| The SFC / related entities have worked with GPL developers to sue. All they need is a developer to let them act as their lawyer (for free). This is what is remarkable. The SFC is so toxic in the open source developer community that despite their being a ton of a developers, not that many want to jump on the SFC train. So yes, this makes it hard for them. Linus joked the title of a talk should be: "Lawyers: poisonous to openness, poisonous to community, poisonous to
projects". So an approach for SFC might be to write code and start contributing. One challenge they might face is that a) they can't write code and/or b) getting developers to write for them that can do meaningful work may be difficult given their reputation and c) open source projects might choose not to accept their code because they know they'd be getting in bed with the SFC. Realize the SFC views are very left field. They are now arguing in the Vizio case that the GPL is not a copyright license but some kind of contract with users. This is so backwards its crazy. One solution, they write some very cool software everyone WANTS to use, then they could sue everyone. Downside, folks might stop using their software. Developers have sued - that's mostly been fine I think. Harald Welte did a lot for the GPL. I liked most of his cases. He kept it focused on GPL license being available, and source code being available. He even won cases where links to source code in documentation were not allowed which was an interesting twist. But fundamentally his litigation followed Linus's and many other developers views, I give you my code, you give me yours, we are square. He did over 100 cases, and was successful every time that I know of. I think the SFC is going to be on much thinner ground with their Vizio case but we will see. |