[nativeit]

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.

[nordsieck]

> 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.

[pabs3]

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/

[WD-42]

There is such a organization, it's called the Free Software Foundataion??? Where do you think the GPL comes from?

[nativeit]

> 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.