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by crankylinuxuser 3018 days ago
And pray tell me what Oracle, Microsoft, and the friends in the BSA do if you're caught violating the terms of the license?

Do they kindly ask for apology? Do they offer, at cost, to make their licenses good? Are they a good steward when they find license mishaps? Or, why should Free Software foundations accept this against companies making decisions to cheat all of us?
2 comments
LukeShu 3018 days ago
The licenses used by Oracle, Microsoft, and friends are there to protect the monetary interests of Oracle, Microsoft, and friends. So, when you are caught violating the license, they offer to make their license good, conditioned on you serving their monetary interest.

The licenses used by the FSF are there to protect the liberty of users. So, when you are caught violating the license, they offer to make their license good, conditioned on you restoring the users' liberty.

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crankylinuxuser 3018 days ago
Yes, and the liberty of the users (read: the price the developers would be if having to replace the violated code) is worth that much.

How much is a team of developers for a month? So yeah, that's real money and time.

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bonzini 3018 days ago
They don't do free software. FSF and Conservancy are trying to keep the moral high ground.
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crankylinuxuser 3018 days ago
I will concede that point for one class of violators.

There's from what I see, 2 groups of GPL (and related) license violators. The first are unintentional ones. They didn't realize, for one reason or another, the ramifications of the GPL. Or, they just don't have a license but it's on Git(Hub/Lab). These people, if it is mentioned to, will fix it.

You have the second group, that sells corporate, closed source hardware, with closed source linux kernel and associated GPL'ed tools. These care not for licenses, and would violate anything and everything for a nickel. They are bad actors, willing to do anything to disadvantage any suckers. Look no further than pretty much every Android phone vendor, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, and lots others.

Intent is 90% of the law. I'm certainly willing to let the 10% drop (the action), but its clear whom is and isn't well meaning and who is a bad actor. Making a pile of money and intentionally breaking the license and copyright is usually a pretty strong indicator.

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bonzini 3018 days ago
You only have 60 days to be compliant for your license to be reinstated. The ilks of Allwinner have failed to comply for years, and are outside the scope of the "GPLv2 safeguard" that's the topic here.
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sametmax 3018 days ago
The problem with moral is that it's in the eye of the beholder. While legal is described very clearly on paper.

And how is it moral to be nice with immoral people ?

Now I do believe it's good to let a chance to do the right thing. But if not, it must be followed by actions.

E.G: I would add to the licence that it is illegal to give technical support or to provide a commercial service related to the product with a violated licence, for all the product with the same licence. If you can't get support for any of your linux servers, or you can't even rent a new VPS, you'll think twice about compliance.

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