GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Posted Dec 23, 2012 0:21 UTC (Sun) by stevenb (guest, #11536)
In reply to: GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance by johnsu01
Parent article: GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

> We resolve violations on a regular basis, and in countries around
> the world. We usually do not publish the specifics, because most
> violations are resolved constructively -- it often turns out people
> have unintentionally made mistakes and do not deserve shaming once
> they have remedied the problems.

There is no shame in reporting a successful resolution of a violation
issue. It hurts no-one to say that such-and-so a company had violated,
inadvertently, the conditions of the GPL on this-and-that piece of
software and that the issue was successfully resolved to satisfaction
for both parties. The company involved will typically have to show
the code anyway (assuming the typical resolution does not involve
removing the GPL-covered code).

No need for a wall of shame, and it might help change the perception
that the FSF is a lame duck.

GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Posted Dec 23, 2012 6:34 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

Companies don't like having their name attached to negative connotations in places that Google can find, and so they're often more willing to compromise if they know that the outcome will be kept quiet. The question is whether public shaming is likely to prevent other companies from making the same mistakes - the evidence so far is that it doesn't, so keeping things quiet seems fairly reasonable.

GnuTLS, copyright assignment, and GNU project governance

Posted Dec 23, 2012 15:30 UTC (Sun) by stevenb (guest, #11536) [Link]

My point is that there is *no* shame in resolving an accidental GPL infringement. It's a matter of how you bring the message. You could even just make a list of entities using free software, with non-infringers and ex-infringers in a single list. Just to show where and how often free software is used.