[onli]

Some context: Germany has a very special, unfriendly system called Abmahnungen. Basically, whenever you see someone violating a right, you can partner with a lawyer and send them a bill. That's the system with which in Germany the anti-copying industry and its lawyers are using file-sharing to make money.

Given the hints in the announcement and the linked explanation from sfconservancy.org, together with http://www.ferner-alsdorf.de/rechtsanwalt/it-recht/urheberre..., what seems to have happened here is that Mchardy used that system to target distributors of linux systems to make money. If, as in the lawyer blog described, making the source code available online is not enough and you need some written offer, basically all linux vendors can be targeted from a right-holder. They'd have to cease the "violation", pay lawyer costs (normally inflated to make a profit) and often be susceptible to pay for damage as if they had no open source licence at all to distribute Linux. This might be very expensive, and even defending against overly broad claims will be expensive.

Uncertainty like this would be a great danger for linux distribution in that country. But note that I have no clear image of what really happened, I'm just combining some pieces. Still, given the danger of that broken juridical system, if someone is active in that space and even only not willing to clearly communicate his methods and goals, to block him is the least these organizations should do.