[tarotuser]

Until FLOSS stewards start suing for the maximum damages permitted by law ($135k/violation) and make these company-ending events, FLOSS will be seen as a grab-n-go for anyone to pilfer, abuse, and sell as their own.

I completely understand why FLOSS people wouldn't want to go after individuals misunderstanding a license. And that's also not at all what I'm talking about. LEGO et al have been around for decades, piles of lawyers, heavy handed trademark letters from their lawyers.... but end up doing fuckall with FLOSS folks.

Think if the tables were turned - and you accurately modeled every LEGO brick and allowed sending to 3d printers to make custom bricks. Just how FAST would they shut that down?

Oh, and this is hypocritical as ever: https://www.lego.com/en-us/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-p...

[em-bee]

Think if the tables were turned - and you accurately modeled every LEGO brick and allowed sending to 3d printers to make custom bricks. Just how FAST would they shut that down?

LEGO brick patents have already expired years ago and there exists plenty of alternate producers of LEGO compatible bricks. but yes, LEGO is trying every trick in the book to stop alternate brands from selling their products.

i disagree however that suing for maximum damage is helpful to GPL software. it only instills fear in companies wanting to use it because it increases the risk.

i believe a good will approach to help companies with compliance is better, only suing when companies refuse to comply.

[scotty79]

They shouldn't be sued for damages. They should be ordered by the court to publish the source code of their derived product.

[tarotuser]

> i disagree however that suing for maximum damage is helpful to GPL software. it only instills fear in companies wanting to use it because it increases the risk.

And for some reason, a company with questionable EULAs, illegal in many jurisdiction's terms, and hundreds of pages of dense legalese doesn't seem to scare any of these companies away.

And many FLOSS licenses are written in plain language to easily understand what you can and cant do. These companies aren't doing an accident - its intentional, ongoing, and continual malfeasance BECAUSE there is no real punishment. At best, they'll have to "comply". (And you know, FLOSS is always bemoaning no money.... well, here's a way to fund it)

> i believe a good will approach to help companies with compliance is better, only suing when companies refuse to comply.

You can disagree with me all you want. All I ask is "how does it look when the tables are turned"?

And we have a rather nice answer - https://www.bsa.org/ and https://www.siia.net/

The business software alliance and Software & Information Industry Association are utterly dictatorial about intentional copyright violations, and also very harsh about accidental violations.

You can do further research on case studies of places that were called out for pirated software, and how many millions of dollars they had to pay in fines and "fixing proper licenses".

Until FLOSS starts doing tit-for-tat (the best game theory decision in these kinds of things), we're going to keep seeeing companies treating FLOSS as their own personal loot-crate with little to no punishment for intentionally doing wrong.

[em-bee]

Until FLOSS starts doing tit-for-tat (the best game theory decision in these kinds of things), we're going to keep seeeing companies treating FLOSS as their own personal loot-crate with little to no punishment for intentionally doing wrong.

for every company that is doing that there are two others the use FOSS with good intentions, and some of those will make mistakes in their compliance which they will fix when politely approached.

if we start pursuing every violation with an immediate lawsuit then those well intended companies will stop using FOSS because they don't want to risk getting sued.

i will have to stop using FOSS in my products. because my small company can't afford a lawsuit just because i accidentally forgot to give notice or include a link to the source somewhere.

so if we do that FOSS will loose market share.

we can and should pursue malicious users aggressively, but only after we have confirmed that they are not going to comply willingly.

[cycomanic]

> for every company that is doing that there are two others the use FOSS with good intentions, and some of those will make mistakes in their compliance which they will fix when politely approached.

I doubt the statistics here. I surely hope most companies are not this sloppy with their contracts, that they "forget" to follow their requirements.

> if we start pursuing every violation with an immediate lawsuit then those well intended companies will stop using FOSS because they don't want to risk getting sued.

> i will have to stop using FOSS in my products. because my small company can't afford a lawsuit just because i accidentally forgot to give notice or include a link to the source somewhere.

And what will you use instead? How will you follow the requirements of those licences? That's what I never understand in these arguments. The alternatives have typically much stricter requirements and are enforced by large corporations.

> so if we do that FOSS will loose market share.

Why should I care about the market share of FOSS if a significant portion of that share doesn't distribute their code?

> we can and should pursue malicious users aggressively, but only after we have confirmed that they are not going to comply willingly.

[em-bee]

most companies are not this sloppy

i said "some of those will make mistakes", which means, most won't. there is no contradiction.

And what will you use instead?

BSD stuff i suppose, or write my own, or pay for a commercial license which is usually a lot easier to follow than the GPL, because it doesn't require me to give anything to my users. i just pay and then i can use the code however i want as long as i don't resell the source.

Why should I care about the market share of FOSS

that's up to you. i care because FOSS, and the GPL in particular give me and other FOSS users more freedom in how they use the software. in want this freedom to spread. making it risky for businesses to use FOSS is not the way to do that.