Jumping the licensing shark

Posted May 2, 2023 18:43 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Jumping the licensing shark by paulj
Parent article: Jumping the licensing shark

> Could someone state exactly what it was about McHardy's style of enforcement action (approach once nicely, and get them to fix and promise to be good; sue them when they failed yet again) that was so objectionable? Setting aside any arguments about his legal or even moral claims to be able to sue over the ipfilter code (a separate issue).

Basically he was out to make money. He approached nicely, got them to sign a contract (important, that meant he could sue them for violating OTHER PEOPLES copyrights), and then - because he worded the contract deliberately so - he gouged them for pretty much everything.

Yes you should be in compliance. But compliance is hard. And he was targetting people for profit, who were actually "trying to do the right thing". And I don't think he was interesting in helping people comply.

If he'd got them to sign a consultancy contract for him to bring them into compliance, fine. He would have worked for the money and earned it. But basically, once he'd got them to sign this contract, all he did was collect rent on other peoples' property.

Cheers,
Wol

Jumping the licensing shark

Posted May 2, 2023 18:50 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

> Basically he was out to make money.

That is my understanding of the concrete objection too.

> he was targetting people for profit, who were actually "trying to do the right thing"

Is that a fact? I've read it phrased it way - by people and statements reported on here on LWN - but I've not seen any detail on this. We have to take it as received fact - from people who are known to be in the softly-softly camp on enforcement AFAIU (which is, to my thinking, effectively a pro-corporate violators and anti-individual-developers camp - not the intent, but that's my view). I respect those people, but I think it's possible there some is subjectivity here that may be coloured by the positions people hold.

Jumping the licensing shark

Posted May 2, 2023 22:50 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

We only have fairly abstract, qualitative characterisations of what McHardy did in one last case, AIUI. We don't have the substantial details that led the person involved in the case to make that characterisation. And that person, from whom we have the most "detailed" account, was the lawyer representing the company McHardy sued - so I'm not entirely sure that person is an entirely neutral reporter. (I'm referring to this talk, as reported by LWN: https://lwn.net/Articles/752485/).

The details are very murky.

The characterisations of McHardy's nefarious ways come from those who a) have a well described position that Free Software developers should not "profit" from GPL violators - even /serial/ ones and/or b) represented GPL violators, and have an obvious interest in describing their client's violations as minor, minimising the serial nature of those violations, and characterising McHardy as the bad guy.

The details are murky... Even SFConservancy can be quoted as stating that.