GPL - possible violation - what should I do?

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra rms at 1407.org
Fri Mar 22 11:49:23 UTC 2002


On Fri, 2002-03-22 at 07:44, Claus Färber wrote:
> No, that's plain wrong. The Directive 91/250/EEC clearly says:
> | Whereas an objective of this exception is to make it possible to
> | connect all components of a computer system, including those of
> | different manufacturers, so that they can work together;
> (where it is clear from later paragraphs that components refers to
> both hard and software.)

Why can't different manufacturers work together?
How come a change from ASF's httpd to GPL'ed would fall under antitrust
law?

Let's keep in mind a few things:
  a) manufacturers can continue to develop their own versions of apache
     httpd based under a lower version that has the ASL
  b) manufacturers of proprietary stuff are those who are having a more
     restrictive license. The change is benefitial to competition, just
     not to their licensing model.
  c) they are not excluded from developing with apache, they choose to
     exclude themselves by not willing to comply with a license that
     would break their monopoly on the proprietary extension.

A change of apache httpd to GPL would not hinder competition in favour
of ASF but enlarge competition. To comply with the new license, the
proprietary extension maker would have to open the extension to
competitors. He can simple take an older version of apache httpd and
develop on it.

Cheers, rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Ghandi
+ So let's do it...?
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