Re: AdaCore ... the Next SCO?

["Hyman Rosen" <hyman.rosen@gmail.com>]

Michael Bode wrote:
> This, as I have learned here, has no legal force.
> You always have to ask the author.

You have heard this claimed here. I would suggest
that you do not "learn" it. Should things ever come to
enforcement actions, a judge is going to look very
dubiously at anyone claiming that a plain statement
of license embedded in a file does not apply. Go have
a look over at Groklaw and their discussion of "squishy
law".
<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060716182835630>.

The law is not a computer program which is rigidly
executed by lawyers and judges. Any plaintiff will be
asked why, if he did not want files to be distributed in
accordance with the license in the header, he allowed
that license to remain there. He will be asked this in
the context of the FSF's instructions on how to apply
the GPL, <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>, which
say to put the license and copyright information into the
source file headers. The judge at best will think that the
plaintiff was too lazy to properly establish his rights and
at worst that he was deliberately trying to entrap the
recipients of the software. And the plaintiff will have his
case summarily dismissed.