[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] GPL enforcement actions

[Tim Bird]

On 07/08/2015 02:25 PM, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 08:41:35AM -0700, Tim Bird wrote:
>> On 07/07/2015 01:18 PM, David Woodhouse wrote:
>>> On Tue, 2015-07-07 at 13:00 -0700, Greg KH wrote:
>>>> As those "efforts" are being driven by the developers of the kernel, I
>>>> think that the developers involved would be the best to present this,
>>>> not the SF Conservancy people.  As you point out, the SFLC is just the
>>>> lawyers being hired by the developers to do what they want them to do :)
>>>
>>> A lot of those developers will be in the room too, of course.
>>>
>>> But the "efforts" are being driven *by* Conservancy on *behalf* of
>>> those developers who have asked Conservancy to do so. And I suspect
>>> someone from Conservancy is better placed to give up-to-date
>>> information about what's actually happening "on the ground".
>>>
>>> The point is to get people in the room and have a direct discussion
>>> without hearsay or misinformation — and doing that *without* someone
>>> from Conservancy doesn't really make much sense.
>>
>> My experience with this is that you'll get one side (and perspective)
>> of the compliance enforcement story, only.  Companies involved in
>> compliance "improvement" exercises simply will not comment on them, so
>> it's not easy to tell if the remedies being requested are understood
>> by all parties or not, and whether I'd agree with them.
> 
> s/will not/usually can not/g
Agreed.

> 
> I'm worried that since a lot of people can't talk about this, for
> various reasons, that the usefulness of it might not be all that
> helpful.
> 
>> From my standpoint it would be useful to hear the Conservancy's stance
>> on a few issues.
> 
> What specific issues are you curious about that you think would be
> good to discuss / hear about?

I'm interested in the scope of remedies requested by the Conservancy.
Specifically, if the Conservancy finds a GPL violation for one piece of
software, or for one division or group in a company, whether they
then request to review and approve the compliance for other unrelated
pieces of software, or for software from other divisions, groups or
products.  That was the thing that caused the most concern within
companies I talked to a few years ago, when I got caught in a
firestorm for proposing support by the CE Workgroup for the Toybox
project.

It's unclear to me whether this is the type of subject David is
proposing, or whether there's much benefit to this discussion at
a kernel summit.  The benefit to me would be to gauge other developers'
reactions to these issues (though honestly I consider myself a 
very low priority for invitation to the summit.)
 -- Tim