My question was slightly different from what is written above [LWN.net]

My question was slightly different from what is written above

Posted Feb 22, 2017 17:27 UTC (Wed) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642)
Parent article: Principled free-software license enforcement

I think the article incorrectly restates my question. However, I do admit that I was slightly irked at the time, so perhaps I failed to ask the question with perfect clarity. (The article seems in fact to be conflating my question and the question from Tom Marble just before mine. There's a video on FOSDEM's site if people want to verify all this. :)

I asked two questions; only the second one is iscussed in the article above. What I was asking in that second question was why Fontana, or Red Hat generally (depending on who he represented — he started with a “not my employer's views” disclaimer, but also said “we” a lot in the talk so it was unclear whose views were being presented) had not engaged in the existing public mechanisms created for feedback on the Principles, but instead surprised everyone with his criticisms in the talk.

To be clear, I'm glad for his criticisms: Fontana is a personal friend of mine and a great copyleft thinker so if he thinks something is missing, I want to know about it and discuss. But even Fontana admitted to me later that some of his criticisms were a bit half-baked thus far. Before this article even came out, I had already encouraged him to post his feedback on list for full discussion, and I hope he does!

As for the fact that I was on the committee for the DevRoom in question, as I said during Q&A; the proposal didn't say that Fontana would be bringing forward detailed criticisms of the Principles in the talk. If it had, I would have suggested at the time to Fontana that he post them and discuss them publicly on-list before the talk so the talk could be a full discussion with many viewpoints presented.

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My question was slightly different from what is written above

Posted Feb 22, 2017 19:30 UTC (Wed) by madhatter (subscriber, #4665) [Link] (1 responses)

Thank you for that. I'm the author of this article, and I value your clarification. That said, I'm fairly sure I didn't confuse you with the previous questioner; your question starts at 2580s in the video (which I link to in my article), and Fontana addresses you by name, if I'm not mishearing. I do acknowledge that you asked two questions, but the first seemed to me to be based on a misunderstanding, and not particularly noteworthy as a result. Your second (starting at 2675s) was, to me, more interesting, and if I'm hearing correctly, went "You just answered Tom's question saying yes, you want to engage in the process of discussing [in] the Principles in a way. There's been multiple forms available since the Principles were published to do that. I haven't seen you or Red Hat do that. Instead we have a surprise talk where you criticise everything about our Principles and didn't even tell us you were going to do that. So I'm a little confused [like] why you're saying you want to have discussion, but you aren't engaging in the forms that exist, they're public and transparent, to discuss the Principles.". I'm sorry if you thought my summary of that was incorrect; it was a summary, and it's certainly possible that it wasn't a very good one. Your clarification of the nature of Fontana's original proposal is helpful, to me.

I do agree that Fontana used we a lot during his talk, which I felt blurred the line between his views, his colleagues' views, and Red Hat's official position (if, indeed, any was that). I would like to have had a clearer indication of which was which. I'm also happy to hear that you're still minded to engage with Fontana about the Principles, and I look forward to what might emerge from such discussions.

My question was slightly different from what is written above

Posted Feb 26, 2017 1:07 UTC (Sun) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link]

madhatter wrote:

but the first seemed to me to be based on a misunderstanding, and not particularly noteworthy as a result.

I disagree; as I said, I perhaps didn't ask the questions as clearly as I could have, but my point in the first question remains: this idea that using GPL enforcement as counterattack during GPL-unrelated lawsuits (such as Red Hat did with TwinPeaks), IMO deserves even more scrutiny than Principled GPL enforcement. Red Hat allowed TwinPeaks to get away indefinitely with a GPL violation just so Red Hat could get a secret (and perhaps GPL-violating in itself) patent license from TwinPeaks to settle the lawsuit. None of this is transparent; we must intuit what likely happened based on the public record.

But, as you say, it is completely unclear whether Fontana was giving his own opinions or Red Hat's. Regardless, I look forward to Fontana actually raising his concerns in the public fora designed for the purpose. I hope that he eventually does! In those comments, he can clarify why we should not question the transparency of Red Hat's actions in GPL counter-suits, but should at the same time mandate even more transparency (and we operate quite transparently already) of Conservancy's enforcement work.