GPLv3 - Further Step Towards An Orwellian Society?:
Remarks On Software Licensing.
No-one should use a right against an other one, if he hadn't a harm caused by this violation, even if the other one violated his right.
The reason is, that rights - and laws denying or granting them - are no values by them-self, but derived from the interest to live in peace and without harm.
If there is no harm, you should not start a legal strive. Respectively: if there are big harms and some minor - to say mince - one, you should address the big harm, not the mince, not to lose your creditability.
Certainly we all get harm from undisclosed software, it dangers us, threatens us, takes our dignity. But what is harmful here at the first stake, that are not small companies using free software without declaring it properly, but the big one, forcing us to accept human right violation disguised as licenses.
We have the right to know, what we are doing with our computers, because we are held to be responsible for it.
So we should address the big one with complaints and not the smallest, weakest and less harmful violators.
On the other side a severe cultural setback is to be feared, referring to the law enforcement in GPL-Violation-Cases.
In general if something is declared to be free, thats it. You take the newspaper from the grocery if its offered as free, without reading the impressum or some licensing there. You will give away or even sell your free newspaper careless, because you got it for free.
There is already a contradiction between free and licensed: The licensed isn't free at all and never will be. All licensing starts with the non-free and needs it. As it needs it, it lives from it and will strive to reassure this - non-free - existing conditions of their own. The good Bertolt Brecht inside another freedom-project once tried to solve this contradiction in his play "The Good Men From Sezuan". However, once living in the GDR I experienced the outcome (which was not so one-sided bad as depicted now, sure) and don't need it again.
So if you are going to license, I suggest not to label it as free. Its an allure to make mistakes.
Respectively - and quite naturally - some companies didn't care much about copying conditions and other license stuff, because it has been declared to be free. There was certainly some surprise about the first legal cases. I uphold that this surprise did not foster the idea of free software and did not won assistance for it - on the contrary.
That German Courts now seem to follow GPL-claims, proves nothing. They are obeying since 1945 and until then US-troops beneath their civil-habited helpers feel at home in Germany. If you heard otherwise, its just to win an election. Won cases as against Sitcom are no victory of freedom at all.
Beside the conditions in Germany: If we look backward in history: Who did the biggest crimes always and always again? Just that corpus, who sermons to save our life and to protect our freedom. Will that corpus, who organized Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, who caused the death of ten-thousands Iraqis, defend open source and free programming? We should not ask the butcher to protect the lamb.
So, if its written: "The Linux kernel is in legal mud waters. There are many files in it that violate the GPL," (Alfred M. Szmidt, Wed Feb 1) what, if our brave lawyers of Munich, who got the preliminary injunction against Sitcom, will get one against all European Linux-Distributors? AFAIK, a preliminary injunction don't need much, its given at the risk of the suer quite easily - followed by tremendous consequences for the firms concerned. So not just GPLv3, already GPLv2 may turn out not as a defense but a major menace of free software and all ideas alike.
With all your gifted folks around, you will find better ways then the law enforcement procedures. Do not feed the mill of the mighty and their lobbyists. Why not rather reward these companies, which comply? Why not establish a network - if not already done - of assistance around free software? Also there is the instrument of black- and white-listing.
Not do be mistaken, dear members of the FSF and authors of the GPL: The above mentioned is not about your intentions, its just an essay to contribute to the defense of the giant gift, that Richard Stallman and the developers around FSF made to all of us. Thanks BTW for all these (free?) licensed software and Emacs at special.
All the best
Andreas Roehler http://www.sleipnir.netfirms.com