On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bk...@ebb.org> wrote: > Felipe Contreras wrote at 14:43 (EST) on Tuesday: > >> Really? So Sony can violate the GPL in some small product, and it >> would not affect other product lines, like TVs? > > Technically, it *does* impact other products.
No, it doesn't. > The question is whether > or not Conservancy, as BusyBox's enforcement agent, would *insist* that > a company stop distributing *compliant* products when other products are > out of compliance. Yes, but s/would/could/. From what I've read, you make no distinction on product lines. And that's worrying. >> You must not know how a big company works. It's not a matter of >> resources; it's a matter of control and organization. The bigger a >> company is, the more difficult it is to have tight control over all >> areas. > > I do know somewhat how big companies work: they spend resources on > things that matter to them, and ignore things that don't. Big companies are comprised of many units, and divisions, and groups, and teams, and ultimately people. People do things everyday on the name of the company that the CEO might think are not worth spending resources on. Where resources are spent on is not as clear-cut as you make it seem. > In my > experience, GPL enforcement is the only way to get GPL compliance to > matter to them. We don't care about compliance, compliance is almost useless. What we need is for them to become members of the community, and that can only happen within, by a change in culture, understanding how open source works. Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I hope I don't have to tell you that many people are angry about this, and have called Android a fork. How are you going to solve this? Suing? Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. > Otherwise, many companies merely ignore the GPL. GPL is not important; it's just a tool. What is important for developers is to get contributions back. In the case of Sony, this tool is doing the opposite; not only is it taking potential contributions from Sony away, but it's encouraging other people to do the same (since toybox is also open source). Perhaps it's time to write a special clause that says that the scope of busybox enforcement should be restricted to busybox (not used as a proxy). Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
