EU software patent law faces axe 782
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Op Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:17:58 +0000, schreef billwg: You couldn't tell the difference between M$' practice of taking others' ideas and...
It is untrue that Microsoft does this, particularly as a common practice. In your bias you may wish to attribute all sorts of things to Microsoft, but they have little need to do these things...
1. You agree it hasn't gotten to court. 2. You have no specifics to offer where it has even been threatened. 3. What would be the basis for a fine? If there is no patent involved, there can be no infringement.
I have no idea what you are on about, so supply a detail or two out of the thousands of cases you reference.
I have no personal knowledge of any and you have offered nothing either.
Where do you sweet fellas get the idea that anyone who disagrees with you is not as bright as you are? Besides the arrogance involved, it is a poor strategy to underestimate the opposition. Well...
The term would be "copyright violation" and to be in violation of the statute, you would have to be copying a copyrighted work either in its entirety or at least to a major degree where the differences are trivial. That is a high mountain to climb legally, BTW, and I doubt if the FSF has the time or the money to actually fight one of these things. To date they have not done so.
I don't even know that for a fact. Moglen has stated that he has butterted these rights, but he gives no details either. Maybe he is scamming you too! The argument that I find interesting is that someone who takes a GPL program and adds some significant functionality, say enough to make it a new but derivative work is required by the GPL to release the source to that improvement and to licenses that improvement under the same terms as the original GPL. Now that is nothing to do with copyright law per se and only can have an effect in contract law. But this contractual obligation says that I must do something only in the case where I do something that I am not obligated to do at all, i.e. if I do not make any improvements, I do not have to disclose anything. So the contract that requires me to perform in a specific way is deficient under the law because I have no obligation to perform in the first place. It is also deficient in that there is no consideration given for the rights to my derivative works. Under contract laws I have no obligation to do anything for which there is not consideration provided.
That isn't an alias, silly. My name is Bill W...g........ At the place where I got my first e-mail address, Bill was taken and BillW was taken, so I got BillWg and have used it everywhere I couldn't get bill or billw.
William Henry Gates III might be billg or billhg or bill3 or such, but not billwg. Besides, billwg is mine.