
GPL enforcement is a social good - teddyh
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/38992.html
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logn
I donated and you should too.
[https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/](https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/)
You get a t-shirt and your name/company publicly listed as a supporter (if you
want). They're a charity, for tax purposes.

More importantly, they use their money efficiently and have tangible positive
results.

Unfortunately due to the VMware lawsuit they've lost some corporate sponsors.
Note that on the whole, their GPL enforcement is not litigious and not
profitable. And that's just one part of their overall mission.

~~~
sanxiyn
I donated. Find my name here:
[http://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/](http://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/)

For people searching: logn's donation is credited as "Machine Publishers,
LLC".

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jordigh
Bradley Kuhn has asked, "do you think I should be doing what I'm doing?" He
doesn't believe he has a right to work on GPL enforcement. That's up to us to
decide, by giving his organisation money or not:

[https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-
do/](https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/)

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patrickod
If you find yourself with the opportunity to see Bradley Kuhn speak I'd highly
recommend it. I met Bradley at the Linux Fest North West event this year in
April and it was one of my favourite and most formative moments of the year.
I'm proud to be a financial supporter of the Conservancy with all the work
that they do to protect and promote Free Software.

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krylon
In Germany, Harald Welte has taken on several hardware vendors over GPL
violations.

I wonder why vendors that build, like, SOHO routers and Wifi access points go
through the effort it takes to violate the GPL instead of using a BSD base
(where making modifications to the codebase and keeping them closed is at
least legal). It's kind of like breaking into bank while next door there is a
guy giving money away for free.

~~~
jordigh
As I was reading your sentence "go through the effort it takes to violate the
GPL instead of..." I was expecting the "instead of" to be just publish the
necessary source code. That seems pretty easy to me. It's probably easier than
trying to get non-GPL versions of things like Linux, which tends to have more
widespread hardware support (like, a full set of drivers) than, say, NetBSD.
And I say "probably" because I expect these companies have been taking the
easy way out.

The BSDs still have to rely on Linux compatibility layers in order to use
Linux drivers, right?

~~~
chei0aiV
The BSDs have their own drivers, they don't use Linux drivers.

~~~
jordigh
Isn't the nvidia blob used through a Linux compatibility layer?

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CaptSpify
I only see monthly/annual support. Do they have a one-time listed anywhere
that I'm not seeing?

~~~
sanxiyn
You can make one-time donation here:
[http://sfconservancy.org/donate/](http://sfconservancy.org/donate/)

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chrismcb
Wow, this is too confusing. I don't understand what SFC claims to do. This
post seems to conflate two separate concepts. One is people should use open
source, and two people abuse open source. Enforcing GPL implies the second,
yet the article kept alluding to the first. And the FUD... a toy is not going
to stop working because of API mortality (what is that?) And most embedded
devices aren't going to be vulnerable, even with "old" code. And while it
might be cool to hack your barbie doll, only a handful of people are going to
do that.

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farva
Rob Landley (former Busybox developer) begs to differ.

See
[http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#13-11-2011](http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#13-11-2011)
[http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#15-08-2011](http://landley.net/notes-2011.html#15-08-2011)
[http://landley.net/notes-2009.html#15-12-2009](http://landley.net/notes-2009.html#15-12-2009)

~~~
sangnoir
Not really - I'd say he's showing concern with the execution rather than the
idea of enforcement. The other thing I got is he hates GPLv3 (but not v2), and
also is not a fan of the BSD license:

> My only real concern about a BSD license is it lets for-profit corporations
> hire your developers away to work on a proprietary fork (as I ranted about
> here and here). This is why BSD the operating system has never amounted to
> anything: Sun looted them in 1982, BSDi looted them in 1989, and Apple
> looted them a third time around 1997 and never stopped stopped. (None of
> which explain why Free, Open, and Net are separate projects.)

> But honestly, I think the FSF has now made the GPL more of a liability than
> an asset. I've spoken on panels defending the GPL but GPLv3 was a career
> limiting move. LLVM and PCC and Android are all organizations that were fine
> with GPLv2, until it got painted with the same brush as GPLv3 and the
> contamination spread to cloud the old thing

~~~
chei0aiV
The principles SFC operates their GPL compliance efforts under are eminently
reasonable. They aren't going to sue anyone into the ground, they just want
GPL compliance and reasonable coverage of legal expenses.

[https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-
compliance/principles.htm...](https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-
compliance/principles.html)

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dnautics
I am an advocate of open source. One time I had a laptop running Linux that I
couldn't get the wi-fi driver working for. Eventually after searching the
internet I found that the driver was linking to a restricted syscall, so I
recomipled the driver, to change a variable claiming it was mit-licenced (it
wasn't) and then the wi-fi driver worked.

