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

[David Woodhouse]

> I've said it before, and I've said it again.  For me, this is much
> more about a project governance issue.  We don't let random pissed off
> army officers decide when to start World War III.

This, too, is completely inappropriate hyperbole. It is bizarre to draw
comparisons between the level of destruction that a nuclear war would
involve, and the act of holding a few law-breakers to account when years
of attempting to get them to stop breaking the law has failed.

Remember, Harald held criminals to account in Germany for years without
any signs of triggering armageddon.

The only people who have *anything* to fear are those who are breaking the
law.

Even though I abhor what Patrick McHardy is doing, I still can't quite
find it in my heart to have *sympathy* for his victims. Because it's not
as if he's just taking random pot-shots at passers-by on the street. These
people defended their actions in court, and lost.

In some way, we should all take responsibility for Patrick. Because if we
hadn't been *so* lax about holding offenders to account, and if we hadn't
allowed *so* much rampant abuse of our code to pass without taking action,
there wouldn't have been so much low-hanging fruit for Patrick to make use
of.

We'd all have been better off with *someone* doing what Conservancy does,
and taking the time to work with companies to bring them into compliance
-- using the far-off threat of litigation that nobody *really* wants to
resort to, purely to keep them at the table..

> Similarly Linux has
> establish consensus processes that take into accout *all* of the
> stakeholder,

Linus explicitly declined to take copyright assignments, actually, so no
consensus is required. Of course, you still only really have anything to
fear from litigation if you'd actually *lose* it.

And sure, courts can be fickle but it's not exactly hard to make sure you
are *clearly* obeying the licence.

-- 
dwmw2