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

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Theodore Ts'o wrote at 05:55 (PDT) today:
> there are limits to what we could do to stop Patrick McHardy.

That's precisely why Conservancy and our coalition cooperated fully with the
efforts by LF and others to seek mitigation techniques to deal with Patrick's
activities.  Conservancy worked closely with the Netfilter team as they
developed their statement [0], and made a statement too about the problems
with his enforcement [1].  We were delighted to help you with that issue.

> For the record, I believe there can be a case for the shiny red
> button.  I just want Linus, and not the SFC (or some --- as admitted
> by the SFC --- minority set of developers), to be the one who decides
> when it's appropriate to push it.

Others have replied to point out the way to centralize such GPL enforcement
control is to mandate copyright assignment to Linus.

That isn't to say we shouldn't listen very carefully to what Linus has to say
on the subject.  We should take his opinions on this very seriously.  This is
why I sought Linus' advice before agreeing to help Christoph in the VMware
case, and Linus told me he didn't want that control, and always wanted
individual developers to make their own decisions.  Like James and others, I
also believe all copyrights should reside with individual developers, and
copyright assignment should always be 100% optional.

Linux has a mixed bag on that last point.  While there fortunately is no
central authority that demands copyright assignment for all merged-upstream
contributions to Linux, a non-scientific review indicates that most new Linux
copyrights generated aren't in the hands of developers, but assigned to their
employers.  I suggest that Linux developers start demanding to keep their own
copyrights, rather than giving them to any corporation (a for-profit company
*or* a charity like I work for).  Conservancy led the way by making copyright
assignment 100% optional for all our projects since our inception, and
recently launching the ContractPatch [2] initiative to help developers demand
to keep (or get back) their own copyrights from their employers.

> .... includes the those "evil corporations" that Bradley loves to bash so
> much in his conference talks.  (Both Linus, Greg, and I have alluded to
> Bradley's talks, because fortunately, they are available on YouTube.  And
> we've been looking at them...

I am glad that you've found the availability of my and Karen's talks useful.
I take great logistical effort to make sure both my and Karen's talks are
available because Conservancy does all of our work transparently.  But,
please don't attribute to me things I didn't say.

Specifically, I don't recall ever using the phrase "evil corporations" to
refer to anything other than a joke.  First of all I also work hard to avoid
describing anything as "evil".  It's inappropriate hyperbole; "evil"
accurately describes atrocities like mass murder.  Anyone able to respond to
this thread is privileged because little (if anything) ever happens in our
lives that's evil.  Anyway, I *work* for a corporation (it's "Software
Freedom Conservancy, Inc."), so if I thought corporations are were evil (or
bad), I'd also think my own employer is evil (or bad).  I don't.

Instead, what I have said, as I put on a final slide of a recent talk, is
suggest that we should question the authority of corporations.  I regularly
question the behavior of all the employers of people posting on this thread,
just as four of you here are questioning the behavior of my employer.
Questioning, and receiving answers to those questions, is a healthy community
process. (BTW, there are very few corporations who participate in the Linux
community that rally the Chief Executive (Karen), a high-ranking staffer
(me), and a member of their Board of Directors (Jeremy) to participate
directly with the Linux community in discussions about important policy
throughout the week *and* all weekend long.)

Finally, with regard generally to my past statements, I see a tendency by a
small few on this thread to look at statements I made in years ago, and
shoehorn those statements as a response to something specific in this
discussion.  This is particularly strange behavior given that I am *actually*
responding actively to this thread -- it's not as if I'm some inaccessible
public figure whom you can't ask to clarify and discuss an issue.

Also, I have not even been in *charge* of Conservancy's day-to-day operations
for almost three years.  Karen is, and she has *also* responded to this
thread.  So, worrying that my statements in some talk sets perpetual policy
is akin to worrying that some statement that Linus makes in a mailing list
will be automatically adopted by Jim Zemlin as official Linux Foundation
policy.  Linus surely has huge influence over LF policy just as I have huge
influence over Conservancy policy, but neither of us makes the final call for
our orgs.  I explicitly abdicated that authority at Conservancy because Karen
is the much better person for the job.  As I said to James last night on this
thread, I recognize when other people are better at things than I am and I
work hard to ensure my work complements theirs.  In my view, that's a
fundamentally necessary trait for a Free Software contributor.

> But Linus has stated pretty clearly what his preferences are,

Yes, and like me, Linus makes lots of public statements, so we can just read
his preferences [3]:

   "I think licence choice is very much a personal issue, and while I
   personally prefer the GPL exactly because it 'forces' you to
   co-operate"

   "if somebody decides that they want to enforce the GPL, and seriously
   believe they have a strong case for code they wrote, I think that's their
   choice too."

[0] https://marc.info/?l=netfilter&m=146887465012705&w=2
    https://www.netfilter.org/files/statement.pdf 
[1] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-gpl-enforcement/
[2] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/aug/04/everything-is-negotiable/
[3] http://www.itwire.com/open-source/74432-no-highs,-no-lows-linus-torvalds-on-25-years-of-linux.html
--
     -- bkuhn
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