Re: What about an OS monopoly under GNU license?

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 06:01 PM 3/25/98 -0500, Ben Drasin wrote:

>This is a good question-and who would bring the suit-someone who wanted to
>see the source code, someone acting on behalf of GNU (does GNU exist as a
>legal entity?).  For example, suppose I thought that a comercial product
>contained
>a code fragment from EMACS?  Can I sue to see the source code?
>
>I have often wondered this myself.

The party with standing to sue would be an author of some piece of code that
was released under the GPL and then used in a commercial product. But no one 
has ever sued, to the best of my knowledge! This is most likely because of 
the great difficulty inherent in proving that GPLed code was incorporated 
into a commercial product.

In other words, the provisions of the GPL which prohibit commercial
re-use have not been shown to have significant benefit, since
violators are not likely to be caught. However, they most likely HAVE 
done harm by discouraging commercial reuse among programmers who
do feel ethically bound to honor the license. 

--Brett