Subject: Re: Difficulties in interoperating with Windows
To: lkml@andyjeffries.co.uk (Andy Jeffries)
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 17:09:22 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <20020109163450.77a39cfc.lkml@andyjeffries.co.uk> from "Andy Jeffries" at Jan 09, 2002 04:34:50 PM
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Message-Id: <E16OME6-0001jC-00@the-village.bc.nu>
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

> and hire all the lawyers they'd want...at the end of the day, could you
> just go to court and say:

Oh glorious naivety.

> The law seems pretty damn clear on this issue (in fact Subsection 3.c
> sounds like I could quite happily send it to someone in the USA if they
> can do the work better than I).

You release the code

The next day an injunction arrives in the post

The day after that the large corporate lawyers slap a secrecy order on you
preventing you discussing the case with anyone but your legal representative
by convincing some pissed geriatric moron in the high court that if he
doesnt sign it you'll tell the whole world and harm them irrepairably

Over the next week 10-15,000 pages of documents arrive for you, followed
by a couple of thousand discovery requests.

A week later while you are reading them they file for summary judgement 
because you have failed to file the defence. You lose. Game over

Then the court costs bankrupt you.


Sound like fiction - it happens _regularly_. Its very rare (McLibel case
is extremely unusual) that it can ever be talked about on a per case basis,
or that the good guys win.

This is why everyone doing innovative computing work does it outside of the
US, and outside of most of the EU. 

Alan
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