Patrick McHardy and copyright profiteering (Opensource.com)
Patrick McHardy and copyright profiteering (Opensource.com)
Posted Aug 29, 2017 8:05 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)In reply to: Patrick McHardy and copyright profiteering (Opensource.com) by paulj
Parent article: Patrick McHardy and copyright profiteering (Opensource.com)
Business _must_ educate themselves about these matters, if they wish to minimise those risks. You can buy goods from a foreign manufacturer, sell them in your own country, and find yourself hit with trademark suits, or find product standards agencies confiscate your goods with no come-back. No Linux or copyrights involved.Linus and other kernel developers have said rather explicitly, many times, that they are not interested in going down the lawyer route unless all else fails. Their goal is to ensure usage and compliance. Hitting hard with lawyers will kill usage -- as Linus pointed out in this fine rant, that's what happened with busybox.
What's happening in this case is extortion by a very, very minor stakeholder in Linux, not at all sanctioned by the project leaders. In the commercial world this would be impossible. A minor Apple employee cannot sue Google (or anyone) for violating an Apple product's trademark/copyright/patent against the wishes of the bosses. Even if he, himself, did legally own a minor piece of IP in the case. Well, I guess he could but he'd be fired.
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