Misleading

Posted Jan 23, 2025 10:46 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Misleading by pizza
Parent article: SFC reports a successful (L)GPL suit in Germany

> 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)

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,
Wol

Misleading

Posted Jan 23, 2025 14:00 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> 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".

....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.