linux-kernel - Re: Will no-one sue GrSecurity for their blatant GPL violation (of GCC and the linux kernel)? - He is violating, but you can also rescind the license

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Date:   Mon, 04 Nov 2019 18:20:46 +0000
From:   nipponmail@...email.cc
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     ruben@...rklyn.com, mrbrklyn@...ix.com
Subject: Re: Will no-one sue GrSecurity for their blatant GPL violation (of
 GCC and the linux kernel)? - He is violating, but you can also rescind the
 license

You do know, correct?, that the Copyright holder can simply rescind the 
license if he is displeased with the way the licensee is behaving - 
since the license is not supported by a contract.

The licensee would then rush to the Federal Court in his district to 
seek a declaratory judgement regarding his rights, and then you're in a 
diversity and federal-question suit.

But that is an option where the licensee paid no consideration for the 
non-exclusive licensee grant (and no: obeying a pre-existing legal duty 
is not sufficient for consideration)

I would like to note that in the Kasner(sp)? decision in the 9th circuit 
the uneducated like to bandy about; the Artistic License was found NOT 
to be a contract but a simple copyright license.

Also in the lower-court (California) Artifex decision the court didn't 
even identify the "GPL" correctly, conflating it with the 
offer-to-do-paying-bushiness preliminary writing (pay us, or accept the 
GPL), but the court then allowed the Copyright holder to choose which 
theory to go ahead with: Contract damages for the price of the 
proprietary license OR pure Federal Copyright damages under the GPL 
(because the GPL is not a contract: it's only a license. If the court 
found it to be a contract it would limit the recovery to contract 
damages under state law: which is WHY in Kasner the violator wanted the 
Artistic license to be deemed a contract: damages of 0 (free))

However, GrSecurity is violating the GPL so you can just sue for 
Copyright damages off the bat (as my other 2 posts quickly explain, I 
haven't repeated the arguments here).