On Fri, 4 Mar 2016 11:13:09 PM Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
Consider option #3, commit the tort. OK, who's the copyright holder? This is relevant question because said party is the only entity on the planet with standing to bring litigation over the tort.
And standing matters because, if the tort-feasor knows that the only party with standing doesn't mind, committing the tort might be a very attractive option indeed.
It's not just a matter of legal issues. If BMW wants to convince us that they are a trustworthy reliable company that obeys laws then providing access to their source code would be a good idea. If however they want us to think that they are a criminal organisation that uses hidden "features" in their code to evade the law (as they have done in the past) then they can continue doing what they are doing. The people most affected by engine emissions are the people who use the car the most. If you bought a Diesel VW in the past few years for your family then the chance of them getting cancer is slightly greater than if you had bought a non-VW.
I don't know who that copyright holder might be, but I'm going to strongly guess that it's a frequent business partner of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG that wouldn't actually give a tinker's damn about this (hypothesised) tort on the automobile company's part.
If that was the case then they would have just given a non-GPL license to BMW. As an aside I'm happy to give non-GPL licenses to any code that I solely wrote to anyone who pays me well. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/