|
|
Log in / Subscribe / Register

It's posturing

It's posturing

Posted Mar 21, 2018 3:41 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
Parent article: Six more companies adopt GPLv3 termination language

The companies that are party to this agreement have one thing in common: they haven't ever brought suit over their Open Source licenses. Even Red Hat is only rumored to have considered bringing suit against a patent aggressor once concerning some Open Source they might have been using.

So, what is the point of making elaborate promises regarding something they will probably never do?

The companies have a strong disincentive to sue because they are in the business of Open Source software.

And of course Open Source developers have always given longer cure periods than these folks promise. Often years. Even Patrick McHardy, which this is all directed to, does not discover new infringements as far as I'm aware, but pursues ones that are publicly known, where the defendant has probably already been contacted by someone else from the Kernel team or the SFC.

So, my B.S. detector is going off here. At least the Kernel developers have some prospect of actually bringing suit. These folks? No.

to post comments

It's posturing

Posted Mar 21, 2018 7:06 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Perhaps if termination is no longer the nuclear option, they will be less reluctant to go to court in future? Or, in negotiations, can more credibly claim that they will go to court?

It's posturing

Posted Mar 29, 2018 22:39 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> The companies that are party to this agreement have one thing in common: they haven't ever brought suit over their Open Source licenses. Even Red Hat is only rumored to have considered bringing suit against a patent aggressor once concerning some Open Source they might have been using.

"The only winners in a court action are the lawyers".

If I had signed up for this, and I wanted to chase an infringer, I would point at that "opportunity to cure" and say, "you know what, if you don't play ball, that's clear evidence to me of bad faith. I *will* sue".

I just wish they'd signed up to a few more of the bug-fixes in v3, for example the fix to the distribution clause. For example, under v2, if I put separate tars of the binary and source up on a web-site, it's classed as binary distribution triggering the three-year requirement for the source :-(

Cheers,
Wol


Copyright © 2026, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds