FDL again, was: My concerns about GPLv3 process

[simo]

On Sun, 2006-02-12 at 13:47 +0100, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

> None of what Alessandro described is harmful, it is explcitly allowed
> by the license.  You are claiming that there are problems when there
> are none, it is like having people claiming that the GPL has problems
> by disallowing a GPLed project being converted into a non-free
> program.

I must say the analogy is completely wrong, and, I'm sorry, almost
specious here.

> If you wish to have a way to enforce the copyright, then you will need
> to have copyright papers.  Otherwise, you cannot enforce it at all, it
> really doesn't matter what license you are using.  A judge would love
> to hear "Sorry your Honour, but I couldn't gather the copyright
> holders to actually sue the accused'.

I do not think a judge would love that, probably an evil lawyer from the
other side, but not the judge. I think the judge would actually like to
judge facts not handle formalities.

> This is a misconception you, and others have shown repatedly when it
> comes to copyleft, that unless you have a single copyright holder (or
> a very small number), it is impractible to enforce the license.  And
> if you cannot enforce the license, the license looses its charm.
> 
> In theory, anyone can go and make Linux a non-free program, since it
> is simply impossible to enforce the license there.

In practice I think this shows up to be false, otherwise it would have
already happened, don't you think SCO would have already done that
otherwise for example ?

Simo.