On Fri, Nov 26, 1999 at 11:48:30AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > They are clueless, but are you serious about a lawsuit?
>
> Perhaps not _this_ time, but I am throwing up my hands because I have no way
> to keep them from doing something much more clueless next time and then a suit
> may indeed be necessary.
I think we should be serious about one. Corel has again and again tried
to pull this crap with licenses. Each time they do it and we catch them
at it they claim they simply didn't know any better. Well this being the
fourth or fifth time(?) it's pretty obvious that one of two things are
happening here:
1. They truly have made these same "mistakes" consistantly, which
raises serious questions as to their compitence.
2. They're NOT making "mistakes" and are just trying to get away
with whatever they can get away with.
I think it's time to quit playing games with Corel. I should point out
that I was originally one of the people SUPPORTING Corel's efforts and as
late as even the beginning of September would have been willing to try and
work things out. But the fact is that either Corel has no clue (about
anything) or they're actually trying to pull one over on us.
I doubt the company has lasted this long by being stupid, so I'm forced to
assume they're trying to pull a fast one. Trying hell--they've already
pulled it and have all but gotten away with it at this point.
> You can tell I'm frustrated. It's because I tried to smooth these things
> out _twice_ so far, first with the beta license, and again with the APT
> license issue. Dan Quinlan and I discussed their advisory board at Comdex.
> The board met once, and never again.
Face it, we've been had. We _must_ persue this issue or the licenses on
our packages means nothing. Our partnership with Corel was made in good
faith. I'm sorry to see them attempt to take advantage of it.
> A lot of the software contributors were legal minors at the time they
> contributed the software, and some of them still are, and Corel accepted
> _their_ licenses. Should those contributors now turn around and say they
> had no legal right to give Corel those licenses and thus they are void?
> Or shall we assume that they had the collusion of their parent or guardian
> and thus the licenses are legal, in which case Corel should make the same
> assumption in their license?
I don't think anyone can assume anything in this area can they?
> I am trying to explain to them that they are distributing somebody else's
> software, and they keep unintentionally, and with no malice involved, pissing
> off the very people who wrote their system. And when I explained this to their
> P.R. person at Corel, it was clear that she thought the developers were
> whining children and didn't want to concern herself with them. OK, some of
> them really _are_ children, but Corel bought that headache when they decided
> to make use of their code.
I don't believe that. Not anymore. This is only the latest in a long
series of attempts to screw us on the licensing front and essentially
hijack a Linux distribution. As long as they were playing fairly I'd have
been (and in fact was) happy to support them---and in fact as long as they
were playing fairly we _couldn't_ stop them. They've abused our trust and
our licenses repeatedly. They show no intent to change their behavior nor
do I believe they consider us any real threat.
It's time to stop playing around with them. They're not serious about
delivering on their promises. If all they want is a free ride, I have no
use for the company.
--
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<Mercury> emacs sucks, literally, not a insult, just a comment that its
large enough to have a noticeable gravitational pull...
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