From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,d0f6c37e3c1b712a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!s13g2000cwa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "Hyman Rosen" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: AdaCore ... the Next SCO? Date: 18 Jul 2006 07:22:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1153232531.124342.293270@s13g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> References: <1151405920.523542.137920@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com> <1151434144.2179.36.camel@localhost> <1151965334.709372.227600@a14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <3Ryqg.368$Rk2.140@trndny04> <1152882713.304794.267470@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <34r70ox8kc.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de> <1153167224.590828.32290@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com> <1153175027.628030.98470@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <1153220326.967685.309610@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.253.248.208 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1153232537 24661 127.0.0.1 (18 Jul 2006 14:22:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:22:17 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: G2/0.2 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: s13g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=204.253.248.208; posting-account=lJDDWg0AAACmMd7wLM4osx8JUCDw_C_j Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:5764 Date: 2006-07-18T07:22:11-07:00 List-Id: Ludovic Brenta wrote: > The reasons why the headers have no legal force ... > I think that AdaCore could successfully convince a > court that they are indeed the copyright holder. The natural mistake people here (and ACT as well) are making is to assume that law works like computers. For example, you are recommending technological solutions to ward off "spoofing attacks" on the license and copyright of programs. That's not how things work. In law, especially in license and contract disputes, the assumption is that everyone is honest and that things mean what they say. People wind up in court over disputes in meaning and interpretation. Deliberate dishonesty and fraud is a much rarer thing. Furthermore, law accomodates itself to the way things are. Should a licensing dispute about Ada generic packages wind up in court, it will be demonstrated that there are many open source libraries available on the internet, and that it's routine to download them and aggregate them under the terms of the licenses they contain in their headers and associated license files. It will also be demonstrated that for many of the libraries that ACT supplies and claims are distributed only under the GPL, there are either identical or ancestral versions available elsewhere with the extra exemption. The onus will be on ACT to explain why, if they wished to change the license terms, they did not follow normal practice and indicate the changed terms in the files they distribute. The answer is going to be laziness or attempted entrapment, and neither will sit well with the court. Dewar's comments are those of a cautious (Ada!) programmer - he says that since you have no way of knowing who might have altered the headers of the files, you cannot trust them and so they are irrelevant, and therefore they should be ignored, regardless of what they say. A lawyer would laugh at this. A lawyer's assumption would be that things must mean what they say and say what they mean. Regardless of whether someone down the road might fraudulently alter the license of a file, it is the responsibility of the distributors to make sure that the license terms are given clearly and unambiguously if they intend to later enforce their ownership rights. You've all seen the automatic disclaimers that company lawyers attach to outgoing e-mails, the warning labels on possibly dangerous products, and so on. Do you really think that a lawyer would sanction sending out files that contain deliberate misstatements of their licensing terms? It's laughable.