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Comment by getcrunk | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain to a noob?

He meant that after reading it, it was unclear that it was actually a legal license that would stand up in a court of law. It's just too confusingly written. See Nelson Minar's comment at the end of this: https://web.archive.org/web/20081015194558/http://radar.orei...

Every IP lawyer I've talked to since has looked at GPL and said something pretty similar. "It's just too confusingly worded to understand as a defensible license"

Someone's lawyers seem to understand it better than he did, company's seem eager to settle rather go to trial when they are found to be violating it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits

https://www.pillsburylaw.com/images/content/1/6/v2/1655/A9A2...

That probably says a lot more about the optics of being sued over the GPL than legal defendability.

> Someone's lawyers seem to understand it better than he did, company's seem eager to settle rather go to trial when they are found to be violating it.

It's often substantially cheaper to settle lawsuits than go to trial. This says more about our legal system and the American rule[0] than anything else.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney's_fees)

Well the reason I linked to the second article is because it talks about how more and more it looks like the GPL is solid and enforceable. So expense aside, as time rolls on and more cases come up it's pretty clear that defendants assume they'll lose if they are caught violating the license terms and try to fight it.

That link article? It makes bold claims about the GPL being imprecise, ambiguous, and full of legal holes.

But not a single example.

Rhetoric, huh.

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