Thanks for the analysis Jonathon, 1. The edge case I was thinking of was being able to obtain a bounty of up to $1 million USD. It is actually a formula based on the amount obtained in a settlement that is obtained *without* litigation. The edge case is that happening where the settlement exceeds $10 million USD. We're not talking innocent violation of license terms here, we're talking about willful violations, so I am in some ways unsympathetic. (And I don't think anyone being so willful is interested in this web page, since if they were completely willing to abandon whatever pirated goodies they are clinging to I think it would have happened, considering the level of exposure.)
2. There is an interesting situation with the FSF case, as I recall. The FSF only has standing to litigate in those cases where they have obtained the equivalent of CLAs from contributors. The achievement of the suit that I remember the most about was it having demonstrated that the GPL is indeed enforceable in courts. It's true, of course, that it would be smarter to find permissively-licensed code to use instead, not only ALv2 as an alternative. Of course that's why some FLOSS adherents consider permissive licenses to be corrupt. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: jonathon [mailto:toki.kant...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2015 03:54 To: dev@openoffice.apache.org Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Inappropriate "Compliance Costs" [ ... ] ### Addressing various issues mentioned in other emails. > The page under discussion identifies some worst-case situations that are not representative of what happens, FWIW, as far as SBA compliance is concerned, it does not cover worst case scenarios, but rather, average to _best_ case scenarios. (IOW, if anything, it understates what happens, if the SBA targets your business. Also, contrary to SBA claims, they individuals are also targetted.) As far as FSF compliance is concerned, their formal policy is to work with organizations, and _not_ go to court. Even in court, they are willing to settle at any point during the trial, up to, and including seconds before the judge issues the official verdict.(IOW, if you are in court for a GPL violation filed by FSF, it is either because your attorney is incredibly incompetent, or you are incredibly stubborn.) In both instances, there won't be much, if anything, in the court records. The SBA takes, without going to court, and the FSF simply insists on making changes in the organization's operations, so that it fully complies with _all_ software licenses, not just the FLOSS licenses. What one can find, is FSF and SBA press releases, that describe what happens when they do find violations. > I submit that a software producer could distribute binaries under per-seat licenses that were based on software completely under a permissive license and dispute violations of the terms under which those binaries were made available to a customer. Whether or not said producer gets anywhere legally, depends upon the specific license of the binary: * With GNU GPL 2.0, odds are the producer qua plaintiff, gets to pay defendant's court costs; * With BSD, odds are the defendant loses the lawsuit, because they did violate the license; There were a few firms that distributed OOo under a per seat license. They all appear to be out of business. There were, and are some firms that provide LibO & AOo support, on a per seat basis. They appear to have an informal policy of allowing a percentage of understatement of seats, whilst providing full support for all seats. [ ... ] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
