The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement

Posted Sep 1, 2016 16:37 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
In reply to: The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement by nhippi
Parent article: The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement

> I think Linus's idea that companies are emotional beasts sulk and never talk to you again if you threaten to sue them is quite hilarious. Companies don't have memory or feelings, the day the threat is over, they will look at what is the best way to make profit of the new situation.

I don't think that is true at all, the people who make decisions collectively on behalf of the corporation absolutely do so in an emotional way, the individuals don't behave logically and neither does the collective, and they very often put short term emotional gratification over profits. You can find many cases of corporations behaving in an incredibly antagonistic way against their customers, employees or competitors that clearly cause them to make less money, or lose money, based on collective attitude of the decision-makers at the company.

The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement

Posted Sep 2, 2016 13:38 UTC (Fri) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link] (1 responses)

True, the people involved may end up taking their company getting sued personally. Companies are not rational machines. People do incredibly bad decisions for their companies based on bad ideas ("sunk cost" fallacy comes up often...). But that's business - companies doing mistakes go titsup to make space for more savvy companies (or just companies that make different mistakes). But so far the companies that have stopped using Linux due to GPL threats is negligible. Cisco, sued for linksys violations, is platinum member of Linux foundation.

The kernel community confronts GPL enforcement

Posted Sep 2, 2016 15:11 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> companies doing mistakes go titsup to make space for more savvy companies

That's only the case for very small companies where they are providing a commodity in a competitive market where the customer has sufficient information to make a rational decision, the first rule of business is to get leverage over the market so that it is not competitive and the consumer does not have information to make a rational decision so that mistakes do not have the same penalties. In addition the timeline between a grievous error and a market correction can be so long that there effectively is no feedback loop, no learning or adjustment happens.