Good news, Brett!

[Gary W. Swearingen]

> http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/08/06/HNgplunenforceable_1.html

It's hard to believe that the guy wrote a 123-page report on the
subject.  He didn't seem very familiar with his subject.  It sounded
like he was mostly just trying to raise the level of FUD.


I'll try to summarize what I think he was trying to say:

German and EU law makes developers (I suspect that means "owners"),
distributers, and dealers of software liable in ways that cannot be
waived in license contracts such as the GPL.  [So be it.  Lawyers
are paid to sort that stuff out.  It's no reason for people to not
use o.s. software; just reason to not do business in the EU.]

The wrong people might get sued when people don't know who owns which
parts of some software, or what is derivative of what. [A tough
problem, but not a frequent problem, and not unique to the EU.]

Employers are in a tricky legal situation when they pay people to write
software that they can't sell licenses for.  (No explanation, except
that it is a "latent contradiction".)  [That was worthless.]

Users of open-source software are taking a risk that he's wrong (or
the law will change) and all those open-source software people really
can't be held liable. [Sounds like a GOOD thing, to me.  But they
don't think they can sue them as it is now, so there's no more risk.]

The GPL should be rewritten in German to acknowledge everyone's
liability ("in the interest of users, open source developers and
competition") under German law. [That's about all he needed to have
said.]