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> 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 examp

> 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.
        pedrocr 7y ago
        That's only true if your only options are a lawsuit or sitting on your hands. Linus and Greg explain how they do a bunch of other stuff that ends up actually working. So that's a false dichotomy. And it's not even true that there's no downside to losing. You may get a precedent settled that actually invalidates enforcing the license. Then you've screwed up your own enforcement and everyone else's.
- komali2 7y ago
  This almost smacks of the discussion yesterday in the thread about gorillas that were dismantling poacher traps. There was a subthread about intelligent parrots stealing bait from traps that were set to capture artificially introduced predators of the parrots. Thus the parrots were unknowingly harming themselves, though benefiting themselves in the short term.
- monocasa 7y ago
  What's the closed source BusyBox alternative?
- the_why_of_y 7y ago
  I believe you are mixing up two separate Linux related lawsuits: the case against VMWare by Christoph Hellwig, who is known for his filesystem contributions, was supported by SFC and the goal was compliance with the license. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit... Some years earlier, there were lawsuits brought by Patrick McHardy, who contributed a non-trivial amount of networking code, that asked for monetary damages; these lawsuits were not supported by any organization. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-gpl-enforcement/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-g...

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.
      - pedrocr 7y ago
        That's only true if your only options are a lawsuit or sitting on your hands. Linus and Greg explain how they do a bunch of other stuff that ends up actually working. So that's a false dichotomy. And it's not even true that there's no downside to losing. You may get a precedent settled that actually invalidates enforcing the license. Then you've screwed up your own enforcement and everyone else's.
komali2 7y ago
This almost smacks of the discussion yesterday in the thread about gorillas that were dismantling poacher traps. There was a subthread about intelligent parrots stealing bait from traps that were set to capture artificially introduced predators of the parrots. Thus the parrots were unknowingly harming themselves, though benefiting themselves in the short term.
monocasa 7y ago
What's the closed source BusyBox alternative?
the_why_of_y 7y ago
I believe you are mixing up two separate Linux related lawsuits: the case against VMWare by Christoph Hellwig, who is known for his filesystem contributions, was supported by SFC and the goal was compliance with the license. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-lawsuit... Some years earlier, there were lawsuits brought by Patrick McHardy, who contributed a non-trivial amount of networking code, that asked for monetary damages; these lawsuits were not supported by any organization. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-gpl-enforcement/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-g...