Item — HN Reader

It is good if there are more decisions of the highest court. Legal uncertainty is harmful for open source. And as long as there are points in the GPL without leading decisions, this legal uncertainty will continue and open the door for trolls to blackmail open source users with out-of-court settlements in order to enrich themselves.

Actually it would be so simple: I give you source code, you give me changes back, we're even. [...] If you make hardware that locks down software, it's your decision as a hardware maker; it has no impact on my decision as a software maker to give you the software. [...] To me the important part was always: I give you software, you can do whatever you want with it; if you make improvements, you have to give them back. (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU).

1 comments

I think there is a spectrum of opinions on where the dial is set, but what is best for all of us, from say a 10 or 30 year viewpoint?

I wonder if GPL3 didn't have quite so many changes if it would have been more widely accepted.

But listening to RMS he said he didn't realize that companies would "tivoize" everything so he added:

"(0) The freedom to run the program as you wish, for whatever purpose."

Personally I think it kind of sucks that much of computing coming out nowadays has locked bootloaders.

In European law, the actual party will is the determining factor in contracts, not the (possibly ambiguous) wording. This is especially important with licenses such as GPL, which are full of unclear, secondary regulations. That is why the clear, unambiguous statement of the original Linux author is important.

Good software, which is not used due to (unnecessary) legal uncertainties, and thus cannot benefit from the support of potent companies, is of no use to anyone, neither in the short nor the long term. The sooner legal uncertainties are removed, the better. Unfortunately, companies avoid legal disputes, often at all costs; that is why it is so easy to blackmail them with out-of-court, very often unfounded claims from patent and copyright law.

When I buy a product, I want it to work well and have good value for money. For this it is irrelevant if the bootloader is locked. If I want to make a system to tinker where I can replace the firmware, I buy a Raspi. The Raspi also benefits from contributions from companies that use Linux in devices where I might not be able to replace the system.

> In European law, the actual party will is the determining factor in contracts

It is similar in most other jurisdictions too, but wording predominates in practice.

No, the Anglo-Saxon law (US, UK, etc.) is different and makes no assumptions outside of the contract; the contract is applied verbatim as written, and when something is missing, it is not part of the contract. In Europe on the other hand the contract is just one piece of the puzzle and the judge can add, remove or modify clauses in search of the true pary intentions; in case of conflicting elements, the judge may refer to what is applicable under the usual rules for such contracts and even change the contract type. That's why Tivoization with GPL v2 is unquestionably legal in USA, but there is still a certain legal uncertainty in Europe, because there is no supreme court decision.

EDIT: clarifications

> and when something is missing, it is not part of the contract.

What if a clause is ambiguous to benefit both parties equally, but not at the same time? Are both parties forbidden to act on their own in those cases?

There is no general answer. The judge decides and instructs the parties how to proceed. Contracts in Anglo-Saxon countries are usually much larger and regulate many more eventualities than one is used to in Europe. It is then usually a matter of presenting evidence in the sense of the specific wording of the contract.