[csirac2]

The conservancy's current level of input to the debate is appropriate. They're clearly not expending resources they don't have for this discussion. Also, they spent years with VMWare before it finally began legal action. What we have now is a discussion.

It sounds as if you don't think there should be discussion at all. "These licenses are incompatible but screw it, ship it anyway" is shitty behavior we expect from noname WiFi router OEMs.

> Apart from idealistic purity, what has that effort actually done? Has it given us access to source code we don't already have?

If we wanted a Linux that could be used like this, it'd be LGPL. That is exactly what the LGPL is for. Really. It's that simple.

I absolutely think people should think twice before blindly depending on or mashing up GPL software - at the moment they don't, and that's how we get these messes.

It's an important landmark in the history of the GPL and I find it completely weird that anyone would expect the conservancy to remain silent on it. In terms of their long-time resourcing problem, that's got nothing to do with this case and everything to do with VMWare pulling out all the stops to get their existing support pulled.

I rather suspect if the conservancy cared about their long-term survival and keeping everybody happy that much they simply wouldn't have pursued the VMWare case.