Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC)

[Paolo Bonzini <bonzini at gnu dot org>]

[trimming Cc list]

> > > It wouldn't be worth my time and I have trouble understanding how
> > > I could demonstrate personal loss making the law suit worth persuing in
> > > the first place.
> >
> > Perhaps because you know the code better than anyone else, so you
> > could provide paid support on that derivative as well.
>
> This is true whether the code is GPL or truly free.

First of all, let's avoid equivocal language (and politics).  you'll 
probably agree that the meaning of "truly free" is in the eye of the 
beholder.  So, let's simplify things and say BSD.

The difference is that if that for BSD code the other person has the 
right to close up the derivative, and you know that in this case you 
won't be able to provide any kind of paid support. (There's also the 
case of someone copylefting the derivative; how to approach this case is 
a wholly different topic).

In the case of the GPL, the other person is violating your copyright. 
You may decide to let it go, but if your or your company's finances 
depend on providing paid support for that project, or on dual licensing 
it as GPL/commercial, he's hurting you.

> > Or maybe because you have to. There was a case of a free software
> > project (JMRI) being sued for patent infringement by a proprietary
> > software company. It turned out that the proprietary software included
> > source code from the free software project without attribution
> > (copyleft was not even necessary, as the project was under the
> > Artistic License!). In this case, the possibility to counter-sue saved
> > the free software programmer from having to pay millions of dollars.
>
> I think this might be an over simplification. There were many statements
> in this history (new to me - just read it all - good read) that
> demonstrate that the patents were incorrectly granted. The copyright
> issue was involved, and the defense of free / open source copyrights was
> involved, but it looks pretty clear to me that JMRI wanted to shut down
> *all* violations. They wanted the incorrectly granted patents dropped,
> and they wanted their copyrights held intact. Was the latter required
> for the former victory, or was that just how things played out?

From my understanding, it was the easiest way to get the case settled.

> I'll also note that even if it was required, it was the Artistic
> License, and it was demonstrated as being valid in a court of law.

Yes, I mentioned it above.  My points were basically two:

1) patents are a big threat to free/open source software, so it's better 
to keep our main counter-weapon (copyright) strong.

2) you might be forced to sue even for violation of a permissive 
license, so watering down the ability to defend your rights may turn out 
to be a bad idea, even if you choose to skip copyleft.

I hope nothing of this happens to anyone involved in this thread, of course!

Paolo