Wallace's Second Anti-GPL Suit Loses

Enterprise OpenSource Magazine is reporting that Daniel Wallace's second Anti-GPL lawsuit has gone down in flames. From the (short) article: "The judge wrote that 'Antitrust laws are for 'the protection of competition, not competitors.' In this case, the GPL benefits consumers by allowing for the distribution of software at no cost, other than the cost of the media on which the software is distributed. 'When the plaintiff is a poor champion of consumers, a court must be especially careful not to grant relief that may undercut the proper function of antitrust.' Because he has not identified an anticompetitive effect, Wallace has failed to allege a cognizable antitrust injury.'"

Judge, not only made correct decision, but gets it

[Mostly a lurker]

What surprises me is not that Wallace was laughed out of court. That was almost certain for various reasons. What did surprise me is that the judge's comments showed that he really understood the GPL and its role in ensuring a competitive marketplace.

Reprinted by SYS-CON Media from Client Server News

[merc]

It must have chaffed MOG's hyde to print this news. I do have to give her points for writing the facts of the case for once instead of anti-IBM FUD.

As for Wallace, he is a fucking crackpot and now everyone in the IT industry knows it.

Who is Daniel Wallace?

[beefstu01]

I'm just curious-- who is this Daniel Wallace character, and what does he have to do with the GPL? What prompted the suit? I read the Wikipedia page and there wasn't much on him other than his two suits were thrown out.

Re:Who is Daniel Wallace?

[mulhollandj]

Perhaps he can't compete against the GPL. Maybe he is trying to run a business and trying to sell something that has already been done that is open source. This doesn't seem to justify huge court expenses though. Where is he getting he money from? Maybe he is working for somebody like Microsoft or SCO. It is interesting that Microsoft sells software and hence is against GPL and IBM sells services and is for GPL. It is all in the business model. Will Microsoft change to a services company?

Re:Interesting take at Groklaw

[Ohreally_factor]

There's this thing called contingency fees. If you have a decent case, you can find an attorney who will take the case for a percentage of any judgement or settlement you receive.

If your case is crap, it's unlikely that you will find such a lawyer. You might not think your case is crap, but trust me on this, if you can't find a lawyer to represent you on contingency, it's crap.

If the stakes are not high enough to interest a lawyer, there's this other thing called Small Claims Court. In Small Claims, there is a level playing field, because the other side is not allowed to hire a lawyer to represent them in court. Similarly, you are not allowed to use a lawyer to sue in small claims.

Anyway, what alternatives would you suggest to fix these perceived issues with the justice system? The system is not perfect, but I have yet to see a proposal that isn't worse than the problem it purports to address.

Re:Who is Wallace and why did he sue?

[mangu]

All I could find about him in Google is that he is a physics teacher and a member of the FSF. This raises the question: did he lose on purpose? The whole thing was done so ineptly and without apparent motivation to win that one wonders if he's just trying to work some judicial precedent for the GPL.

Re:Who is Wallace and why did he sue?

[Matt Perry]

I mean we know he sued because he doesn't like GPL, but why doesn't he like GPL? Does he own a closed sourcesoftware buseinss that was trying to compete with Linux? Or is he a paid shill? Or did RMS insult him at a comic book convention? Maybe Linus wrote a scathing reply to his ponies request inclusion to the Linux kernel?

Here's another possibility. Maybe he wanted to lose so that the decision would make it onto the books, thereby strengthening the position of the GPL via existing case law. I'm not a lawyer but I would think that every little decision in the right direction helps.

Re:Who is Wallace and why did he sue?

[Anonymous Coward]

He used to be a member of the FSF but that was
long ago.

The last few years he has been in any board he could get into trying to prove the GPL wouldn't have a chance in a court of law and, basically, being laughed at.

He probably couldn't take the laughs any more and he tried to prove he was right.

Re:What?

[Homology]

If Linux succeeds in displacing Windows, you will start to see non-free versions of it appear. Versions with enough modification that the "free" part is no longer the significant portion of its value. And the free versions will be obsoleted by their remnant bugs.

The way this happens is inclusion of propetiary binary drivers into the kernel, or thin wrappers around binary blobs (NVIDIA, for instance, or Intel to use wireless network cards). Then we have the NDIS wrapper so that Windows drivers might be used.

This is happening today in the Linux kernel, and FreeBSD is on the same path. Why should a vendor release hardware documentation when OS developers bends over to include their binary blobs?

Besides, the newest darling Ubuntu embraces binary blobs [undeadly.org]

>> On LinuxTag '06 the idea of a 'Blob-Award' came up ...

> Wel, I would like to nominate Mark Shuttleworth, the sugar daddy behind Ubuntu,
> who during his keynote speach at LinuxTag answered a question about this and
> stated that they embrace as many binary contributions from vendors without
> questions to offer their users the "best experience". He wanted to sign an exclusive
> deal with Broadcom.

Maybe it would be good to have two different Blob-Awards. One for Vendors and one
for those people who try to poison free software from within (project leaders,
developers and other 'subjects' in the community which are proud of their blob-love) ...

OT: Small Claims

[abb3w]

If the stakes are not high enough to interest a lawyer, there's this other thing called Small Claims Court. In Small Claims, there is a level playing field, because the other side is not allowed to hire a lawyer to represent them in court. Similarly, you are not allowed to use a lawyer to sue in small claims.

IAmNotALawyer, but that part is somewhere on the spectrum between inaccurate, misleading, and just plain wrong.

Exact rules on Small Claims Court vary from state to state. It is uniformly true that a private citizen is not required to get a lawyer to sue there, but the exact rules on lawyers vary widely. Some states mandate that an incorporated entity must obtain a lawyer for representation when either plaintiff or defendant in small claims court. Some do not permit lawyers to represent plaintiff or defendant in court, or even to be present (excluding lawyers working pro se, or lawyers holding salaried positions with a corporate plaintiff). All, of course, permit a lawyer to advise plaintiff or defendant outside the courtroom; and some do permit representation by an attorney in court.

More important from the standpoint of this particular blithering loon, it's also universally true that small claims court judgements are limited to a relatively small amount of monetary damages (limits vary between states, but I think I heard IL at $10000 is the current largest), with no opportunity for injunctive or equity relief; and I believe in some states, receiving an affirmative judgement in small claims court renders you inelegible to seek any further relief from any other civil court. (Depending on state, merely filing in Small Claims may preclude seeking non-monetary remedies, even at appellate level.) So, if Wallace went to small claims court, the best he could get is a check for ten grand (plus filing costs), after which IBM et alia could continue on their merry way, without changing their business practices, and leaving Wallace unable to sue over the matter again.

Of course, IBM seems to resist blackmail even when it would be cheaper, just because giving in to blackmail sets a lousy precedent....

Re:What?

[zotz]

"But unless you're new to "Free Software" you know that the whole point is to compete with and hopefully end un-free software."

I am not new to Free Software, and while that may be the aim of RMS and the GPL, (I said may, so as not to have to argue that point) that is hardly the aim of every individual Free Software program.

Now, as to the distributors, who contends that all of the linux distributors are giving their distros away for free to corner the market.? I am not sure that even makes sense...

Yay, a hundred of us distros have cornered the software market worth $0.00 in revenue. Whee. Oh wait! What? You mean we really don't have the software market cornered? What? People can get the programs we distribute direct from the actual programmers? How can that be? I thought we had the market cornered...

Gotta love it.

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111123 [ourmedia.org]

Seems I am trying to corner the market in unfinished novels.

http://www.ourmedia.org/user/17145 [ourmedia.org]

And the market in instructional videos and other markets as well.

Imagine that!

all the best,

drew

Re:Who is Wallace and why did he sue?

[sconeu]

I think you're wrong. Consider a "traditional" license.

I give you permission to redistribute/modify my code if you pay me X dollars.
You don't pay me X dollars.

The GPL is:

I give you permission to redistribute/modify my code, as long as any derivative works from it are GPL.
You don't do so.

It's the same thing. Why would the judge take a dim view?

Trolling, stupid, and/or misinformed

[spun]

It is not illegal to sell something below cost unless you are a convicted monopoly. If what you were saying were true, gift giving would be illegal and so would loss leaders and any sales event that lowered the price of an item below cost. I suspect you are just looking to get a rise out of people. Or perhaps you are simply stupid and/or misinformed. Can you really not think of any instances of things being given away or sold below cost?

it isn't the accepting...

[YesIAmAScript]

"a license that not only doesn't even try to screw the people who accept it over"

Do licenses try to screw those who accept it over? Licenses mostly screw people who violate it over.

If I accept the GPL, I can do anything I want except what isn't allowed by the license. If I do try that stuff, I get screwed.

How is the GPL any different in this way?

Re:Who is Wallace and why did he sue?

[arivanov]

Plausible, but least likely.

He had lost 2 lawsuits already and has been ordered to pay costs on at least one.

The average lawsuit costs in the US this will bankrupt a maker of WallaceOS right away so he has to have some bigger sponsorship to be still alive.

Who is paying this guy's costs?