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Why the GPL Licensing Cops Are the Good Guys
Reader rtfa-troll writes: "'GPL enforcement by Software Freedom Conservancy puts electronics makers on notice, leaves business users untouched,' says Infoworld, going on to explain 'You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be raided by your proprietary suppliers, in the form of the Business Software Alliance, than to ever hear from SFC, let alone face any action. License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the case concerns an end-user license agreement (EULA), not a source license.' The article gives a good summary of why having GPL licenses enforced helps everybody, except for 'hardware manufacturers — typically those creating low-cost consumer and business electronics' who need to verify that they pass on the same rights to others as they received with the original code."
It's hilarious that the people in favor of forcing "freedom" for software on everybody else define freedom to mean that everyone should do things according to THEIR rules. If code is truly free, release it in the public domain. Of course, THAT would mean that you can't control what people do with it later -- and control is what the GPL is all about, despite the pretensions of its fans. They care about getting the outcomes they want, not about individuals having freedom to do whatever they choose.