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In the time leading up to the next Kernel Summit topics are presented and discussed beforehand on the Ksummit-discuss mailing list. There [CORE TOPIC] GPL defense issues was introduced. Even though Linus is not subscribed to this list he speaks his mind, bluntly. A good read.
I'm not aware of anybody but the lawyers and crazy people that were happy about how the BusyBox situation ended up. Please pipe up if you actually know differently. All it resulted in was a huge amount of bickering, and both individual and commercial developers and users fleeing in droves. Botht he original maintainer and the maintainer that started the lawsuits ended up publicly saying it was a disaster.
So I think the whole GPL enforcement issue is absolutely something that should be discussed, but it should be discussed with the working title.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday September 06 2016, @06:56AM
It's obvious to me but just reading the link in the OP it's plain that this is something both Torvalds and GKH have trouble keeping clear in their own minds.
"Again, some folks tend to take a binary view on this, but corporations do not all interface in the same manner. The big ones are quite notorious and may be quite indifferent and almost dispassionately inhuman in its machinations to deal with for sure. But there are small to mid size corporations as well and some of these do have a more humanistic side when dealing with them. What Greg is saying though is one thing is for sure, the moment you pull in lawyers, they _all_ retreat back into that walled garden."
Not quite accurate or at all relevant. You're missing the point. The interactions are always between individuals. The corporation is a floating abstraction, a legal fiction, a 'ghost in the machine.' You cannot directly interact with a corporation, only with human beings who are temporarily empowered to act on its behalf. Those human beings may of course be members of the community, but the corporation itself, the fiction that they temporarily serve, is an entity of a different order entirely. Dealing with intelligent, productive, contributing human beings who are agents of a corporation has a natural tendency to create an emotional bond that is felt to be with the corporation, but unlike emotional bonds with people, an emotional bond with a corporation is always completely and absolutely one-way. It's a delusion, one might even say a mental illness, though it's quite common today.
GKH has done some great work, and I can see in part he went off because he felt slighted by a comment that probably wasn't aimed at him but failed to take him into account. Linus piled on without any such obvious rationale. But both of them are acting like their ability to jet around the world and meet important people face to face and work things out diplomatically over periods of years while making big $$$ is entirely the result of their own work and virtue and has absolutely nothing to do with the FSF which spent years creating the space where what they do is possible, and defending that space. Linus is really deeply, deliberately insulting to people that he should be grateful to, and it's disgusting.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?