Patrick McHardy and copyright profiteering (Opensource.com)

Patrick McHardy and copyright profiteering (Opensource.com)

The Linux way, of having a copyleft licence and enforcement by persuasion rather than by lawyer, is what has made a real impact on the world.

When you take away the legal standing of a licence, all that remains for "persuasion" in the face of a party violating that licence is to indicate that they will suffer unspecified consequences to their reputation or to their economic activities, but these will be empty threats in many cases. You could, of course, not use a licence at all or use a permissive licence instead and see if this "persuasion" is still a successful tactic.

I suspect that the "persuasion" only works precisely because the licence brings legal obligations and consequences that, indeed, involve lawyers in the case of the most stubborn violators. But, of course, various people are happy to portray responsible compliance efforts in a bad way, while letting licence compliance slide because it either doesn't affect them or they may even benefit in that it sends more paid work their way.

Maybe those people might acknowledge their role in creating the environment for the situation described in the article instead of whining about lawyers, while getting lawyers to write guides about how not to be taken down in the German legal system, and instead of being generally offensive.