10 ms·

Well this is what was apparent for me on day one, and I genuinely did not understand people calling for "DON'T SUE THEM, YOU WILL SCARE THEM AWAY FROM LINUX!"

Well this is what was apparent for me on day one, and I genuinely did not understand people calling for "DON'T SUE THEM, YOU WILL SCARE THEM AWAY FROM LINUX!" I see no goodwill from those types, and the simplest explanation for their stance is them being material beneficiaries from that. People like Patrick McHardy do an enormous service to the Linux community, and he alone provably did more in the last few years than what that GPL conservancy did for its entire existence. Nothing will be more educational than a "GPL death sentence" to some multi-billion dollar multinational like Broadcom. If it will not be McHardys doing the hard work of suing such companies, who will? I don't see those conservancy guys, Linus' associates, or meek Linux Foundation raising a hand on kinds of Qualcomm, or Samsung (from whom, coincidentally, lots of Linux Foundation funding comes) I completely don't understand people who direct flak on them, and the brouhaha with the "pledge." The only rationale I can fathom, is again is that material beneficiaries of GPL violation have now penetrated the circles who made the "GPL Cooperation Commitment"

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> I genuinely did not understand people calling for "DON'T SUE THEM, YOU WILL SCARE THEM AWAY FROM LINUX!" Bringing lawyers in always makes people really defensive. People are unlikely to take risks if there's liability involved. Whether this is good or bad for free software I don't know. Probably not. Linux needs more leverage over companies. Not necessarily legal leverage.
- avmich 6y ago
  The idea of GPL is to move towards better software, better rights of users of software and developers of software. So > People are unlikely to take risks if there's liability involved. people are free to choose inferior products, ways of development, components and libraries, but that would - probably - make them less competitive, so e.g. their investors may become worried. Not only Linux needs more leverage - it also needs to use it, because otherwise it's a moot point.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Investors are much more likely to worry about IP lawsuits than the nitty-gritty of development libraries and methodology. If people start being sued for using the Linux kernel, your investors are going to expect a pretty solid explanation for why you won't be one of them.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > If people start being sued for using the Linux kernel, your investors are going to expect a pretty solid explanation for why you won't be one of them. So follow the license? If you built a business on pirating Windows, nobody would be surprised when MS murdered you in court. Why should Linux be any different?
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        It shouldn't be! Linux devs have every right to enforce the license as strongly as they'd like. I'm just saying that it's silly to expect that this won't impact usage, or that investors will insist on Linux because of their deep and principled commitment to good development standards.
        ramshorns 6y ago
        Is usage the goal? I would think it's better to have, say, 80 devices on the market that use Linux and comply with the GPL and give software freedom to their users, along with 20 devices whose vendors chose to avoid the hassle and used a proprietary or permissively licensed kernel, than to have 100 devices that all use Linux and violate the GPL and give the users no ability to share or modify the software.
      - jariel 6y ago
        Spicy is right though. Whatever the movement is 'trying to do' is not the point so much as 'what will happen' because of the incentives and thinking process (ie risk mitigation) at most companies. Most of these licences are untested in court and that's a very bad thing for everyone. So in a way, a bunch of clear and settled cases would provide the 'best path forward' because then we'd know where the lines are - but - a bunch of 'weird outcomes' that cost other companies bazillions would probably hurt a lot and it will strike fast. You won't be able to get your investment if your flirting with a situation in which some other corp got banged for $2B, even if technically you are in the clear. It's probably a very bad idea to 'sue for money'. The objective of the legal cases should be 'clarity' and the cases should be chosen on that basis if the open source community really wants to thrive.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
McHardy wasn't trying to get compliance, he was trying to get money. He didn't care about source availability at all, and many of the suits were over licensing matters entirely unrelated to source availability. Enforcement is a good thing. But the point is to get people complying with the license.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Look at the results instead...
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  Surely the point is whatever the people that own the copyrights decide it is?
  - tephra 6y ago
    Isn't that exactly what choosing a license is all about? Choosing a license and then not caring if the license is upheld seems like you should have chosen another license.
    - reitzensteinm 6y ago
      The question is whether monetary damages should be sought on top of compliance.
      - dspillett 6y ago
        Dual-license. Set out a commercial option. Once compliance is achieved they are liable for the commercial licensing fees for the period up until that time. It isn't a fine, it isn't damages, it is just the normal cost of doing business. May the standard licensing costs quite high (but not exorbitant) and state that other terms are available if negotiated before using the software. If they refuse to pay and the amount is large enough, sell the dept to a collections agency and at least cause some inconvenience (though that last part probably won't work across international borders). Of course if you don't want financial recompense, and open-source-ness is your only concern, then compliance it the only matter to be concerned about. But some people and commercial entities simply won't respect that up-front (so you'll have to fight for compliance) unless non-compliance has an associated cost.
hyperman1 6y ago
If, like me, you have no Idea who McHardy is: Here are some results of a quick google: * http://www.netfilter.org/licensing.html#faq http://www.netfilter.org/licensing.html#faq - the last question on the FAQ page * https://opensource.com/article/17/8/patrick-mchardy-and-copyright-profiteering https://opensource.com/article/17/8/patrick-mchardy-and-copy... - This page unfortunately does not demonstrate why he is profiteering
- baybal2 6y ago
  > This page unfortunately does not demonstrate why he is profiteering The page also unfortunately does not demonstrate why the people, who self proclaimed themselves "netfilter core team," are so hellbent on arm twisting McHardy into signing on their "Principles." Linus said that those principles are not a prerequisite for participating in the Linux kernel, but the current netfilter people not only suggest they are, but are ready to scream, shout, mislead, make dodgy insinuations to people, and go wingnut to make contributors sign it. The second assumption after first presuming them doing this is the goodwill, is them getting good paychecks from network devices owners who benefit from various extends of erosion of GPL terms.
outsomnia 6y ago
> People like Patrick McHardy do an enormous service to the Linux community A response to legal attacks, justified or not, is that a lot of places with $$$ to fund the GPL work ban GPL as an existential threat, and fund work under more liberal licences. That shouldn't be a valid get-out for people ignoring the licence terms. But it is the reality and has to be part of the argument / strategy. That's aside from any consideration about the form of the particular legal attacks you refer to.
- baybal2 6y ago
  They are free to use something other than Linux, or GPL software. This is pretty much what an opensource is, don't like GPL, go get some code not under it. The much of the *BSD family whose pretty much only point of existence over GNU was its use of permissive license is there laying around, with their devs almost begging for somebody to take their code, and fund their work. And still, how many of those companies went, and chose FreeBSD over Linux? Not many, very likely just single digits. Most continue skulking, squabbling, crying, facing lawsuits, lose money, face, but they still continue to bite the bitter fruit, which is Linux. The simple truth is that they have no alternative to Linux, and they don't have resources to make an OS of their own, or bring the numerous permissively licensed "Linux killers" to usable state.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Sony, Apple, with endless contributions back to upstream. /s
  - andi999 6y ago
    I chose it (now back on windows, different story...). The GUI/xserve configuration was problematic. To me, I think bsd is great for servers, but for Desktop less usable then linux.
  - outsomnia 6y ago
    > And still, how many of those guys went, and chose FreeBSD over Linux? Well, Apple is at 14% of the smartphone market globally and that's derived from BSD, Macs are smaller but also BSD. The OS is just one case, it's hard to catch up with Linux, but that has not stopped Fuschia (BSD/MIT/Apache) and proprietary, nor SaaS where Linux powers it but is not "distributed" in GPL terms. The shape of the future is people are stopping feeding the GPL commons in favour of permissive licenses that the $$$ wants https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/open-source-licenses-trends-and-predictions https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/o... shows over half of projects in 2019 are MIT /Apache vs GPL(s), and a steady decline in even GPL3 usage. I don't know what should be done about enforcement but I do know these realities have to be factored into any useful considering about that.
m463 6y ago
> Nothing will be more educational than a "GPL death sentence" to some multi-billion dollar multinational like Broadcom. I don't think you understand. That's the equivalent of someone asking about relationship advice on the internet and getting all this "dump her" / "dump him" advice when really what's needed is a little more communication. I would say a majority of the work in open software comes various forms of corporate sponsorship via sort of unofficial work from their employees. You ask for "GPL death sentence" and you'll end up with a lot more Apple Computer employees who are for all practical purposes unable to work on any GPL projects. Everything will be MIT and sharing changes will be withheld for the tiniest of reasons. There are already plenty of reasons to shy away no matter how good it is for everyone. Destroy your enemies by making them your friends.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  How many Apple Computer employees work on GPL projects? I suspect that number is extremely low.
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    Pretty sure they are not allowed, so 0.
  - m463 6y ago
    (right, that's what I was saying... Apple stays away from GPL and keeps their employees away from it too)
- baybal2 6y ago
  Again, this it's not like it's a tragedy, it's an opposite. Opensource will very much benefit from less freeloader companies like Apple, and less companies of lesser rectitude hanging around OSS projects. Apples is free to go back 20 years, and copy *BSD userspace instead of GNU, which it used for 15 out of 20 years. They are completely free to chose Microsoft Trident instead kHTML for the browser engine. The are completely free to do the same for hundreds of other GPL libs they used in their commercial products. They are 100% free to do that... If they can pull it out. The thing is they chose it, because they couldn't make anything else work. Apples militantly opposes GPL, is a freeloader, was actively working around GPL legal language, and it uses DRM, and they are rumoured to be behind much of anti-GPL publicity campaigns. No, they are not good players at all, and will never be.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> I genuinely did not understand people calling for "DON'T SUE THEM, YOU WILL SCARE THEM AWAY FROM LINUX!" Bringing lawyers in always makes people really defensive. People are unlikely to take risks if there's liability involved. Whether this is good or bad for free software I don't know. Probably not. Linux needs more leverage over companies. Not necessarily legal leverage.

avmich 6y ago
The idea of GPL is to move towards better software, better rights of users of software and developers of software. So > People are unlikely to take risks if there's liability involved. people are free to choose inferior products, ways of development, components and libraries, but that would - probably - make them less competitive, so e.g. their investors may become worried. Not only Linux needs more leverage - it also needs to use it, because otherwise it's a moot point.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Investors are much more likely to worry about IP lawsuits than the nitty-gritty of development libraries and methodology. If people start being sued for using the Linux kernel, your investors are going to expect a pretty solid explanation for why you won't be one of them.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > If people start being sued for using the Linux kernel, your investors are going to expect a pretty solid explanation for why you won't be one of them. So follow the license? If you built a business on pirating Windows, nobody would be surprised when MS murdered you in court. Why should Linux be any different?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      It shouldn't be! Linux devs have every right to enforce the license as strongly as they'd like. I'm just saying that it's silly to expect that this won't impact usage, or that investors will insist on Linux because of their deep and principled commitment to good development standards.
      - ramshorns 6y ago
        Is usage the goal? I would think it's better to have, say, 80 devices on the market that use Linux and comply with the GPL and give software freedom to their users, along with 20 devices whose vendors chose to avoid the hassle and used a proprietary or permissively licensed kernel, than to have 100 devices that all use Linux and violate the GPL and give the users no ability to share or modify the software.
    - jariel 6y ago
      Spicy is right though. Whatever the movement is 'trying to do' is not the point so much as 'what will happen' because of the incentives and thinking process (ie risk mitigation) at most companies. Most of these licences are untested in court and that's a very bad thing for everyone. So in a way, a bunch of clear and settled cases would provide the 'best path forward' because then we'd know where the lines are - but - a bunch of 'weird outcomes' that cost other companies bazillions would probably hurt a lot and it will strike fast. You won't be able to get your investment if your flirting with a situation in which some other corp got banged for $2B, even if technically you are in the clear. It's probably a very bad idea to 'sue for money'. The objective of the legal cases should be 'clarity' and the cases should be chosen on that basis if the open source community really wants to thrive.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

McHardy wasn't trying to get compliance, he was trying to get money. He didn't care about source availability at all, and many of the suits were over licensing matters entirely unrelated to source availability. Enforcement is a good thing. But the point is to get people complying with the license.

baybal2 6y ago
Look at the results instead...
reitzensteinm 6y ago
Surely the point is whatever the people that own the copyrights decide it is?
- tephra 6y ago
  Isn't that exactly what choosing a license is all about? Choosing a license and then not caring if the license is upheld seems like you should have chosen another license.
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    The question is whether monetary damages should be sought on top of compliance.
    - dspillett 6y ago
      Dual-license. Set out a commercial option. Once compliance is achieved they are liable for the commercial licensing fees for the period up until that time. It isn't a fine, it isn't damages, it is just the normal cost of doing business. May the standard licensing costs quite high (but not exorbitant) and state that other terms are available if negotiated before using the software. If they refuse to pay and the amount is large enough, sell the dept to a collections agency and at least cause some inconvenience (though that last part probably won't work across international borders). Of course if you don't want financial recompense, and open-source-ness is your only concern, then compliance it the only matter to be concerned about. But some people and commercial entities simply won't respect that up-front (so you'll have to fight for compliance) unless non-compliance has an associated cost.

hyperman1 6y ago

If, like me, you have no Idea who McHardy is: Here are some results of a quick google: * http://www.netfilter.org/licensing.html#faq http://www.netfilter.org/licensing.html#faq - the last question on the FAQ page * https://opensource.com/article/17/8/patrick-mchardy-and-copyright-profiteering https://opensource.com/article/17/8/patrick-mchardy-and-copy... - This page unfortunately does not demonstrate why he is profiteering

baybal2 6y ago
> This page unfortunately does not demonstrate why he is profiteering The page also unfortunately does not demonstrate why the people, who self proclaimed themselves "netfilter core team," are so hellbent on arm twisting McHardy into signing on their "Principles." Linus said that those principles are not a prerequisite for participating in the Linux kernel, but the current netfilter people not only suggest they are, but are ready to scream, shout, mislead, make dodgy insinuations to people, and go wingnut to make contributors sign it. The second assumption after first presuming them doing this is the goodwill, is them getting good paychecks from network devices owners who benefit from various extends of erosion of GPL terms.

outsomnia 6y ago

> People like Patrick McHardy do an enormous service to the Linux community A response to legal attacks, justified or not, is that a lot of places with $$$ to fund the GPL work ban GPL as an existential threat, and fund work under more liberal licences. That shouldn't be a valid get-out for people ignoring the licence terms. But it is the reality and has to be part of the argument / strategy. That's aside from any consideration about the form of the particular legal attacks you refer to.

baybal2 6y ago
They are free to use something other than Linux, or GPL software. This is pretty much what an opensource is, don't like GPL, go get some code not under it. The much of the *BSD family whose pretty much only point of existence over GNU was its use of permissive license is there laying around, with their devs almost begging for somebody to take their code, and fund their work. And still, how many of those companies went, and chose FreeBSD over Linux? Not many, very likely just single digits. Most continue skulking, squabbling, crying, facing lawsuits, lose money, face, but they still continue to bite the bitter fruit, which is Linux. The simple truth is that they have no alternative to Linux, and they don't have resources to make an OS of their own, or bring the numerous permissively licensed "Linux killers" to usable state.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Sony, Apple, with endless contributions back to upstream. /s
- andi999 6y ago
  I chose it (now back on windows, different story...). The GUI/xserve configuration was problematic. To me, I think bsd is great for servers, but for Desktop less usable then linux.
- outsomnia 6y ago
  > And still, how many of those guys went, and chose FreeBSD over Linux? Well, Apple is at 14% of the smartphone market globally and that's derived from BSD, Macs are smaller but also BSD. The OS is just one case, it's hard to catch up with Linux, but that has not stopped Fuschia (BSD/MIT/Apache) and proprietary, nor SaaS where Linux powers it but is not "distributed" in GPL terms. The shape of the future is people are stopping feeding the GPL commons in favour of permissive licenses that the $$$ wants https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/open-source-licenses-trends-and-predictions https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/o... shows over half of projects in 2019 are MIT /Apache vs GPL(s), and a steady decline in even GPL3 usage. I don't know what should be done about enforcement but I do know these realities have to be factored into any useful considering about that.

m463 6y ago

> Nothing will be more educational than a "GPL death sentence" to some multi-billion dollar multinational like Broadcom. I don't think you understand. That's the equivalent of someone asking about relationship advice on the internet and getting all this "dump her" / "dump him" advice when really what's needed is a little more communication. I would say a majority of the work in open software comes various forms of corporate sponsorship via sort of unofficial work from their employees. You ask for "GPL death sentence" and you'll end up with a lot more Apple Computer employees who are for all practical purposes unable to work on any GPL projects. Everything will be MIT and sharing changes will be withheld for the tiniest of reasons. There are already plenty of reasons to shy away no matter how good it is for everyone. Destroy your enemies by making them your friends.

saagarjha 6y ago
How many Apple Computer employees work on GPL projects? I suspect that number is extremely low.
- the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
  Pretty sure they are not allowed, so 0.
- m463 6y ago
  (right, that's what I was saying... Apple stays away from GPL and keeps their employees away from it too)
baybal2 6y ago
Again, this it's not like it's a tragedy, it's an opposite. Opensource will very much benefit from less freeloader companies like Apple, and less companies of lesser rectitude hanging around OSS projects. Apples is free to go back 20 years, and copy *BSD userspace instead of GNU, which it used for 15 out of 20 years. They are completely free to chose Microsoft Trident instead kHTML for the browser engine. The are completely free to do the same for hundreds of other GPL libs they used in their commercial products. They are 100% free to do that... If they can pull it out. The thing is they chose it, because they couldn't make anything else work. Apples militantly opposes GPL, is a freeloader, was actively working around GPL legal language, and it uses DRM, and they are rumoured to be behind much of anti-GPL publicity campaigns. No, they are not good players at all, and will never be.