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

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Tue, 2016-08-30 at 18:15 +0200, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 08:55:42AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 09:24:54PM -0700, Jeremy Allison via
> > Ksummit-discuss wrote:
> > > Your opinion on that is clear and I understand why you hold it.
> > > There are many other developers who hold the same opinion, but
> > > lots of them work on FreeBSD not Linux.
> > > 
> > > Respectfully, I don't agree with you. Greg and Ted seem to agree
> > > with you, Linus (like me) seems to imagine there can be a case 
> > > for that shiny red button.
> > 
> > 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.
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> If you are trying to equate "random pissed off officers" with those 
> kernel developers part of the SFC alliance, then I have to say that 
> is perhaps one of the most stupid misrepresentations of members of 
> SFC that I have heard so far. Unless of course your statement is 
> educated, you know all members part of SFC and have asked each one
> why they joined.

Given that the names aren't public, that's somewhat of an impossible
test.

The problem Ted has is that a tiny minority of the copyright holders
can launch a GPL action under the law today with out regard to the
opinions of the majority.  So could one person try to set up a
permanent fork of linux; What holds it together isn't legal principles,
it's sound governance, which is why Ted says this is a governance
issue.

The analogy is to try to get you to understand, not to insult you by
equating members of the SFC coalition with random pissed off generals.

> If you don't know then please educate yourself on this as reading 
> this type of incoherent nonsense being spouted out is just offending 
> and does nothing to help.

OK, so leaving the rhetoric aside, do you understand why we see this as
an unsolved governance issue?  Solving it correctly is a hard problem,
because it involves finding some mechanism for bringing GPL violators
into line that everyone (including those in the SFC coalition) can
support.

James