OLS: Enforcing the GPL

Posted Jul 26, 2004 18:40 UTC (Mon) by piman (guest, #8957)
In reply to: OLS: Enforcing the GPL by JoeBuck
Parent article: OLS: Enforcing the GPL

The folks on debian-legal may be "amateurs" (some are in law school), but I would wager that they have read and dissected more copyright licenses than Prof. Moglen. And please read my message in the context of parent poster. I don't mean to insult Prof. Moglen in any way at all, I think he's a genius. But to suggest that he has the time to look into every possible infringement of the GPL is absurd; and other FSF members are also an amateurs, with much less experience than debian-legal. licensing@gnu.org isn't a direct line to a lawyer; it gets you Dave Turner. He's a smart guy, but his situation is almost exactly that of debian-legal, just less breadth. For the grandparent's idea to be implemented, the FSF would need dozens of real lawyers.

That FSF Europe exists does not give the FSF any European copyright expertise by fiat. Who works for FSFE that has the kind of experience Prof. Moglen does? Or, more likely, are there just a few "amateurs" -- good at what they do, but still with little breadth of experience in licensing, and little or no legal training.

I'm familiar with the FSF's approach to GPL enforcement. Good, if it works for them. It didn't work for Harald, and what he's doing now does.