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Bill Bogstad wrote: > It doesn't sound like the FSF even got their court costs for filing > the lawsuit (or other costs) repaid. If that's the case, then the > financially correct thing for a vendor to do is to calculate how much > it would cost to be compliant and compare that with the potential > future lawyer's fees to settle a non-compliance suit. The FSF might find it more efficient to address this problem using a carrot approach rather than a stick approach. For example, creating a "GPL Compliant" trademark logo, and licensing it to companies that use GPL licensed components in their products, contingent upon them complying with the terms of the license. (Of course a company could use the badge in violation of the terms, and the FSF would be back in the same boat needing to sue them. Though perhaps that'd be a more obvious and cheaper case to prosecute.) > I'm not sure exactly what advantage the free software community gets > for the conciliatory approach that the FSF has used in cases like > this. The products that Linksys makes have a high turnover in the > marketplace. If it takes a couple of years to actually get complete > source code, the product will probably no longer be available for > sale. True. Currently if you try and make an informed purchasing decision, it takes a fair bit of research. (First, you need to track down if, and then where the source is made available for download, which is often hidden. Typically this will require emailing the vendor and waiting for a reply. Then you need to find reports from other developers to see if the source provided is actually complete and useful.) Creating a "bad vendor" list would be another approach the FSF could take. (Chances are the FSF would then get sued for listing a company as a bad vendor. But defending such a suite would probably be a better use of their legal resources.) Of course compliance isn't black-and-white. They'd need to develop a grading system, ranking and weighing each aspect of compliance, and aggregating the results from all the products a vendor sells. Then they could apply any money saved from legal fees to marketing the trademark and/or bad vendor list, as both require consumer awareness to be effective. Another useful tool the FSF could provide would be some automated way an end-user could report a GPL violation that would include sending an email to the vendor summarizing the GPL terms and stating that they were being investigated for non-compliance, much the same way the Better Business Bureau will notify vendors when a complaint has been filed against them. It may not carry any real legal weight, but it might get some vendors to realize their non-compliance has been noticed. Numerous times I've emailed device vendors that are clearly using GPL code asking for the link to their source, only to be told, "we don't provide the source." I write back informing them that they're in violation of the GPL, but something slightly more official looking would carry more weight. > I believe the FSF should work towards making non-compliance suits a > self-funding part of their operations. How would that work? They can attempt to do this by seeking monetary damages, but that isn't a reliable funding model. If they built the "GPL Compliant" trademark into something that had some value in the marketplace, then they could charge a revenue proportional licensing fee (in other words, bigger companies pay more), and use that to fund compliance enforcement. -Tom -- Tom Metro Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA "Enterprise solutions through open source." Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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