I should know better than to get into GPL debates. In addition to Nelson and haruspex, Chris Ball sent me the following email.

A few points on your blog entry. Perhaps you could add them to your diary, if you like; I don't have an advogato diary myself.

"So a contract signed by someone to break a law (eg commit a murder!) is not legally binding. Similarly a contract (the GPL) which requires you to break the Law, (ie export some software to Iran) is not legally binding."

Firstly, the GPL is not a contract, it is a license. The user of GPL'd software is not following the license because they signed a contract to do so, they are following it because they will lose the extra rights granted to them by the license if they do not.

Which leads into my second point -- Red Hat would not win a case against the FSF, because if Red Hat breach the GPL, they no longer have a right to distribute the work; the license the work is under reverts to pure copyright, which is far more restrictive than the GPL. After a breach of the GPL, the FSF could sue Red Hat for copyright violation, in distributing their copyrighted works without authorisation.

Hope that helps.

I have no desire to continue a long discussion about this and will shut up.