Most of the time, I don’t have that high regard for opinions Judge Easterbrook. But, in explaining why I disagree with him, I usually get a flood of comments from angry Easterbrook fans, which wastes time.
Anyway, DoTD points to Wallace v. IBM et al.
Daniel Wallace would like to compete with Linux—either by offering a derivative work or by writing an operating system from scratch—but maintains that this is impossible as long as Linux and its derivatives are available for free. He contends that IBM, Red Hat, and Novell have conspired among themselves and with others (including the Free Software Foundation) to eliminate competition in the operating system market by making Linux available at an unbeatable price. Under the GPL, which passes from user to improver to user, Linux and all software that incorporates any of its source code will be free forever, and nothing could be a more effective deterrent to competition, Wallace maintains. The GPL is the conspiracy as Wallace sees things; it is a joint undertaking among users and creators of derivative works to undercut the price of any potential rival.
Got it? This guy doesn’t like the idea that a large segment of software comes with a license that allows people to tweak and distribute it for free, and prevents them for charging for others work? He concludes that open source software is not predatorily-priced, or price-fixed.
The opinion contains a nice description of open-source software in general.
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