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

[Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>]

On Fri, 2016-08-26 at 09:34 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 8:28 AM, Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2016-08-25 at 22:24 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > 
> > > What matters are the people - and companies - that actually
> > > develop
> > > and contribute code, and make the future happen.
> > 
> > Are you saying that the freedom of end users
> > to modify the software running on their Linux
> > devices is irrelevant?
> 
> Irrelevant? No. And are companies who violate the license a good
> thing? No.
> 
> But they really don't make a difference. In a very literal sense.
> They
> aren't improving the code - even in the hidden product itself.

They do not have to for the GPL to work.

What matters is that the users downstream
from them have the freedom to modify the
code on their devices.

> 
> > The downstream freedoms seem to be generating
> > new upstream communities all around us, for
> > example OpenWRT.
> 
> And I call bullshit. Anybody who tries to point to the lawsuits and
> say that they were a big factor in the success of OpenWRT is actively
> ignoring all the other - and hugely *bigger* factors - in the
> successes of OpenWRT.

I am not saying the lawsuits are any factor in
the success of OpenWRT.

What I am saying is that the end user freedoms
specified in the GPL are just as important as
the upstream community behind the original
project, since the end user freedoms enable new
projects, and new communities.


> I'm sure you've had many of the same discussions that I have had with
> other open source people working in various places who are sharing
> horror stories about how some project was a nightmare and parts of
> the
> company was doing bad things.
> 
> So even the good companies tend to have their warts.

Of course the good companies make mistakes.

They tend to get corrected after working with
those companies for some period of time,
sometimes several years.

> So there's been lots of nugding and discussions and talking to people
> going on when companies sometimes need encouragement to behave well.
> And public shaming too - I think the things that Matthew does when he
> points out truly crap hardware or horrible security issues are
> *wonderful*.

There is a lot of nudging and shaming going on,
but little on the opposite direction.

I wonder if it would make sense for an organization
like SFC to compile a list of devices that are GPL
compliant?

Companies that sell Linux devices could submit their
devices for inclusion on that list, with a URL to
the source code, etc.

The stick of shaming and GPL enforcment efforts
might be more effective if there is also a carrot,
directing customers towards the devices that are
compliant.

> We need to stop the antagonistic threatening stances, and we need to
> stop having lawyers involved, and have people who can actually talk
> to
> companies *without* getting that "turtle" response.
> 
> Because that approach really does have a proven track record.  And
> I'm
> pretty sure you know that too.

Lawsuits appear to be the absolute last resort
for the SFC.

If there are people who believe the non-lawsuit
GPL compliance work by the SFC is still too
antagonistic, it may be worth discussing exactly
why people feel that way, and whether anybody
has ideas for better ways to go about GPL
compliance.