coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Rich Felker wrote:
>> The issue is that kernel developers have not stepped up to enforce the
>> GPL when companies infringe.

Rich, upon reading the above, I wonder if perhaps you missed the URL
that I posted earlier in this thread:
http://sfconservancy.org/news/2012/may/29/compliance/

Specifically, some Linux copyright holders now cooperate with BusyBox
GPL enforcement via Conservancy.  I have some posts elsewhere in this
thread where I talk about all of it in detail.

> On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 5:35 PM, Rich Felker wrote:
>> The legal rights to kernel code of course belong to the kernel
>> developers, who are actively working to undermine enforcement.

Mike Frysinger wrote at 23:52 (EDT) on Saturday:
> some developers don't want to enforce, some do, and many don't care
> either way.  saying "the kernel developers are actively working to
> undermine enforcement" is overly broad and simply wrong.

I agree with Mike.  I'll go further, even -- I actually don't know of
*any* individual developer in the Free Software community who is
"actively working to undermine enforcement".  Some developers have told
me they don't like it and "would prefer that Conservancy not do it", and
have even asked me to stop.  Indeed, some ask me to stop every time they
see me.  But none go as far as to "undermine" it.  Frankly, if anything,
it was complaints from Linux developers who didn't like BusyBox enforcement
that finally got me sufficiently motivated to build the cross-project
collaborative enforcement program that Conservancy now has; their
criticism had some validity in my view and I've worked to modify
Conservancy's compliance program to address the concern.


Admittedly, there *have* been many political situations where social
pressure was applied in an effort to convince Conservancy to stop doing
enforcement; "undermining" is probably too strong of a word for such
situations.  For example, I had an executive of a for-profit company
tell me recently that if I want to Conservancy to "be big and
successful" rather than a "small-time org with very little staff",
Conservancy will just have to stop doing GPL enforcement.  But that's
not undermining; in fact, he was probably stating a truth, with the goal
of applying some of that social pressure to seek changes in
Conservancy's policies.

Indeed, I suppose some Executive Directors might be swayed by that sort
of thing, but I'm frankly happy for Conservancy to be relatively small,
as long as we're focused on doing what developers ask us to do (and I
always remind people: enforcement is only a *small* part of what
Conservancy does for developers and their projects).  Some developers
want us to enforce, so we do.  I'm always saying: if there comes a time
when every last copyright holder cancels all their enforcement
agreements with Conservancy, then Conservancy would of course stop.

Meanwhile, I think it's really important that we don't bifurcate the
community over this issue.  Permissive licenses have their place, and
folks who want to write code and license it that way should.  It's still
Free Software.  And, while I've often argued that an unenforced
GPL is effectively the same as a permissive license, it's certainly not
*worse* than a permissive license.
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy