[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] GPL defense issues

[Greg KH]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 02:24:25PM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
> We're getting off into the weeds on this.
> 
> The question is whether there's an interest among the attendees of KS
> in hearing about this type of thing.  Based on the feedback from
> Christoph's session last year and some of the replies to this thread,
> I'd say there is.  There is an argument that we shouldn't do this
> because it expands our exposure to legal jeopardy ... if you want to
> argue on that tack, I'm listening.

Yes, that's the issue here.

I discussed this last year with you, and others.  By us talking about
this in a setting like this, we open ourselves up to being part of any
lawsuits that are discussed.  That's _really_ dangerous, and is why I
didn't attend the session last year.  I was not told by anyone that I
could not, it was my own decision.

That's my objection, I don't want any of us to be exposed to that risk.

> Dragging up employers not liking it is a red herring: last year's
> session was organised very late and some employer's did veto their
> developers attending (like yours), but the resolution was simple: you
> didn't stay in the room.  Anyone whose employer orders them to stay
> away can do the same.  We can make sure to have the same warnings we
> had last year, so I don't really see the employer angle being an
> objection to holding a GPL session at KS.
> 
> One of the good things about last years session was that I think we did
> get an embryo of a process to actually share this type of information
> responsibly with the kernel community and that enabled more information
> to be discussed reliably.

Maybe, but really, this has the huge potential to politicize our
community (if it hasn't already).  The kernel summit has always been
about technical things.  We have had outside people (user group
representatives, crazy Germans wanting changes for userspace, etc.)
attend in the past, but those are all technical issues.  I never want to
have a topic at the kernel summit be such that I am forced to have my
personal lawyer present just to ensure that I don't get in any sort of
legal trouble.

So yes, the license matters.  And yes, the GPL is one of the main
reasons we have succeeded so well.  And yes, us being engineers love
arguing the technical issues involved in legal matters.  But being as
these are legal matters, shouldn't we be trusting this to our lawyers
(personal and corporate?)  That's what they do best, not us!

As the creators of this body of code, let's stick to the technical
issues at hand, as we do that really well.

thanks,

greg k-h