Epstein is a zealot

Epstein is a zealot

Posted Oct 24, 2004 12:58 UTC (Sun) by douglass (guest, #25611)
Parent article: Why open source is unsustainable (Financial Times)

First, (and I can hardly believe a tenured law professor at Chicago wrote these words):

"It [the GPL] does not in so many words specify the appropriate remedy when some portion of the open source code is incorporated into an otherwise proprietary program."

Code incorporated into a program without the permission (i.e. license) of the author is a copyright violation. Title 17 of the U.S. Code has very many words to say about appropriate remedies for this.

See e.g.
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc...

Second, Epstein is the director of the James Olin Program in Law and Economics. Start with 'James Olin Program' in anything. Olin was a wealthy wingnut whose foundation, along with the Bradley Foundation and Richard Mellon Scaife's foundations fund much of the right wing in America. Look at the Heritage Foundation's website or its sponsored media/blogs (Townhall.com), the American Enterprise Institute or any of the right wing think tanks and activist organizations. You will see the names Olin, Bradley and Scaife travelling in a pack.

Third, Law and Economics is a right wing legal theory, largely funded by the foundations mentioned above, to apply economic principles to legal decision making. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_economics for more. Their pretense is that the application of economics to law is neutral and common sensical but its practitioners generally have thumb on the rightward end of the scale.

Fourth, and this goes to Epstein's motive. Remember the laughable book by Ken Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) accusing Linus of stealing the kernel? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville_Instit... ). Will it come as any surprise that the three primary funders of AdTI are the Olin, Scaife and Bradley foundations?

See http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Alexis_de_To...

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