Hello Bradley, On 10/9/2013 at 10:28 PM, "Bradley M. Kuhn" <[email protected]> wrote: > >This list is a very useful resource for us to discuss GPL >violations >where the companies aren't acting properly. However, I'd like >restate >advice I've been giving for years now: contacting a company >privately >regarding GPL compliance issues is always the best first step. It >seems >that most on this list *aren't* doing that. Please, don't play >"gotcha" >over GPL violations; it makes it *harder* for those of us who >enforce >the GPL, not easier. > >This is a point I've often made in my 15 years of GPL enforcement >work, but >it bears repeating often, because so often, people want to "go >public" >quickly, which just isn't the most productive way to work on GPL >enforcement. > >I've written blogs about this issue in the past, FWIW: > http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html > http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/09/17/gpl-compliance.html > >The most salient quote on this point is what I wrote on 2009-11-08: > > Don't go public first. Back around late 1999, when I found my >first GPL > violation from scratch, I wanted to post it to every mailing >list I could > find and shame that company that failed to respect and >cooperate with the > software freedom community. I'm glad that I didn't do that, >because I've > since seen similar actions destroy the lines of communication >with > violators, and make resolution tougher. Indeed, I believe that >if the > Cisco/Linksys violations had not been a center of public >ridicule in 2003 > when I (then at the FSF) was in the midst of negotiating with >them for > compliance, we would not have ended up with such a long saga to > resolution.
Good point. I raised this because I couldn't find the right channel to get a hold of who was responsible for this, especially because the IRC channel for the Chromium team didn't give useful pointers from a try and this also was my first analysis of mixed code that had closed source and open source code in the same binary. Thanks for pointing this out. Best regards
