5 ms·

If you manage a website like this, I implore you to spend an hour and think about someones first-time experience when they land on your site. - The logo goes t

If you manage a website like this, I implore you to spend an hour and think about someones first-time experience when they land on your site. - The logo goes to the homepage - the "gpl-violations.org" link goes to the homepage - the page title goes to the homepage - About describes the goal of the project and who's behind it, but not how to access the project... or if that's even a thing. - The GPL page lists the GPL itself - FAQ has a drop down... for four pages that I don't have the context to pick from? Who is this site for? The categories also aren't the same. Some are people (Vendors) others are topics (Legal). Beyond reading those pages, as an individual landing on the page I'm exhausted at trying to find out what gpl-violations.org does. > The gpl-violations.org project tries to raise public awareness about past and present infringing use(r)s of GPL licensed software. Yes, but _what do you do_? Email people? Run marketing campaigns? > The project wants to act as information and communication platform between all parties involved with licensing of free software Where is this platform? How do I access it? Is your selling point acting as a liaison? If so, why would you not put a big "contact us" button front and center? Look, I get that you might not want to design your site to look like a brand-new Bay Area SaaS. I don't want you to do what you don't want! I just want you to think about how to best provide info to the people who visit your website (and who might want to join your cause). And, so far, this ain't it!

john_moscow 6y ago
Last entry in the news section is from 2016. Looks dead in the water to me.
- riedel 6y ago
  I guess laforge is doing other things atm, but i guess he at least hasn't called it dead: http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/projects/license-compliance/ http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/projects/license-compliance/
  - craigsmansion 6y ago
    > I guess laforge is doing other things atm Yes. Judging by the reactions here I think most commenters are unfamiliar with Harald Welte, prolific Free Software hacker and one-man GPL defender. For all the noise out of kernel hackers about doing their own enforcement if needed, so any copyright assignment is not necessary, Harald is one of the very few who actually went through the trouble of doing something to keep the kernel GPL instead of "GPL as lipservice, BSD in practice." You'd think the Linux Foundation would be all over this, but it looks like they prefer to keep the gravy train rolling (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/join/members/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/join/members/).
  - pabs3 6y ago
    His current focus is open source mobile communications networks: https://osmocom.org/ https://osmocom.org/
remram 6y ago
Agreed, this is empty of information. There's a wikipedia page for the organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl-violations.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl-violations.org Among other things, it mentions that the website was offline for most of 2015, and while they recovered it, I am not sure if they have been in activity since (whatever their activity is).
ISL 6y ago
My expectation from the URL would have been better served by a perpetually-maintained static html page enumerating GPL violators.
- thih9 6y ago
  I think they intentionally avoid it, see FAQ: > Beware the "public shaming" bomb. It's easy to let off, but very hard to defuse if you made a mistake or the issue turned out to be minor and is rapidly resolved. [1]: http://gpl-violations.org/faq/violation-faq/ http://gpl-violations.org/faq/violation-faq/
LaF0rge 6y ago
If you have so many comments, why raise it here and not mail the contact stated at the website? Do you think it is more productive in effecting a change to only post this here, rather than to whoever is responsible?
- syockit 6y ago
  The answer is in the first sentence > If you manage a website like this So it is and advice to whoever manages this kind of website, not just the webmaster of GPL-violations.org
- bawolff 6y ago
  Its a forum. The entire point is to post and discuss things, not to fix the world. If we wanted to do that we would be fixing the world instead of reading hacker news.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
One more minor point: http should redirect to https.

john_moscow 6y ago

Last entry in the news section is from 2016. Looks dead in the water to me.

riedel 6y ago
I guess laforge is doing other things atm, but i guess he at least hasn't called it dead: http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/projects/license-compliance/ http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/projects/license-compliance/
- craigsmansion 6y ago
  > I guess laforge is doing other things atm Yes. Judging by the reactions here I think most commenters are unfamiliar with Harald Welte, prolific Free Software hacker and one-man GPL defender. For all the noise out of kernel hackers about doing their own enforcement if needed, so any copyright assignment is not necessary, Harald is one of the very few who actually went through the trouble of doing something to keep the kernel GPL instead of "GPL as lipservice, BSD in practice." You'd think the Linux Foundation would be all over this, but it looks like they prefer to keep the gravy train rolling (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/join/members/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/join/members/).
- pabs3 6y ago
  His current focus is open source mobile communications networks: https://osmocom.org/ https://osmocom.org/

remram 6y ago

Agreed, this is empty of information. There's a wikipedia page for the organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl-violations.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl-violations.org Among other things, it mentions that the website was offline for most of 2015, and while they recovered it, I am not sure if they have been in activity since (whatever their activity is).

ISL 6y ago

My expectation from the URL would have been better served by a perpetually-maintained static html page enumerating GPL violators.

thih9 6y ago
I think they intentionally avoid it, see FAQ: > Beware the "public shaming" bomb. It's easy to let off, but very hard to defuse if you made a mistake or the issue turned out to be minor and is rapidly resolved. [1]: http://gpl-violations.org/faq/violation-faq/ http://gpl-violations.org/faq/violation-faq/

LaF0rge 6y ago

If you have so many comments, why raise it here and not mail the contact stated at the website? Do you think it is more productive in effecting a change to only post this here, rather than to whoever is responsible?

syockit 6y ago
The answer is in the first sentence > If you manage a website like this So it is and advice to whoever manages this kind of website, not just the webmaster of GPL-violations.org
bawolff 6y ago
Its a forum. The entire point is to post and discuss things, not to fix the world. If we wanted to do that we would be fixing the world instead of reading hacker news.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

One more minor point: http should redirect to https.