you allowed to use the program.
> > > 
> > > Sure, but you aren't allowed to use it if you are going to do this.
> > > That's pretty unambiguous as well and we think we can make it stick,
> > > or at least that's what the lawyers have told me.
> > >...
> > 
> > The German copyright law says the licence clauses are invalid - not the 
> > licence itself.
> > 
> > I'm not sure how a lawyer would circumvent the law...
> 
> The flaw here is that you are presuming you have a legal right to use BK
> in the first place.  You don't, you only get that right if we grant it
> to you and if you can't agree with the terms you don't get BK.  It's 
> pretty simple and the terms are pretty reasonable.

As already said:

At least according to German law, the licence is still valid if some of 
the licence clauses are void because they violate the law.

If I know that a clause in a treaty is void according to the law, I can 
sign the treaty knowing that the clause is void but the treaty is still 
valid. The reason behind this is that a company shouldn't have any 
advantages from clauses that aren't allowed according to the law.


> As someone pointed out to me in private mail, it is the nature of any
> engineer to try and find a way to do something they are told can't be
> done.
> 
> Further more, he told me that he thought a lot of this discussin is 
> because people feel like the power of the Linux kernel was shifting
> from Linus to me because of BK.  Is that true?  Do you guys really 
> think that any of this crud gives me control over Linux?  Because
> that's certainly not my goal, the whole point was to make sure that
> Linus stayed in charge as long as he wanted.
>...

To clarify things:
- I do not use BK and I do not plan to use it
- I do currently not plan any significant contribution to any
  SCM tool
- although I'd be more happy if Linus would use an open source SCM tool,
  I can live with the current status quo


It has nothing to do with the question whether I like or dislike BK and 
it's licencing - I simply completely dislike it if someone from the USA 
thinks laws everywhere in the world are similar to US law. It's more 
than a year ago that I first told you that there's no case law in 
continental Europe, and to be honest, I'm quite pissed off by your 
attitude of still asking for case law in e.g. Germany.

Please, do me a favor and inform yourself about the differences. [1]

cu
Adrian



[1] e.g the Wikipedia article "Civil law (legal system)" gives an
    overview over the differences of the different law systems [2]
[2] it was interesting, I didn't know before that different from the
    other 49 US states, Louisiana has a civil law system

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed