Misleading
Misleading
Posted Jan 22, 2025 20:27 UTC (Wed) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901)In reply to: Misleading by pizza
Parent article: SFC reports a successful (L)GPL suit in Germany
Increased legal risk will always be a deterrent to more people getting involved or staying involved with OSS.
We know that not everyone who wields the legal system is a good faith actor - witness Patrick McHardy.
Do you think everyone who was sued by Patrick McHardy should just drop OSS, and that would be "good riddance"?
If Google were sued by a bad actor, should they drop Linux from Android, and just replace it with Fuchsia?
Posted Jan 22, 2025 21:16 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (6 responses)
Uh... please point us at _any_ "bad actor" going after a "well-behaved OSS community member" that is "following the license" (and by that I mean providing the complete corresponding GPL sources to all binaries they ship without having to threaten them with legal action)
> We know that not everyone who wields the legal system is a good faith actor - witness Patrick McHardy.
All of McHardy's shenanigans could have been avoided if the companies he targeted actually followed the plain-language terms of the software they actively incorporated into their products.
(In other words, his targets were _not_ "well-behaved OSS community members...following the license")
> If Google were sued by a bad actor, should they drop Linux from Android, and just replace it with Fuchsia?
...Google is sued every single day by bad actors. What's one more? Or are you saying they should preemptively shut down their business just in case?
Posted Jan 23, 2025 10:46 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
Except this appears to be a case of going after a "good citizen". Someone I define as "a person who treats others with respect and tries to obey the rules". Otherwise you end up with a police state where there are so many rules it's impossible to be an upright law-abiding citizen and everyone is in fear of being arrested and jailed on pretty much any excuse.
We don't know the details, but I get the impression the full source was available, it's just that AVM's tracking systems couldn't retrieve it correctly. Be careful what you wish for - you don't want lawyers with big guns chasing you for a little slip ... (but that's the American way, sadly).
Cheers,
Posted Jan 23, 2025 14:00 UTC (Thu)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
....Except they *didn't* obey the rules!
(Note that "the rules" here are the terms of the settlement for their _first_ GPL violation -- ie the one their lawyers explicitly signed off on)
> but I get the impression the full source was available, it's just that AVM's tracking systems couldn't retrieve it correctly.
In other words... they couldn't provide the source code they were supposed to.
> Be careful what you wish for - you don't want lawyers with big guns chasing you for a little slip
I'm sorry, but live by the IP sword, you die by the IP sword. None of these companies would accept "a little slip" if it was _their_ property being misappropriated.
Posted Mar 18, 2025 19:41 UTC (Tue)
by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Mar 19, 2025 10:35 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (2 responses)
1. The open facts of the matter are that:
2. Those who say McHardy's intentions were bad or nefarious; that the violators were acting in good faith, and/or made only trivial violations; refuse to give details, never mind evidence. There are just claims to be in the know, or to know people who know, and that the details must be kept hush-hush, behind the scenes, cause... reasons, which we can't tell you.
So we have the basic, sparse facts that are available - which do NOT of themselves justify anything in 2. Indeed, the reverse.
And then we have 2, which we, the unwashed public out there who just read LWN, are meant to just take on authority, and ignore the only facts available in 1. We are meant to just take it for granted that GPL violators - corporates making money importing and selling products with GPL code - are the poor ickle good guys here, and McHardy is the bad guy for enforcing the licence on code he claims to have helped make (I know there are other questions there, but that's a distinct matter, and can be answered, inc. in court).
That appeal to authority, at odds with the (few) available facts, doesn't quite sit right with at least some of us.
Posted Mar 19, 2025 13:04 UTC (Wed)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (1 responses)
It's also hard to garner sympathy for "victims" [1] whose best argument is "we mistakenly signed an agreement we had no hope of complying with because we didn't know how our own business actually operates". (ie "we're too incompetent to act out of malice")
...Because that's about all one can infer from the few available facts.
[1] Who all had full access to competent legal counsel
Posted Mar 19, 2025 13:18 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
One of the organisations pushing the devilling of McHardy is the Linux Foundation. A commercial trade organisation representing a number of large commercial corporates, for whom any enforcement of the GPL appears to embarrassing / inconvenient. (Some of those members of the LF are... GPL violators).
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Wol
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a) McHardy made settlements with or had sent clear cease-and-desist notices to GPL violators, part of which was to cease their violations or face penalties
b) The violators went on to violate again
c) Thus McHardy went to collect on the penalty clauses of his prior agreement with or warning to said violators
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