[lugm.org] Fwd: [FTF-Legal] Mildly GPL related case in Supreme Court of Mauritius

Tue Jun 28 14:46:11 UTC 2011

Hello,

I agree with Ronny: we are not lawyers and not expert in FOSS licences. 
  But we should have a better understanding of those licences than most 
people and should point it to the law, while remaining neutral.

Cheers,
Aadil.

On 6/28/2011 6:40 PM, Ronny R. wrote:
> we can also make the applicant aware that we are keen to help the defendant
>
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 6:39 PM, Ronny R.<redoverlord at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> hello
>>
>> my opinion is that
>> 1. we are not lawyers
>> 2. sending a letter to the court is of no use as we dont have any locus standi
>> 3. we better advise defendant to counter affidavit the one of the
>> applicant and then we can be of some help
>> but please note that in no case can we act as expert og the GPL laws,
>> we can provide the text and let the lawyers of the defendant analyse
>> and show to the court.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Ronny
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 6:26 PM, Aadil Noorkhan<aadil at lavabit.com>  wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> The fraudulent statements in the affidavit are disturbing indeed.
>>>
>>> We should inform the Supreme Court and both parties of the misleading
>>> statements via email and a letter, backed by solid evidence and signed by
>>> the LUGM managing committee, or simply the president.
>>>
>>> If no response is received then we sent the letter to the press.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Aadil.
>>>
>>> On 6/28/2011 5:24 PM, Avinash Meetoo wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> I have just received this email from Philip Hands in the UK referring to
>>>> a case currently in the Supreme Court of Mauritius. It would seem that
>>>> the two parties involved have different opinions on what an open source
>>>> license really is, more specifically the GPL. Someone called Harald
>>>> Welte has written a post on his blog on this matter.
>>>>
>>>> A few months ago, someone called me at work asking me about what the GPL
>>>> really means but I am not sure whether he is one of the parties concerned.
>>>>
>>>> What do you think?
>>>>
>>>> Avinash
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> From: *Philip Hands*<phil at hands.com<mailto:phil at hands.com>>
>>>> Date: Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 4:01 PM
>>>> Subject: [FTF-Legal] Mildly GPL related case in Supreme Court of Mauritius
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Avinash,
>>>>
>>>> I'm forwarding this to your mailing list in the hope that someone on
>>>> the list knows how to inform your Supreme Court properly.  It wasn't
>>>> clear to me if that was a subscriber-only list though, so I'm also
>>>> sending it to you direct, as you appear to to be the founder of the
>>>> LUG. I hope that's OK.
>>>>
>>>> Here is the main point from the attached mail:
>>>>
>>>> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/06/27/
>>>>
>>>> in which you can see that someone from http://www.linuxsolutions.mu/
>>>> seem to be claiming (under oath) that there is no difference between GPL
>>>> licensed software, and Public Domain.
>>>>
>>>> I'm sure that any feedback that you have would be welcome, either on the
>>>> ftf-legal-bounces at fsfeurope.org<mailto:ftf-legal-bounces at fsfeurope.org>
>>>> mailing list, or perhaps if you get in
>>>> touch with Harald Welte<laforge at gnumonks.org
>>>> <mailto:laforge at gnumonks.org>>, and he can then update
>>>> his blog (of course, you're welcome to reply to me as well).
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Phil.
>>>>
>>>> P.S. FYI I'm a long-time Debian Developer, and have hosted the Debian UK
>>>> mirror (ftp.uk.debian.org<http://ftp.uk.debian.org>) since the mid 90's
>>>> -- and I make occasional
>>>> contributions to the Free Software Foundation Europe mailing list where
>>>> this issue came up.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Harald Welte<laforge at gnumonks.org<mailto:laforge at gnumonks.org>>
>>>> To: ftf-legal at fsfeurope.org<mailto:ftf-legal at fsfeurope.org>
>>>> Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:58:53 +0200
>>>> Subject: [FTF-Legal] Mildly GPL related case in Supreme Court of Mauritius
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> since I don't expect everyone here is following my blog, I would like to
>>>> post a small notice here: http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/06/27/
>>>>
>>>> The case is mostly about whether or not a freelancing contractor
>>>> (defendant) has broken and NDA and anti-competition clauses he signed
>>>> with the plaintiff.
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand all the details as I have only some of the
>>>> documents, but for whatever reasons a "duly authorized marketing and
>>>> sales executive" of the company ceritifed under oath that "open-source
>>>> software like "Linux" have no copyright restrictions, which in effect
>>>> puts no restrictions on their user or distribution".  And furthermore,
>>>> "any work derived from the open source software [...] becomes the
>>>>   ownership of the applicant"
>>>>
>>>> I don't really see how this is cloesly related to the heart of the case,
>>>> but I still think it's devastating to see such an argument be made in
>>>> front of the highest court of any (albeit small) country.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure what can be done by the outside world (e.g. us) to help the
>>>> court understand that Linux as well as Asterisk are very well
>>>> copyrighted works, and that at least Linux is only available under
>>>> GPLv2, which has a number of conditions on its distribution.
>>>>
>>>> If anyone is interested in this, I have some more documetns that the
>>>> defendant has permitted me to share (not sure if he has authority to
>>>> permit that, but well...).
>>>>
>>>> (and in case you wonder, Mauritius has signed the Berne convention in
>>>>   1989).
>>>>
>>>> Specifically if anyone has an interest to send some kind of
>>>> letter/amicus curiae to the court clarifying the issue, it would be
>>>> great.  Apparently there are arguments on the lines of "you cannot just
>>>> download the GPL text from the internet and claim it is valid" etc.
>>>> The Judge seemed to describe himself as 'computer illiterate'.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe there are also some existing English legal publications that one
>>>> could DHL/FedEx/UPS to the court ;)
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>         Harald
>>>> --
>>>> - Harald Welte<laforge at gnumonks.org<mailto:laforge at gnumonks.org>>
>>>> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================================
>>>> "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
>>>>                                                   (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch.
>>>> A6)
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> FTF-Legal mailing list
>>>> FTF-Legal at fsfeurope.org<mailto:FTF-Legal at fsfeurope.org>
>>>> https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/ftf-legal
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> |)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560
>>>> <tel:%5B%2B44%20%280%2920%208530%209560>] http://www.hands.com/
>>>> |-| HANDS.COM<http://HANDS.COM>  Ltd. http://www.uk.debian.org/
>>>> |(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND
>>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *Avinash Meetoo**
>>>> **Managing-Director of Knowledge Seven*
>>>>
>>>> Call me on 493-9394 (Mobile) or 464-7446 (Office)
>>>> I am on my portal<http://www.avinashmeetoo.com/>, LinkedIn
>>>> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/avinashmeetoo>, Twitter
>>>> <http://twitter.com/AvinashMeetoo>  and Facebook
>>>> <http://www.facebook.com/avinashmeetoo>
>>>> Visit Knowledge Seven<http://www.knowledge7.com/>  and our other sister
>>>> websites<http://www.knowledge7.com/page/internet-services>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> __________________________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>> __________________________________________________________
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>>> Website: http://lugm.org
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>>> Forum: http://lugm.org/forum/
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>>>
>>
>
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