[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]
“This summer could be a lot hotter than usual–not because of
global warming, which may or may not be taking place, but because
of a lawsuit which may or may not be taking place.”
“Before summer’s end, a long-awaited court test of the GNU
General Public License may be filed, says Eben Moglen, professor at
the Columbia University Law School and general counsel to the Free
Software Foundation.“
“If you wait another couple of months I wouldn’t be surprised if
you see either a lawsuit or a voluntary agreement to comply entered
into by a major international software house that has done exactly
what you postulate, less in the ’embrace and extend’ model than in
the ‘security through obscurity’ model, which is another reason why
those who build works on top of free software sometimes try not to
disclose source,” Moglen told me in en e-mail exchange dealing with
the basic nature of the GPL, the licensing instrument of much if
not most Linux-related software. (I had asked him whether it would
be possible for a commercial software firm to envelop GPLed code,
alter it, and sell it, sans source code, and whether it would be
possible to obtain judicial relief under such circumstances.)”