Jumping the licensing shark

Posted May 3, 2023 12:50 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Jumping the licensing shark by Wol
Parent article: Jumping the licensing shark

If the other person is a joint copyright holder in a work, along with me, then he has the right to enforce his copyright. The fact I choose not to, the fact I contributed code to a GPL project but I seem to wish it was a permissively licensed work, doesn't change the rights of the other copyright holder.

And indeed, I think I'd be a bit of a dick if I then launched a campaign to smear that other author within my community because he enforced his copyright against *serial* and _commercial_ violators, and only /after/ first asking the violator to stop, and the violator not doing so. (Least, I think I would be, on /those/ facts).

Now, whether McHardy has enough code in Linux, in the form Genietech (or whoever) were using it, to give him legal or moral standing to take copyright enforcement actions, those are other questions. Assuming he does, refer to above. If not - that's a *different* matter.

Jumping the licensing shark

Posted May 3, 2023 15:52 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> If the other person is a joint copyright holder in a work, along with me, then he has the right to enforce his copyright. The fact I choose not to, the fact I contributed code to a GPL project but I seem to wish it was a permissively licensed work, doesn't change the rights of the other copyright holder.

Except McHardy is NOT a joint copyright holder. If my co-holder chooses to enforce copyright and I don't, that's our mutual separate decisions, and we both have to put up with the consequences of our decisions. But if some random joe decides to enforce MY copyright to HIS benefit in a work to which he has made no contribution whatsoever ... ???

Cheers,
Wol

Jumping the licensing shark

Posted May 3, 2023 16:02 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

The question of whether McHardy has standing - in the original instance - is a different one. Let us assume he did.

There-after, if the company signs an agreement to stop violating anyone's code, in return for a "let off" on the original violation, then that is an agreement that McHardy and the company are allowed to enter into between themselves. That agreement is predicated on *McHardy's copyright in the code* and the *original violation of McHardy's copyright* (and above, we are taking that as given - if not, that's a different issue).

Jumping the licensing shark

Posted May 3, 2023 16:09 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

And just to re-iterate, I am playing the devil's advocate here, as McHardy has stayed silent (see farnz' comment on one interpretation of that), and most of the details that we have on this, that LWN has reported on, appears to have been from lawyers who represent corporate GPL violators - which other lawyers and para-legals in the Free Software licensing world (who are employed by or at least part-funded by corporates with an interest in "softly softly" enforcement) have fallen in step with it seems.

The precise details still elude the wider community - these seem only deemed suitable for discussion behind closed doors at the Chatham House LLW type events. :(