Alan B. Pearce rl.ac.uk> writes: > Be careful with any open source license, as this case in California shows > .. open source will die Open source will not die, but the form under which it exists may change. As I wrote before, that country (the US) is far from being a monolith. Not so long ago prominent m$ officials challenged open source code and operating systems as being 'un-American' in tones that reminded of a certain McCarthy and nothing came of it. There is also the case of the US judge who almost succeeded to split the application and the operating system divisions of m$, as any sane application of antitrust law would demand from a company that competes with its own customers in the application domain, using its own inside technical information to stay ahead, as shown by that and other lawsuits. With the emphasis on 'almost'. Recently, the EU authorities for antitrust and fair competition, have had to enforce precisely that 'dropped' US court decision (dropped by 'higher powers' dropping the US judge from the case, based on a technicality that was likely provoked deliberately out of court, and then quoted out of context, from the way it looks), by forcing m$ to do certain things about its multimedia player bundling. As you can see, this has very little to do with licenses and a lot with politics. For example, the RIAA would likely be extremely displeased if the illegal download suits would move from license violation status to contract breach status, as it would have to move the entire whole operation from a mass hunt to an individual hunt operation, and be forced to give up the mass subpoena powers it has gained on ISPs and private individuals, as well as the value it sues for, to that implied by a contract (usually the value of the contract - i.e. of the CD or DVD). But I am not a legal person, so what do I know about these things. Peter P. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist