[ILUG] FortiOS & Linux

[Paul Jakma]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, Daniel Goldsmith wrote:

> Look, personal abuse crap aside, I really feel you have completely 
> ignored what I said.

I only replied to two points:

1. (a trivial nitpick) re Harald being the developer of initrd (he 
isnt, as Kevin had wrote previously).

2. Your suggestion that these people are zealots:

"IMO, gpl-violations made a tactical error in not including this info 
in their own press release. The lack of any reference to it makes 
them seem like zealots, pushing the greater picture to the detriment 
of a legal argument which they have already won."

gpl-violations.org is *precisely* about the greater picture. That's 
the point you seem to be missing with both the above and your focus 
on how insignificant or not initrd is wrt the linux kernel.

It doesnt matter a damn whether initrd is trivial or a huge amount of 
important code - it doesnt matter whether it's initrd or iptables or 
fs/minix.c. It's just a 'sample' to use as a means of bringing 
commited infringers to court and stopping them.

And if it gets to court, these companies are almost without a doubt 
wilful infringers - they will already been informed privately of 
infringement, they could have worked something out even at court 
before seeing the judge.

FortiOS are worse than that, not only wilful in continuing 
infringement once they were notified but, preceding that, they tried 
to conceal their infringement with encrypted images - they knew they 
were doing wrong from the start, quite likely. Forti, imho, deserve 
only scorn (and huge punitive damages, but i wasnt the judge ;) ).

> to one specific item - initrd. The case was not a wholesale suage 
> of Forti for all of their violations of the gpl.

In practical terms, yes it is.

Forti could of course go and rewrite initrd (or not use initrd at 
all) and start infringing again and Harald will have to find some 
other kernel developer to assign rights over to relevant code, but:

- it's unlikely Forti will do that, eg it would look /very/ bad if
   they're hauled in court again for another piece of linux kernel
   code.

- today, here and now, it doesnt matter - Forti are under injunction
   to desist.

> about the nature of the victory which are not backed up by real 
> legal facts.

There is no wiggle room. They must not infringe copyright initrd.

> The legal facts are that gpl-violations successfully obtained an
> injuinction against Forti for their inclusion of gpl'ed initrd code,
> forcing Forti into a settlement. The statements at
>
> http://gpl-violations.org/news/20050414-fortinet-injunction.html
> and the Forti release are both spinning those facts.

How exactly? What is it stated there (the gpl-violations.org one) 
which you think is objectionable spin?

> gpl-violations need to be roundly congratulated. I whole heartedly 
> agree with everything I snipped from your mail. And, yes, I did 
> read what Kevin wrote, and fail to see how anything I said 
> disagrees with that.

Well, the "gpl zealots" bit seemed wacky, sorry.

> Pass the pipe back when you're done, would ya?

You didnt pass it on yet!

(dont worry though, i have a huge personal stache of crack - at 
least i'm sure many others on this list would think so ;) ).

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
My folks didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet
the boat.