4 ms·

I can't speak to this particular incident, but I have helped with the technical aspects of GPL copyright enforcement, almost exclusively on embedded devices (ro

by paulv 12y ago

I can't speak to this particular incident, but I have helped with the technical aspects of GPL copyright enforcement, almost exclusively on embedded devices (routers, TVs, blu-ray players, etc). The copyright holders didn't always want money (I'd guess more than 50% did, though) and they all, always, wanted compliance with the license. It was definitely made clear to the offenders that they would be taken to court, and at that point most of them opted to settle. For those that didn't, the court stuff was mostly uneventful. The judge would tell them they had to comply with the license, they would either stonewall or give us a (usually non-working) dump of their code & build system, ad infinitum, until we told them we were going to ask the judge for an injunction. That was usually sufficient motivation. The reason there are no court cases is because we had them dead to rights and their lawyers knew it. Their lawyers told them there was no point in fighting, and to just give us what we wanted.

scott00 12y ago
Where did the GPL-enforcing lawyer come from? How did the lawyer get paid? For the people who wanted monetary damages, did they ever actually get significant monetary damages, or were the money claims dropped in exchange for compliance in the settlement process?
- paulv 12y ago
  Sometimes the Software Freedom Law Center, sometimes the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Conservancy does license enforcement for its member projects upon request. The lawyers are on staff at those organizations, but I'm not familiar with the details of how their funding works. They are both non-profits, though, so if you're curious you can pull their Form 990s. I don't know what the monetary damages were. I was never purview to those conversations (as I said, I was only handling the technical side of things). I heard through the grape vine that some of them requested damages as well as compliance, but I don't know for sure.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

by paulv 12y ago

scott00 12y ago

Where did the GPL-enforcing lawyer come from? How did the lawyer get paid? For the people who wanted monetary damages, did they ever actually get significant monetary damages, or were the money claims dropped in exchange for compliance in the settlement process?

paulv 12y ago
Sometimes the Software Freedom Law Center, sometimes the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Conservancy does license enforcement for its member projects upon request. The lawyers are on staff at those organizations, but I'm not familiar with the details of how their funding works. They are both non-profits, though, so if you're curious you can pull their Form 990s. I don't know what the monetary damages were. I was never purview to those conversations (as I said, I was only handling the technical side of things). I heard through the grape vine that some of them requested damages as well as compliance, but I don't know for sure.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]