Following up on a piece he wrote about my recent GPLv3 analyses, Peter Galli interviewed free software advocate Bruce Perens to get his response to the our 20 pages of legal analysis. His response can best be summed up as “Nuh Uh!” and “They’re ugly! (because they have Microsoft as a member)”
It is nice to know that there are a "couple of dozen" corporate attorneys on the GPLv3 committees are constantly evaluating legal risks. Perhaps Mr. Perens should forward my papers to them so that they can actually read them before commenting on the validity of the arguments.
To be honest, Mr. Perens has raised very little I can respond to. He only dismisses the points I made in my paper as "nothing more than words" or "bogus", but with little analysis. Perens’s answers simply do not address the main risk posed by GPLv3, as stated in the paper; GPLv3 may be interpreted as FSF tortiously interfering with a legal contract between two parties concerning intellectual property issues between them. Mr. Perens cites to the case of Daniel Wallace which was based on a predatory pricing theory under another version of the GPL and not a group boycott theory as I was suggesting in respect of the GPLv3.
Different facts, different law, different result.
It is also strange that he would counter my arguments – at least in part – by referring to GPLv2. It was clearly my intent to address issues that arise under GPLv3. Hopefully, Mr. Perens can share my papers with the FSF legal team so that we can find ways to improve the language and avoid these issues. These are important issues that deserve a full analysis and airing.