Who Enforces the Open Source Licenses?

sams asks: "Every few days now it seems that yet another corporate entity has tried to push the bounds of what is allowed under the open source licenses (GPL, etc..) so the question is: If a company violates the GPL license on a product, who will enforce the license? Who will take the violating company(s) to court to protect the open source intellectual work of others? Probably not the writers of the software, who probably can't afford a long drawn out trial with a company? The EFF? Ideas?" We've already had a close call with the Sun/Blackdown fiasco, and this has probably discussed in that topic. However, there is a high possibility that something like this will happen again, and we would do well to discuss this further.

Comments

Legal Firepower vs Developer Interest

[Wellspring]

This is certainly a problem, I agree. I don't think we CAN enforce the GPL-- not in the current legal climate. No individual developer or group of developers-- or the FSF-- can match in dollars spent on lawyers and months spent on courtroom time the power of a potential violator-- at least not until Congress passes tort reform (and would Clinton sign it-- I think not). So we can't really rely on legalism to protect Open Source software.

But that's ok. The key element to making an Open Source product work is mindshare. Closing up the source, embracing and extending, not giving credit where credit is due-- these are tactics that are counterproductive and alienate the network effects that make Open Source so attractive for businesses.

So even if this does happen, I wouldn't worry. We should fight to stop violations, but in the end, the power of the GPL is not in its language or legalisms, but in the community and mass entrepenurism that it makes possible. Break faith with the community, and you lose the one reason to go GPL in the first place.

A close call with Sun/Blackdown?

[stange]

Oh please.

There was no close call with Sun and Blackdown. Sun was completely within their rights to do what they did with the software. Was it rude to not give some credit to Blackdown? Of course, but the GPL doesn't prevent rudeness (Heck, Christmas doesn't prevent rudeness either). The Blackdown folks need to get thicker skins; just because your "partner" goes and uses the product to the full extent of your contract, you don't start whining. Welcome to the business world.

Dear /., stop editorializing in the story summaries. You often don't have a clue what you're writing about, and the additional verbosity just makes /. harder to read.