On Monday 13 October 2008 09:39:55 Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: > Unfortunately as Rob said much more people are going to brought in > front a court in these days because GPL.
No, they're going to be brought in front of a court for blatantly violating the license terms. The "hall of shame" was up for years on Erik's watch without accomplishing a darn thing. The license is now being enforced by the SFLC, which is headed by Eben Moglen, who helped _draft_ GPLv2. Every enforcement action I'm aware of started with an attempt to contact them first and bring them into compliance _without_ a lawsuit. The license is fairly clear about what you need to do to comply, and how to go about it. If you want to make a proprietary application, you're free to write one. If you'd like to include GPL components in your proprietary project, follow the license terms for those GPL components. (Heck, even the BSD license required you put acknowledgements in your "advertising materials". Liberally interpreted that would include billboards and television ads.) > I feel that as long as the > courts does not set a coherent and long record of judgements the > debate continues. Last I heard, the SFLC was still looking for a company stupid enough to actually take a suit all the way to a judgement. So far, nobody's wanted to face down the steamroller once it becomes clear to them how badly they'll lose. > I think it is perfectly sane and correct FSF would > try to enforce their view of GPL. The FSF's entire current license enforcement division is a man named Brett Smith. I met him at the HP conference last month, he's quite nice. He also has no direct connection to the SFLC that I'm aware of. Busybox is not part of the GNU project. The FSF doesn't have copyrights on most of busybox, and isn't any more interested in enforcing the license on this project than they are on enforcing the license on the Linux kernel. It's not their project, nor is it using their preferred current license (which is GPLv3, not v2). The license enforcement actions have been done by the SFLC, on behalf of Erik and myself. I repeat, the FSF is _not_involved_ in enforcing the busybox license. (Well, in the US anyway. There's a pending thing in france that involves FSF europe, but it hasn't been filed yet.) > Unfortunately I think is true what > Novell/SuSE has written in their site: in future we will see a growing > of dynamic linking against GPL software APIs (some smart, some > malicious and some stupid). Out of curiosity, are you quoting their position before or after Microsoft gave them half a billion dollars and people like Jeremy Allison quit in protest? Look: Linux has been under GPLv2 for _seventeen_years_. The license is not exactly new and untested. Busybox is under the same license as the Linux kernel for a _reason_. I just deleted a longish paragraph pointing out how long I've personally been following these issues, because I then noticed the following paragraph: > Such critical mass would turn up the verdict in favour of > Novell's point of view You know this a priori? > in the same way U.S. citizen has going to pay > 700 billion of dollars because too many banks fail. I have no idea how that's supposed to relate to anything... > Moral is not a > fixed thing but evolves in the same way consensus does. When difficult > technical questions are brought in front of a courts judge would relay > on experts and experts relay on their credibility and credibility > evolves in the same way consensus does. Driving the consensus > correctly could achieve results that logic does not. Did you really just say that if neither logic nor precedent are on your side, you'll push on regardless in hopes you can snow the judge? Kind of undermines any attempt at rational debate, don't you think? There really doesn't seem to be much point in continuing this conversation. Rob _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list [email protected] http://busybox.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/busybox
