What should they have done?
Posted Sep 30, 2007 20:35 UTC (Sun) by
landley (guest, #6789)
In reply to:
What should they have done? by rickmoen
Parent article:
GPL enforcement: waiting for the Monsoon
I'm aware of this, and have been taking it into consideration. The
biggest line I've been drawing is "I won't talk about anything that's
happened since the suit was filed", and I do stop and think when talking
about stuff from before the filing. I've _mostly_ been quiet on the
subject.
That said, the question asked wasn't really specific to this lawsuit.
It's "what do I actually need to do to comply with the spirit of the
GPL", and that's an important question. Staying silent on how other
companies can _avoid_ such suits in future strikes me as both
disingenuous and counterproductive. I'm not trying to lure anybody else
into getting sued; quite the opposite. I'd rather _not_ have to be
involved in future lawsuits if there's an easy way to avoid it.
Yes, I pondered staying silent about this topic to make the lawyers
comfortable, but if I would have said exactly this if I wasn't a party to
the suit (and in fact I might have already and it could already be dug
out of the busybox mailing list archives by the opposing side), why _not_
say it now? The point of the suit isn't to change the way _I_ work. Nor
is it to make GPL compliance harder in the cases where it's easy _not_ to
get sued when you take the right steps before lawyers get involved.
I'm also not the only party to the suit, so saying what would have
satisfied me once upon a time when thresholds were lower doesn't
guarantee it would have satisifed Erik, and or that it would be
sufficient now lawyers are deployed. (I thought I made that clear.)
I should probably just write a brief "complying with GPLv2" HOWTO and
post it somewhere. Most of the tricksy edge cases only kick in when
you're trying to weasel out of it, not when you just want to discharge
your obligations and are new enough at it you may not be entirely certain
what they actually are...
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