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

[Matthew Garrett]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 5:31 PM, Theodore Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:
> If some competitor ran off with their code, companies like IBM and SGI
> would be perfectly capable of suing their competitor.  As Linus has
> observed, companies like IBM are prefectly capable of deciding whether
> or not a lawsuit is in their interest, and aggressively pursuing legal
> action when it's called for.

I'm a little confused here. Doesn't the argument that this would
result in companies avoiding Linux in order to reduce their potential
liability apply equally well in this case? If IBM showed willingness
to sue people for JFS-related infringements, there's no fundamental
reason to believe that they wouldn't be willing to do the same against
any other competitor on broadly spurious grounds. The threat of being
sued by IBM seems like a much stronger incentive to use something else
than the threat of being sued by a small coalition of independent
copyright holders.