[jcranmer]

> "I actually think we should talk about GPL enforcement at the kernel summit, because I think it's an important issue," Torvalds gently began, "but we should talk about it the way we talk about other issues: among kernel developers. No lawyers present unless they are in the capacity of a developer and maintainer of actual code, and in particular, absolutely not the Software Freedom Conservancy." - Linus Torvalds

This is fundamentally a pretty stupid take on the issue, to be honest. I can understand why Linus might want to ignore the SF Conservancy in particular here, but banning all lawyers in general is a stupid idea when you're discussing legal documents (that's what software licenses are). It's akin to saying "let's talk about why our car isn't working but NO CAR MECHANICS ALLOWED."

If what you're talking about is legal issues, you absolutely should involve lawyers, and generally earlier is better. This is particularly true when intellectual property is involved, as neglecting to take certain actions can completely foreclose future legal remedies.

[dragonwriter]

> can understand why Linus might want to ignore the SF Conservancy in particular here, but banning all lawyers in general is a stupid idea when you're discussing legal documents

It's a perfectly valid approach if your goal is to discuss developer's concerns/priorities/goals for GPL enforcement and not legal tactics to achieve some known set of goals, and particularly if your goal is to avoid a talk at mixed purposes because some people have goals in mind that are not agreed on and are trying to talk tactics while other people are trying to talk goals and no one gets anywhere.

[throwaway82652]

From the lawyers I've spoken to about this, Linus's view on the GPL and the chosen enforcement strategy has long been known to be nonsense. But nothing will change as long as the kernel developers are intentionally burying their head in the sand and acting like they know better than the legal system.

[onphonenow]

I'm just curious here. If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid".

Especially if my approach has single handedly created the largest body of copyleft / collaborative / open source software out there with massive amounts of actual collaboration.

The irony is so strong here. Basically jerks, who can't get along with others (including each other, witness the battles between SFC and SFLC etc etc) with little value creation themselves want to force their view on others, even though folks have already voted with their feet.

By all means create the Affero GPLv3. Try to get folks to write software for it. That's fine.

But don't pretend to be on some moral high ground speaking for developers / creators who wrote the code. Let them speak for themselves. And don't go back and having lost the effort to get Affero GPLv3 or whatever adopted close the various SAAS and Tivo loopholes, go back and say some old license has these terms.

[HWR_14]

> If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid".

The exact same authority developers have when they tell their clients that they cannot run a 1,000,000 person site off the phone they forget to charge sometimes. Or even a designer telling a client their color scheme is poor (it clashes, isn't color-blind friendly, and renders poorly on anything smaller than a tablet)! It's a technical matter and they are paid SMEs.

They aren't saying Linus's goals are stupid. They're saying the methods he's using to achieve the goals are. Which makes sense. Because he's not a lawyer.

[robonerd]

> They aren't saying Linus's goals are stupid. They're saying the methods he's using to achieve the goals are. Which makes sense.

So if lawyers were in charge and rampaged around suing the shit out of every company that made a mistake when using Linux, that would better suit Linus's goals? Only Linus can speak to Linus's goals, but I doubt this is what Linus really wants.

[HWR_14]

> if lawyers were in charge and rampaged around suing the shit out of every company that made a mistake when using Linux, that would better suit Linus's goals?

No. But if they went around sending demand letters that were complied with (because they came from a reputable law firm) by getting the code open sourced it would. I'm not saying these lawyers should be listened to. I'm saying some lawyers should. And excluding all lawyers is as dumb as trying to get funded for your FaceBook clone saying you only need the money to "hire a programmer" would be.

> Only Linus can speak to Linus's goals

This is nonsense. I might be wrong but I can certainly speak to his goals. We can even discuss what we think they are.

[seoaeu]

> If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid".

This is like saying “If I want to write my code a certain way, what right do compiler authors and language designers have to tell me code contains ‘syntax errors’ and ‘obvious bugs’”. On some level you can write whatever code you want. But if you want it to work the way you intend, there’s some rules that have to be followed

[Benjamin_Dobell]

> If I want to write my code a certain way, what right do compiler authors and language designers have to tell me code contains ‘syntax errors’ and ‘obvious bugs’

That's not a reasonable comparison.

1. Licenses are fundamentally open to interpretation, programming languages have specifications. Yes, the specifications and compiler aren't perfect, however, code is designed to be specific. Legal agreements on the other hands are very intentionally the opposite. Legal agreements consciously avoid being overly specific in order to be broad and all encompassing. Legal agreements fundamentally have access to (and are evaluated with respect to) the concepts of "fair" and "reasonable"; which very intentionally have no strict definition. You need to argue your case.

2. More importantly, licenses are contracts. They're a civil matter (not criminal). Meaning the copyright holder can chose whether or not they want to enforce their license. That's a fundamental right of being a copyright holder. If you consciously don't enforce, you may lose the right to enforce (at least fully), but that is the license holder's call.

[seoaeu]

There's lots of ways that licenses can be objectively wrong. They can contain content that renders them invalid, or wording that legally means something different from what the author intended. A lawyer has the "right" to point out such flaws, and refusing to consult a lawyer won't make those flaws go away.

You are of course right about copyright holders being able to chose whether to enforce their license (at least if they were smart enough to use a license that will actually stand up in court!)

[onphonenow]

This type of positioning by the SFC is horrendous.

Why do I have to follow the SFC rules / interpretation (by the way very flawed) when I write my own code.

Seriously, what gives them this right over my code. I reject this, even if GPL licensed.

Of course, I get the argument you and they are trying to make. By releasing stuff with GPL software I may have written, I've somehow bound myself to release my decryption keys, unlock my devices etc etc. You are making my point for me, that is NOT what most authors of GPLv2 licensed code want or agree to. And just saying "because lawyers" doesn't make it so.

This is a good example of the hazards of involving lawyers I think. Wet becomes dry and dry becomes wet.

[seoaeu]

You (presumably) live in a country with rule-of-law. That means that if you are involved in a court case related to your GPL code, the legal system in your country will determine the outcome. Refusing to consult with lawyer in advance about what the outcome of such a legal proceeding will probably be, isn't going to improve your odds!

I have no clue whether whatever SFC has been claiming about the legal status of GPL is true or not (quite frankly, I haven't bothered even looking at what they're saying). But if the legal system's interpretation of GPLv2 doesn't match what most authors want or agree to, that sounds like precisely the kind of thing authors should want a lawyer to tell them, so they have a chance to switch to a different license.

[onphonenow]

The issue is the legal system has, to date, largely followed the understood intent of the GPLv2.

Consulting with the SFC does nothing to advance anything.

Harald Welte has had great success getting folks to release source code. However, he does not threaten commercial use of GPL software, no unlock keys / signing keys etc are needed.

[jcranmer]

> If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid".

The first part of the statement--if you want to license your code a certain way--your lawyer should be to work with you to find a way to legally do that. Unless you want something patently absurd like "I want a way to let me murder any idiots who use my code without any consequences whatsoever."

It's the parenthetical that's problematic: you can't control how the law will be interpreted, and if you've got an incorrect interpretation of the law, you'll be laughed out of the courtroom. See, for example, any sovereign citizen case.

[onphonenow]

Goodness.

Look at the GPLv2 (written by a CODER).

Compare it to the GPLv3 (written by these expert lawyers).

Which is clearer, more understandable, just more rational?

Which is the license that has the larger adoption on more code used by more folks.

And despite all the claims here, intent is going to matter. When you sue Linus and say the GPL doesn't mean what he and everyone else actually creating this code think it means, then he's going to say, this was our intent. And you are going to have a VERY tall mountain to climb.

[jcranmer]

> Which is clearer, more understandable, just more rational?

Honestly, just quickly looking through the two licenses to answer a simple question... GPLv3 [1].

From a legal perspective, "simpler" documents tend to be less clear, because a lot more of the interpretation will rely on common law jurisprudence [2], and the "common" here doesn't mean "everybody agrees"--it in fact means "every jurisdiction has its own set of rules that may or may not translate directly in other jurisdiction."

> And despite all the claims here, intent is going to matter. When you sue Linus and say the GPL doesn't mean what he and everyone else actually creating this code think it means, then he's going to say, this was our intent. And you are going to have a VERY tall mountain to climb.

Given that a software license is close to a take-it-or-leave-it contract, ambiguous interpretations are generally going to be interpreted in favor of the person who has the take-it-or-leave-it option--which in this case is not going to be Linus and co.

[1] The criteria I used: "how do patents interact with this license." From what I can tell, GPLv2 technically doesn't actually contain a clause where the licensor grants the licensee any and all necessary patents--it instead talks about what happens if the code violates a third party's patent. Admittedly, reading the GPLv2 to not include a patent license grant is somewhat of a malicious reading, but the GPLv3's verbiage here is pretty explicit: "Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version."

[2] I'm limiting my analysis here to US jurisdictions, because that's what I know.

[onphonenow]

If GPLv3 had been GPLv2 plus patent stuff and a few other things it'd likely have been very welcomed.

For folks following along, the GPLv3 is more than 2x the length of the GPLv2

"If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product"

Give you a feel for the GPLv3 style :)

[mistrial9]

absolutely disagree with this paternalistic interpretation.. coders are typically literate. Your example claims some exaggerated illiterate premise and then uses that to say "talk to a lawyer instead" .. no comment beyond that since we obviously have different concepts of what rights of an author are...

[jcranmer]

If you want some examples of legal consequences you might not otherwise anticipate:

* Estoppel. Not going after someone when you are made aware of their violations may preclude you from ever being able to go after them.

* Severability. If one clause of your contract is unenforceable, the entire contract may become unenforceable unless you have a clause saying otherwise. (And even then, sometimes that won't apply!).

Taking the audience of HN as a reasonable sample of competent coders, I have seen more than a few commenters give very confident and very incorrect interpretations of the law. I am not so presumptuous to think that I am not in that class, although I do hope to do so more rarely than the average commenter.

And for what it's worth, I don't believe that the exaggerated premise I used was one that requires a lawyer to understand; it was merely an example that was so outrageous it would not be unreasonable for a lawyer to tell you that it was impossible for you to do what you want to do. An example that is not so outrageous is if you want to release something into the public domain--for there are jurisdictions where giving up all of your rights as an author is impossible.

[mistrial9]

* Estopple -- a quick search shows this USA law student

https://www.whitcomblawpc.com/additional-blogs-of-interest/e...

* Severability I thought we were talking about COPYRIGHT and Software License! apparently not?

"it was merely an example" , yes agree, it was merely an example "I want my license to say that I can murder someone" .. that was your example, right?

[throwaway82652]

>If I as a developer want to license my code a certain way (and enforce that license in a certain way) what authority do these lawyers have to tell me I'm "stupid".

Are you willing to represent yourself in court? If the answer is no, then that's an admission you are stupider than a lawyer when it comes to legal matters. Nothing wrong with it, I have no problem admitting it myself. Let the programmers handle the programming and let the lawyers handle the law.

[onphonenow]

I'd skip the name calling.

You fail to understand how copyright works. If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it.

And yes, I'd be happy to represent myself if SFC came along and told me I could or couldn't do something with the code I wrote because that makes no sense. I can choose a license, I can dual license, I can re-license future releases and I can stop providing updates under any of those licenses.

So sure, if you and the SFC want to go after me for my code, go for it.

There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False.

[throwaway82652]

There's no name calling, "stupid" is the exact word you used. I'm stupider than a lawyer when it comes to all the details of contract law, because I didn't study it as much as they do. If you aren't a lawyer, then you probably are too. Again, nothing wrong with admitting it. You and I can't know everything. It's actually arrogant and insulting to claim that you know more than a skilled lawyer or attorney just because you wrote some code, I would suggest not doing that.

>There seems to be a modern confusion that the folks NOT doing any of the work in writing code have all sorts of rights with respect to it (or time of a dev to fix their bugs). False.

I'm sorry but this makes no sense, it's weird how often I see this sentiment in open source. If you hired a lawyer to represent you and give you legal advice and defend you and court (which is multiple full time jobs) then you're paying them to do a job for you. You're not giving any of your rights away. You don't have to choose to hire SF Conservancy, you can hire another firm.

[jcranmer]

> If I'm the creator of the work, I have the copyright to it.

Not necessarily. For example, work for hire, or copyright being assigned to the employer. Or maybe the work itself isn't copyrightable in the first place. There's even a fun provision where US government work doesn't have any copyright in the first place! You might also have transferred the copyright of your work after you created it in a way which doesn't give you any retained rights.

[mistrial9]

in the USA there is strong copyright for the author of the work in question. Work-for-hire is well understood in Chapter 1 of any book on that topic. Secondly, a court appearance is not required to be an author and therefore copyright holder. Suggestions that "if you are not able to make a court appearance then XYZ and etc" .. is fallacious to start with, condescending and sounds a lot like an attorney arrogance. NOLO Press, read my lips

[mistrial9]

> has long been known to be nonsense

could any statement be less substantiated than pure FUD like that?