Antitrust for Free Software (was Re: GPL - possible violation - what should I do?)

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

Il mer, 2002-03-20 alle 18:16, Tomasz Wegrzanowski ha scritto:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 06:10:15PM +0100, Giovanni Biscuolo wrote:
> > Il mer, 2002-03-20 alle 14:57, Claus F?rber ha scritto:
> > > Jan Wildeboer <jan.wildeboer at gmx.de> schrieb/wrote:
> > > > Interesting - Free software can violate antitrust laws? Can you
> > > > construct a theoretical example? Just curious :-)
> > > 
> > > Consider this: Apache changes the licence to GPL. As Apache has a  
> > > large market share, 3rd party vendors for WWW server solutions  
> > > would have to make their products compatible with Apache.
> > > 
> > > However, taken the GPL literally, they could not, for example,  
> > > write a plugin like mod_fancy_shopping_solution and release that  
> > > under a proprietary licence.
> > > 
> > > So proprietary software vendors could not access that market,  
> > > giving an competive advantage to Open Source software vendors.
> > 
> > They could use a proprietary web server, it's their choice.
> > 
> > Is this a joke?
> > 
> > Ciao.
> 
> No, this isn't a joke.

Oh, so I hoped.

> Antitrust law applies to anyone who is dominant on a market,
[...]

Antitrust laws applies to companies, not to software.

In the above example Apache web server is free software available to
anyone under the Apache Software License, Version 1.1.
Firthermore, The Apache Software Foundation exists to provide
organizational, legal, and financial support for the Apache open-source
software projects. The Apache Software Foundation is a membership-based,
non-profit corporation.

The very same is for all free software, since it is available to
*anyone* (even to competitors) under the terms of a free software
license.

... yes, it *was* a joke ;-)

Ciao.
-- 
Art and science are free and free is their teaching [IT Const., art.33]
Associazione Culturale MiLUG       | Xelera - servizi GNU/Linux 
http://www.milug.org               | http://xelera.it
mailto:giovanni.biscuolo at milug.org | mailto:g at xelera.it           
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 244 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20020321/7eda930f/attachment.sig>