McBride's New Open Letter on Copyrights 770
dtfinch writes "An open letter was posted today by Darl McBride, where he restates his claim that the GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, patent laws, copyright laws, and the DMCA. Mostly he just builds up a false image of the Free Software Foundation and open source supporters claiming that they have no respect for intellectual property and believe copyrights should be eliminated, then attacks that image, AKA the straw man attack. Nothing we haven't seen before."
Groklaw already has a nice analysis.. (Score:2, Informative)
Also there is some other SCO news on the front page.
Personally I can't get past how SCO reckons they can make the GPL invalid and then face all the angry kernel developers suing them for illegally distributing their copyrighted works....
Re:Software Patents aren't the same as Copyrights (Score:3, Informative)
I seriously doubt that RedHat has interest in blowing away copyright.
Most of this letter really is a straw man attack. It's not worth my time to punch holes in all of Darl's claims, but among other flaws:
(A) Darl claims that the GPL violates the Constitution and a number of other things. All "evidence", weak as it is, deals entirely with his claims about the motivations of several groups of people that happen to use the GPL. It has nothing to do with the GPL itself. This is a logical fallacy, on the order of saying "Bob owns a gun and Bob owns a big truck, so anyone owning a gun uses an excessive amount of gas".
(B) It's pretty clear that RH doesn't want to eliminate copyrights. Software patents are a significant disaster -- they are in a few company's corporate interests, but you will be very hard-pressed to find *any* engineer that supports them.
(C) McBride claimed that the GPL is invalid. Again. I'm wondering how he intends to argue that SCO didn't massively infringe copyrights of thousands of parties by then distributing Linux. Again. Same old, same old.
(D) McBride lies, and is happy to deliberately mislead people. We have seen this over and over and over in his claims and releases for almost a year now. It would be more of a surprise to find that he's being honest than that he's lying again.
DMCA Protects U.S. From... Foreigners? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AKA the straw man attack (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. The argument boils down to "The GPL is unconstitutional because the people who wrote it don't like some current laws."
Of course, not liking current laws is also constitutionally protected in the USA, as is the right to voice ones opinions on the matter.
Re:basis in law! (Score:5, Informative)
Nevertheless, there is little need in the US for EULAs.
Or by Darl's bro and a tech writer?? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.gr oklaw.net/article.php?sto ry=20031204195915515
"But here is the odd part: SCO's lawyers didn't write this manifesto and neither did Darl, judging by the headers on the Word file. Yes, thanks to Microsoft's utter disregard for user privacy, we know who actually wrote this document, or at least whose computer was used. You see, Microsoft preserves such info as metadata, little pieces of info about you in the headers of each document you write in Word. Someone on Yahoo took a look at the document's Properties, and the document records that it was written by Kevin McBride and Dean Zimmerman, who is apparently a tech writer."
There's a problem with all of this (Score:3, Informative)
And you thought the law was dry (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Closed Letter (Score:5, Informative)
Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights.
However, after visiting the site, the only word used is "patent," the only occurance of "copyright" is at the bottom of the page claiming that it's a © of Redhat.
Re:Irony abounds. (Score:5, Informative)
They couldn't care less about the "Linux license" pocket money. And as it is, all SCO needs is a PR and law departments, so if other employees go away, that would only be convenient. And somehow I don't see him caring the slight bit about what his mom thinks of SCO business practices, either...
Re:Don't they......they don't..... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Irony abounds. (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. That's why it was published on Dec 4th... one day before Dec 5th when the judge has scheduled oral arguements the 3 motions to compel discovery (2 by IBM against SCO and 1 by SCO against IBM).
I'm not going to make predictions about what the judge will say or do tommorrow... but I will predict that this diversionary tactic doesn't prevent coverage of whatever the judge says.
SCO's lawyers didn't write this... (Score:4, Informative)
check this out (from groklaw [groklaw.net]):
[...]
But here is the odd part: SCO's lawyers didn't write this manifesto and neither did Darl, judging by the headers on the Word file. Yes, thanks to Microsoft's utter disregard for user privacy, we know who actually wrote this document, or at least whose computer was used. You see, Microsoft preserves such info as metadata, little pieces of info about you in the headers of each document you write in Word. Someone on Yahoo took a look [yahoo.com] at the document's Properties, and the document records that it was written by Kevin McBride and Dean Zimmerman, who is apparently a tech writer [caldera.com].
[...]
Re:Unconstitutional ??? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't get it. How can the GPL be unconstitutional ?
The basic arguement seem to be that the constitution states the purpose of copyright is the "promote progress of science..." AND the supreme court recently wrote "motive of profit is the engine that ensures progress of science".
There's certainly no disputing that the constitution really does have that, and that the court really did write such an opinon recently.
They claim the GPL is designed to destroy the profit motive. Suspecd disbelief for a moment and ignore the scant profit Redhat made a couple times.
So, if you put these three things together, you get:
I personally suspect there are a dozen reasons why this argument is bad. But that is, as nearly as I can tell from the letter, the basic arguement.
Re:Irony abounds. (Score:5, Informative)
IAAL. I can assure you that the PR people wrote it with a smattering of legalese dusted on top. The "arguments" are incoherent, the "authorities" are off the point while the rant at the outset about copy-left, etc. is completely irrelevant.
I must admit to admiring the ability to spout this rubbish with a straight face.
Elimination of copyrights (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Irony abounds. (Score:1, Informative)
See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031204
You know, I haven't seen that bit said that well.. (Score:3, Informative)
If GPL is not valid:
No (Score:2, Informative)
Lets respond to the troll.
Why give away the programs? So the programmers can make money by selling support and consultancy services. Funnily enough, they often found companies of their own to do this.
In Eldred, they didn't rule in favour of SCO's opinion, they ruled in favour of Ashcrofts line. It had nothing to do with SCOs opinion. And while we disagree with the DMCA, it protects Linux hippies from companies like SCO too.