On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 6:18 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn <[email protected]> wrote: > Robinson Tryon wrote on Thursday, 17 April: >> in the general case, I hope that employers would not be able to quash >> an employee's personal, non-work-time hobby of GPL enforcement. > > I wish that were true as well, but it's merely a wish, sadly.
Is it legal for the employer to interfere in that way? (not to suggest that the interactions between employe(-es and -rs) always follows the law) > So, instead, I take the political heat and attacks from the industry > bigwigs who claim I'm the same as a patent troll because I don't release > the names of all the copyright holders. That's good politics on their > part: scare people so they don't want their names known, and then attack > the person who helps those scared people stand up for their rights. Maybe I'm just out of the loop here, but I don't recall hearing the head of BigWig Technologies, Inc. stand up and call you or Conservancy out on being akin to a patent troll. If I did hear such a thing, I feel like I'd be inclined to respond, and perhaps not recommend said company's hardware/services in the future to those I advise on tech matters. If all of this is happening quietly in back alleys, then perhaps someone should help you shine some light back there, so we can let the rats scurry back to the subway tunnels and let you do your thing. > This is the industry we all work in. I wish others would realize how > politically dangerous it is to enforce the GPL. I've basically made it > so my only job prospects forever are in non-profit organizations or > outside of computing entirely. It's what I wanted anyway, so it's not > that bad for me, but I'm pretty clearly blacklisted from every working > at any Linux-related company because of my GPL enforcement work. I've had many people express concern over my potential for future employment were I to take a position at an organization such as the FSF or work publicly with someone on GPL-enforcement work. Even some of the talks I've given might be poison to me gaining employment at one of the larger tech companies in the US today -- that is, if HR at the larger tech companies even had the content on their radar. At some level, I think you envision these companies with more substance and internal consistency than the flat, 2-D behemoths they have become; set up as for-profit companies, your current activities as a GPL-wielding, copyleft enforcer are of lesser importance to them than your ability to perform a role they need to fill so that they, in turn, can fill their coffers. If they believe that you can perform your duties and keep your mouth shut about the (totally legal) stuff you've done in the past, then I assume they'd probably hire you. You just strike me as more of an individual, and less of a cog-in-the-machine :-) > Actually, I think most of the major Linux companies prefer to pretend > Linux is LGPL'd. They're fine with upstreaming core subsystem stuff, > but they believe anything that isn't a core subsystem should be > proprietary if they want it to be. Any idea why the general consensus is to draw the line there? Just convenient to their business model, ala open-core? > It's that, but not only that. It's also that these companies believe if > the GPL is ever known to exist, it will "hurt adoption of Linux". > That's why industry trade associations and the like also oppose GPL > enforcement: adoption is more important than software freedom. Yes, I've heard bits-and-pieces of that... >> Do the companies not understand the GPL, or are they willfully >> violating it because they don't think anyone will bother to enforce >> it? > > Some companies against enforcement actually are generally pretty > compliant. They just have this irrational fear that they'll lose > customers if the GPL is enforced. If that were true, of course, they'd > have lost customers already since Harald and I have been enforcing the > GPL for decades now. Given that you're actively working on compliance, are these companies just hoping that you'll be too busy to get to them, or what? Re: losing customers, GPL compliance seems pretty simple to me, but I can see how it's a scary place for newcomers. Perhaps if we can provide more information about how to get into compliance and stay in compliance (including some kind of stupidly-simple guide for companies to pass-on to their downstream distributors), we might calm their irrational fears. > Others companies are known violators who play at the edges of the > fundamental "what makes something a combined and/or derivative work"? > They know they are right on the line, and they are working hard to make > it difficult for me to challenge them on this. And, it's quite > expensive for an individual or a non-profit to challenge a wealthy > company that's hell-bent on infringing your copyrights. That issue is > currently the fundamental center of my GPL enforcement work now. IIRC you were going after the low-hanging fruit in years past. I guess at some point you find yourself picking higher up the tree :-) >> To what extent would further education at the developer/engineer level >> help? > > Telling Linux developers that we need their support -- in a friendly, > non-confrontational way -- is what's needed most. Angry posts like some > on this list make to LKML or other places aren't helping. What helps is > to tell Linux developers that even if they only have a few hundred lines > of code upstream, they should get in touch with me at the GPL Compliance > program for Linux developers. Aside from just the warm fuzzies that a dev gets from knowing that her contributions to the kernel stopped a GPL violation, what other benefits should we tout to devs we hope will espouse these views and join your merry band of GPL enforcers? Is it effective to point out that we need their help to deliver on the GPL's promise of user freedoms? > Second, and probably more importantly: encourage Linux developers you > know to insist that their employers let them keep their own copyright. > There are a fewer and fewer Linux developers who actually have their own > copyrights. This is by design of these companies: they know that > without copyrights, enforcement doesn't happen. Based on my experience, for those who are full employees of a company, the copyright relationship is such that copyright is usually retained by the employer. Free-lancers often negotiate copyright terms on a case-by-case basis, with retention of copyright by the author being more common with graphic artists than with programmers. If someone wants not only a piece of artwork, but the copyright as well, that might cost them treble. My guess is that many companies don't particularly care if they hold copyright on particular pieces of code, but their lawyers tell them to hedge their bets and ask for the copyright anyhow. If we want more Linux kernel devs to retain their own copyright, we might want to encourage that behavior across the industry as a whole. E.g. with LibreOffice, we don't ask for copyright assignment from individuals or companies, but merely a contributor's statement agreeing to license their contributions under our copyleft licenses. Of course, some companies retain copyright on their employees' contributions; it would be interesting to see what percentage of those employed to hack on LibreOffice retain copyright to the code they author. > Individuals need to be the > largest single copyright holder in Linux for a good, secure future of > Linux. I think that's a laudable goal, but one that needs to be followed-up with concrete plans to make it actually happen. The entrenched companies, as you pointed out, are either apathetic or actively opposed to such empowerment taking place. I'd say that we need someone to carry that flag (No, not you -- I know you've already got more than enough on your plate!) Cheers, --R -- Robinson Tryon LibreOffice Community Outreach Herald Senior QA Bug Wrangler The Document Foundation [email protected]
