210 Alex and the Judge << Prev Next >>
by: ColonelZen	IP: 124.105	rated: 1-0	posted: 2006-11-09 21:56:42
Alex Terekov, deploring an appellate decision, as if his disapproval meant anything to anyone wrote:   --------------------------------   And then he compared it to "a flourishing market in legal   treatises and other materials, plus reference databases   such as LEXIS and Westlaw, even though courts give away   their work (this opinion, for example, is not covered by   copyright and may be downloaded from the court’s web site   and copied without charge). And so it is with operating   systems."     Now tell me with a straight face that he wasn't drunken   (i.e. moronized by the RMS' pseudo legal writing known as   the GNU GPL).     Can you?   ---------------------------     Of course we can Alex. The judge is making it very plain that he "gets it" that part of the motivation for F/OSS and the GPL in particular is to perpetuate one's thoughts and pass them on to be built upon in the future. In other words, it sounds to me like Judge Eastman has looked upon the works under the GPL and recognised that it is in some part - and a part he found quite legally defensible - the same as why some judges feel their calling: to make their thoughts and whatever wisdom they are blessed with a part of the world to be kept and built upon for the future.     There really *is* value which is not money, Alex.     -- TWZ