Subject: Re: Another GPL violation: Re: Minimalistic Build-Environmentforwin32 (~7.5MB)
From: "Robert Praetorius" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 15:20:29 -0500

> > FWIW: I am not a lawyer.

> And therefore, everything you have said may be safely ignored.

     Just for reference, if someone's looking for a lawyer not to ignore, 
that would probably Eben Moglen, FSF general counsel and board member 
(also a professor of law and legal history, formerly a clerk to Thurgood 
Marshall and, in the early 80s, a programmer):

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.gnu.org+moglen
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aemoglen.law.columbia.edu+gpl

Naturally, in a legal context, all us nonlawyers ain't qualified to 
interpret what he says (which apparently doesn't mean anything until it's 
made it to court), but ya gotta start somewhere.

     I'd say that he ought to be prevailed upon to right a document on how 
non-lawyers can help with GPL enforcement, but he probably has and I just 
haven't found that link yet.

     However, GPL aside, there's the issue of ensuring that people who 
acquire software one makes publicly available can rebuild it on their 
platform of choice, fix bugs, make improvements, etc.  That would seem to 
amount to common open source courtesy.

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