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Tracking GPL Violators
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week, open source developer Harald Welte made headlines when he personally served warning letters to 13 technology companies for alleged GPL violations. Now in a ZDNet interview, Welte explains the challenges behind tracking down these violators and how he persuades them to comply."
It isn't a duplicate in this case. It even references the article that you point out. This provides more information, it isn't the same.
I think you should read the article.
If you can't be bothered here are some relevant points:
What gives you the legal right to pursue the GPL violations? Most of the violations we're seeing are happening in the embedded market. They are running the Linux kernel and I have copyright on parts of the Linux kernel. In the cases that went to court, it was me as an individual copyright holder [against the company in question].
Some people have criticised the GPL for being business-unfriendly, what do you think? I totally disagree.
And, for the BSD fans in this thread:
How do you think the GPL compares with other licenses? It's a philosophical question. The BSD licence allows you to integrate and modify without giving back modifications, while GPL expects you to give back modifications. These are two philosophies of how you develop software. Which you chose depends on the project, for example, if you have a new standard and want it to spread quickly, it's better to use the BSD licence, rather than the GPL.
You sir, seem to be more of a troll than he does (and quite possibly an insensitive clod too)
FFTA:
Q: Why is it important to stop people from violating the GPL?
Welte: You can use all the code out there for free, but if you do modifications you have to give them back to the community -- it's a fairness thing. If we allowed violations to become common, the system would be out of equilibrium. This would result in fewer contributions and it would have a large negative impact on the motivation of developers.
Reflecting this argument back on the file-sharing issue does not work, incidentally. American (Pop) Idol proves, if nothing else, that there are a lot of people willing to do just about anything for a shot to record professionally. Artists make little from their album sales; they make shit-tons from touring. The lion's share of album sales goes to the record company, which then spends it on ads telling you you're depriving the artists when you download music.
The music industry is never going to collapse just because songs are traded online; they'll just turn the screws harder on the artists who get them paid. Disillusioning the small percentage of OSS advocates who actually code by allowing their ideology to be violated is an entirely different story.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Some of the command line tools from MS are based on BSD code. At least the FTP command (maybe others?) has the following string:
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