[SGVLUG] GPL upheld in court

[David Lawyer]

GNU General Public License

>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

   In May of 2005, Daniel Wallace filed suit against the Free Software
   Foundation (FSF) in the Southern District of Indiana, contending
   that the GPL is an illegal attempt to fix prices at zero. The suit
   was dismissed in March 2006, on the grounds that Wallace had failed
   to state a valid anti-trust claim; the court noted that "the GPL
   encourages, rather than discourages, free competition and the
   distribution of computer operating systems, the benefits of which
   directly pass to consumers."  Wallace was denied the possibility of
   further amending his complaint, and was ordered to pay the FSF's
   legal expenses.

You may use a search engine to find more about this at various other
sites.  I copied the Wikipedia one because it's brief.  I suppose that
giving something away is price-fixing at zero price.  While GPL
doesn't require that it be given away, it does grant users the right
to give it away and hence is about the same as setting a zero price
(plus the price of the medium and communication costs).  But price
fixing is usually done to hurt consumers and a zero price benefits
consumers.  It isn't selling something at a loss so as to gain market
share for future exploitation of the new customers since the GPL will
not likely change in intent in the future.

			David Lawyer