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

[Greg KH]

On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 02:06:44PM -0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> 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.

No, that's not what Patrick did.  Whenever he actually took something to
court, _he_ lost.  Companies paid him off before then because they were
scared for foolish reasons, or it was honestly just cheaper to do it
than go to court and win.  He took the traditional model of patent troll
to the next level.

No one I have talked to has ever said that any of those companies were
actually doing anything "wrong" with regards to the GPL at all.  He just
went for small companies who couldn't defend themselves.

Again, just like patent trolls.  Go watch the wonderful talk at the LF
Collab summit this year from Lee Cheng, the lawyer from New Egg as to
how he has worked really hard to stop patent trolls, and how, even if
you don't do anything wrong at all, you can easily get sued by them, and
how much work it takes to fight these type of things.

We don't want GPL "enforcement" to ever be like patent trolls, that way
is a death sentence for Linux.  Just like what happened to Busybox.

thanks,

greg k-h