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> The GPL is the legal embodiment of this Golden Rule: in exchange for benefiting from my hard work, you just have to extend me the same courtesy. This is a gr

> The GPL is the legal embodiment of this Golden Rule: in exchange for benefiting from my hard work, you just have to extend me the same courtesy. This is a great article that's focused on just explaining why GPL is good. But I'm wondering what people think about enforcing this part of the GPL. I was very disheartened to see the Linux community's and other GPL projects' attitude to enforcement actions brought by individuals. If you ask people to contribute under the terms of the GPL, I think that it is fair for those contributions to be enforced. And unless a project has some kind of CLA that excludes it, the individual contributor should be able to hold violators to the copyleft portions of the license.

oarsinsync 7y ago
> I was very disheartened to see the Linux community's and other GPL projects' attitude to enforcement actions brought by individuals. Can you share some examples of what's happened that's disheartening? I'm assuming based on context that the reaction to individuals enforcing GPL violations have been negative, which I would agree is disheartening. If you don't enforce the terms, the terms are valueless, and you might as well just use a more permissive license.
- neuland 7y ago
  The big case recently was in Germany against VMWare [0]. They lost that case. But it was controversial partly because the person (who contributed a non-trivial amount of networking code) was asking for monetary damages in addition to bringing the company into compliance. But setting the money aside, even the enforcement part was flamed by Torvalds and Greg KH [1]. The gist was that they're able to bring more people into compliance by working with companies behind the scenes. And lawsuits shut down all that backroom handholding. So ultimately, the lawsuits result in less compliance and less Linux adoption. Linus mentions BusyBox specifically, where attempting to bring companies into compliance just led to fewer users and a shitty closed source alternative that these companies started using instead. From Linus' perspective that's lose-lose: fewer users and more closed source software. But from people interested in GPL enforcement, they are more interested in not having their contributions abused by companies for profit. So if they won't give up their bad attitude, that's not the GPL projects' problem. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/635290/ https://lwn.net/Articles/635290/ [1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/2016-August/003580.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/...
  - pedrocr 7y ago
    That's not really being against enforcement. It's having a tactical argument that sueing is not the best way to get enforcement. Given that they did lose the lawsuit, a big part of the Linus/GregKH argument seems vindicated.
    - neuland 7y ago
      Only if you want to maximize use of open source software in general and/or that specific open source project. If you're goal is to minimize the number of people using your work without following the agreed terms, it is worth it to shoo away non-compliant companies or companies that don't share the values of open source. Like another poster said, why use GPL if you don't actually care that companies are violating the terms.
      - pedrocr 7y ago
        >Only if you want to maximize use of open source software in general and/or that specific open source project. >Like another poster said, why use GPL if you don't actually care that companies are violating the terms. Both of these are wrong according to Linux/GregKH. They both very deeply care about both those things and argue very convincingly that you get more of both of them by their strategy than with lawsuits. They cite very specific cases of that both in the kernel and in BusyBox, and the fact that the lawsuit was lost is further support of their argument.
        neuland 7y ago
        I don't think you understand. From the perspective of a pro-lawsuit person, there can only be upside. If they lose the lawsuit, it's the same effectively as the status quo. The company will continue abusing your contribution. But if you win, you win. Similarly, if you scare off people that are not interested in open source values (ie. they're using open source only b/c people have convinced them that in practice it's better b/c they can offload maintenance of their code to the project), that's basically fine too.
mipmap04 7y ago
I'm not involved in those communities. Do they generally dislike when people go after individuals legally for violating the license?

oarsinsync 7y ago

> I was very disheartened to see the Linux community's and other GPL projects' attitude to enforcement actions brought by individuals. Can you share some examples of what's happened that's disheartening? I'm assuming based on context that the reaction to individuals enforcing GPL violations have been negative, which I would agree is disheartening. If you don't enforce the terms, the terms are valueless, and you might as well just use a more permissive license.

neuland 7y ago
The big case recently was in Germany against VMWare [0]. They lost that case. But it was controversial partly because the person (who contributed a non-trivial amount of networking code) was asking for monetary damages in addition to bringing the company into compliance. But setting the money aside, even the enforcement part was flamed by Torvalds and Greg KH [1]. The gist was that they're able to bring more people into compliance by working with companies behind the scenes. And lawsuits shut down all that backroom handholding. So ultimately, the lawsuits result in less compliance and less Linux adoption. Linus mentions BusyBox specifically, where attempting to bring companies into compliance just led to fewer users and a shitty closed source alternative that these companies started using instead. From Linus' perspective that's lose-lose: fewer users and more closed source software. But from people interested in GPL enforcement, they are more interested in not having their contributions abused by companies for profit. So if they won't give up their bad attitude, that's not the GPL projects' problem. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/635290/ https://lwn.net/Articles/635290/ [1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/2016-August/003580.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/...
- pedrocr 7y ago
  That's not really being against enforcement. It's having a tactical argument that sueing is not the best way to get enforcement. Given that they did lose the lawsuit, a big part of the Linus/GregKH argument seems vindicated.
  - neuland 7y ago
    Only if you want to maximize use of open source software in general and/or that specific open source project. If you're goal is to minimize the number of people using your work without following the agreed terms, it is worth it to shoo away non-compliant companies or companies that don't share the values of open source. Like another poster said, why use GPL if you don't actually care that companies are violating the terms.
    - pedrocr 7y ago
      >Only if you want to maximize use of open source software in general and/or that specific open source project. >Like another poster said, why use GPL if you don't actually care that companies are violating the terms. Both of these are wrong according to Linux/GregKH. They both very deeply care about both those things and argue very convincingly that you get more of both of them by their strategy than with lawsuits. They cite very specific cases of that both in the kernel and in BusyBox, and the fact that the lawsuit was lost is further support of their argument.
      - neuland 7y ago
        I don't think you understand. From the perspective of a pro-lawsuit person, there can only be upside. If they lose the lawsuit, it's the same effectively as the status quo. The company will continue abusing your contribution. But if you win, you win. Similarly, if you scare off people that are not interested in open source values (ie. they're using open source only b/c people have convinced them that in practice it's better b/c they can offload maintenance of their code to the project), that's basically fine too.

mipmap04 7y ago

I'm not involved in those communities. Do they generally dislike when people go after individuals legally for violating the license?