Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Jan 25, 2022 9:36 UTC (Tue) by xophos (subscriber, #75267)
In reply to: Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy by flussence
Parent article: Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

I don't follow. Even disregarding the doubious practice of calling anything you disagree with terrorism, i see any GPL enforcement as good.
Prioritizing targets with deep pockets results in more press coverage and (in case of success) therefor more motivation for other parties to avoid becoming a target by complying without waiting for a lawsuit.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Jan 25, 2022 15:01 UTC (Tue) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link] (2 responses)

I would encourage you to read up on details of McHardy’s practices. They were clearly not done in good faith and there was no attempt to encourage compliance. The only goal was to extract as much money as possible even if the violations were more technical or incidental in nature and the companies willing to attempt remedy. Even minor and unintentional violations were pursued zealously without interest in remedy - just cash.

My understanding is he also didn’t truly prioritize deep pocketed violators (no suit against VMWare, afaik) - he prioritized that delicious sweet spot of “deep enough to pay me off, but too small to make it realistic to fight me in court”. And, again, he was uninterested in remediation of even minor and unintentional violations - he wanted cash. It seems unlikely this was helping the cause of free software.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Jan 25, 2022 17:54 UTC (Tue) by mdolan (subscriber, #104340) [Link] (1 responses)

Paf, that is all correct. The damage done to Netfilter as a brand has been considerable - Pablo and the team have had a lot of unwanted stress because of McHardy's actions.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Mar 19, 2025 12:58 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

For the casual reader, Mike Dolan is a long-standing executive at a trade association - the Linux Foundation - representing commercial corporate interests, at least some of whom are GPL violators.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Jan 28, 2022 22:21 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (4 responses)

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Feb 1, 2022 12:22 UTC (Tue) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (3 responses)

In related news, Cory Doctorow recently wrote about Creative Commons trolling: https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commo...

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Feb 7, 2022 0:15 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (2 responses)

Oh, this is tiresome. Between this and the CC org endorsing NFTs recently, maybe it's time to find a more modern replacement.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Feb 7, 2022 4:37 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

The trolling wasn't done by the CC org though? Can you link to the NFT thing? :(

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Posted Feb 7, 2022 12:39 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

It seems to have happened on Twitter which I don't really feel like digging into right now. There was this article[1] last May and an overview of whatever happened in December from Gizmodo[2].

[1]https://creativecommons.org/2021/05/04/at-the-intersectio...
[2]https://gizmodo.com/wait-are-nfts-the-new-creative-common...