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by debugnik 418 days ago
Some people just hoped that picking a corporate-unfriendly license would be enough of a deterrent by itself, because most folks can't actually afford to sue. But infringers, big and small, are increasingly realising that these licenses are toothless by themselves, they need to be backed by money.
2 comments
nativeit 418 days ago
I don’t disagree with any of that, I think the challenge is certainly the costs of enforcement. For GPL licenses anyway (I realize the OP used the more permissive MIT license) I think their is (or there should be) a non-profit foundation established to collectivize the funding and legal actions necessary to support open source projects in these kinds of scenarios. Certainly, pursuing license violations in a manner that maximizes awareness and makes examples out of violators should prompt others to reconsider their actions.
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nordsieck 417 days ago
> I think the challenge is certainly the costs of enforcement.

IMO, this is fundamentally a mismatch between how software is developed in practice and how copyright works.

If software was like a book, where it's finished and published once, then simply registering it with the copyright office would be all anyone needs to do: up to $10k/copy statutory damages is a stiff enough deterrent that few large companies would want to take the risk. And even if they did, it'd be easy to find a lawyer to take the case on contingency.

As a non-lawyer, that doesn't seem to match nearly as well with software as a constantly evolving work. But I'm not an expert - maybe periodically submitting versions is enough.

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pabs3 417 days ago
Software Freedom Conservancy are the most visible GPL enforcers these days. The FSF probably does some enforcement too, but doesn't seem to talk about it as much.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/

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WD-42 418 days ago
There is such a organization, it's called the Free Software Foundataion??? Where do you think the GPL comes from?
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nativeit 417 days ago
> For GPL licenses anyway...I think their[sic] is (or there should be) a non-profit foundation established to collectivize the funding and legal actions

Hence my thinking there is. I kept thinking EFF for some reason, but I knew that wasn't right. EFF are the ones who consistently predict which anti-privacy/anti-consumer laws will definitely get passed.

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trelane 418 days ago
On the other side, some people hoped that picking a "corporate-friendly" license would make megacorps good citizens. It has worked out poorly.
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