On Saturday 08 September 2012 05:47:54 Rob Landley wrote: > On 08/26/2012 09:09 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > > IMO, Tito's response is quite correct. However, I'd add that various > > maintainers (and former maintainers) of projects have supported > > enforcement: Denys has agreed to continue enforcement on BusyBox, and > > Erik agrees -- and in fact, is very supportive -- as a former > > maintainer. Rob, as a former maintainer, used to agree and now > > disagrees, and I respect his opinion and Conservancy doesn't enforce on > > his behalf anymore. > > Heh. Interesting interpretation. > > When I started the first enforcement action to deal with the backlog of > reports Erik Andersen left me in the form of the Hall of Shame, my > interest was in getting access to code. But a year of enforcement > efforts (and several code drops) didn't result in a single line of code > from any third party added to the busybox repository. I withdrew my > support from the efforts because my interest was in engineering, not > money. From an engineering perspective, the busybox enforcement suits > were a complete failure.
Hi, this is probably due to the fact that this third parties never added a single line of code to the busybox's versions they "used", they just took it "as is" because it was good enough due to the work done by a lot of "stupid" idealist developers. > When you say "used to agree and now disagrees" you're implying that my > position changed. It didn't. The lawsuits demonstrated their complete > inability to serve their original purpose. Maybe the purpose was wrong? To catch the one that really adds some code to it you have to chase and search among the many that just use it on their routers, phones, cheap china tablets and so on.... They all miss to follow what is written in the GPL license as they not even mention that the code they used contains busybox nor do they mention links to get the source code. > You have found other purposes: they're profitable for the lawyers, and > they make moralists feel like they're punishing bad guys who pirate > "free" software. People who park their cars in a no parking zone are also profitable for the cops and country but this is not a good reason to not prosecute them because this will lead to the social acceptance of wrong parking (everybody does it.......why not me!!!) with awful consequences. > I find this a strange definition of "free" (not libre, > not gratis). Morally, I think the FSF is on the wrong side of history > here the same way the MPAA, RIAA, patent trolls, and the "zombie rights" > trademark guys are. I thought GPL enforcement might have a pragmatic use > beyond enriching lawyers. I stopped when proven wrong. > Sadly the only way to sensitize people is to touch their wallet... I don't understand tough what you are suggesting, just don't care about infringers? Do you have a better solution, some hints how it could be done better? To be honest it annoys me to think that the MS licenses of the PCs in my shop could be checked by law enforcement agencies and that the same agencies don't care about very similar licenses (but GPL) on other devices. Something has to be done..... at least for the reason to avoid in the future that somebody tells us: "What do you want now, you don't even tried to enforce your license?" Ciao, Tito > Rob > > P.S. Yes, zombie rights: > > http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/appeals-court-rules-marilyn-monroes-image-public-estate-367160 > _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list [email protected] http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
