Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] GPL enforcement actions

[Chris Mason <clm@fb.com>]

On Tue, Jul 07, 2015 at 10:15:24PM +0000, Luck, Tony wrote:
> > I'll bet the average core developer wants to hack on the kernel, and
> > share in the work that everyone else is doing.  But I'll also bet the
> > conversation would be dominated by extremes, spiral down into
> > my-company-won't-let-me-say-xxyyzz, and then finally settle into
> > comparisons of US law with everyone else.
> 
> A sizable fraction of commits come from people whose day job is
> to work on Linux. All my contributions to the Linux kernel are owned
> by my employer.  Do companies with large aggregated contributions
> get a say in the GPL enforcement direction?
> 

I think they've had a say all along, and our stability as a community
has benefited from it.

> I'm certainly not speaking for my employer here - but you might think
> that a company that makes a huge percentage of its profits from selling
> silicon chips would want the minimum possible barriers to people buying
> those chips to run s/w. That may, or may not, align with the opinions of
> people working for the company.

But what level of forced sharing actually makes the lowest barrier over
time?  I'm happy to see us wander around with our wildly different
opinions about this.  It makes for great debates, but it's not something
we can answer at KS.

But going back to David's original topic, there are some important
current events here.  It's not a horrible idea to talk about them,
although Korea is pretty far to drag a lawyer for a single session.

-chris