First, let me say that, in general, a) I support the idea and mission of the SFC, and b) I have never heard of Patrick McHardy prior to reading this article (and linked blog post). In addition, I "have no dog in this fight", if you will. (My only affiliation with SFC is as the owner of a company which has previously donated funds to them. I don't necessarily agree with them 100% but I do support their "end goal".)

This article links to a recent SFC blog post, "The Importance of Following Community-Oriented Principles in GPL Enforcement Work" [0]. Upon reading that blog post, my first impression is that the SFC is attempting to get others to "gang up" on Patrick and pressure him into accepting their "principles".

If my understanding -- that Patrick holds copyright to (at least some of) the netfilter code -- is correct, then Patrick is entitled to pursue any "enforcement actions" he wishes. The SFC is arguing that their "Principles" is the only "proper" way to pursue compliance. That, obviously, is not the case. Patrick is under no obligation to the SFC, the netfilter core team, or the "community" to follow their self-imposed "Principles" or to do what the SFC wishes.

I'm not sure what the SFCs goal here is, other than to gain more support for their own "Principles" and get others to state that they're "right". They're trying to force their "Principles" on everyone and have now started publicly calling out individuals who don't agree with them.

[0]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/jul/19/patrick-mchardy-g...

"If my understanding -- that Patrick holds copyright to (at least some of) the netfilter code -- is correct, then Patrick is entitled to pursue any "enforcement actions" he wishes."

He is. However, and i sadly, can't go into detail with this[1], but the methods he is using to do so are considered by even pretty staunch GPL advocates to be pretty abhorrent. The things he claims are his are ... interesting. From what i understand, he put his name on some files by making 1-2 line changes (and requesting his name be added. You can actually see this in the netfilter mailing list history) and then claims copyright to all of it. His interpretations of the GPL are also, well, let's also just go with "interesting". Suffice to say, if patrick was right, there is probably literally no-one in the world who complies with the GPL or LGPL (IE not even the FSF).

It's like some of the firms who are suing companies for ridiculous ADA violations (not the "you have no wheelchair access to the movie theater" type), or non-existent violations of california's prop 65 (the cancer warning). From a social perspective, it's one thing if they actually care, and are trying to cure those violations, and get companies to a care. But in a lot of cases, they don't care. They don't want you to fix it, they want to make money. In fact, it's better for them if you don't fix it. They strain the boundaries of the law, etc, in that attempt to make money. Do they have the right to do so? Yeah, sure. But it's pretty damn scummy in the opinion of a lot of people.

[1] The reason nobody who has knowledge talks about this is because a lot of this is being done (by Patrick) in ways to make sure it must be kept private (again, that's what other lawyers tell me) and out of the public eye. So one of the reasons you don't see blog posts detailing exactly what is going on is because people are legally not allowed to talk about it (AFAIK)

If his interpretations are as outlandish as you say he'll certainly lose whenever someone pushes back. Has Schilling ever "won" an argument?

Considering that McHardy seems to go after companies and not some poor individual, I suppose that pushback will occur.

If I take your claims at face value (and I tend to do so), then the FSF and SFC side still doesn't look good.

They are basically saying that

(a) whenever they're (potentially) interested in enforcing the GPL nobody else may also do that

(b) they reserve the right not to collect what the developers are owed(!), in order to further their institutional and philosophical goals

To hell with them! I'm certainly supporting any individual developer's right to enforce the GPL, and maybe even especially agains FSF/SFC's wishes.

With the GPLv2 (as opposed to the v3), and "distributed" ownership of the copyright, respecting the community's standards for enforcement is particularly important.

Say FooCorp violates the Linux kernel's GPLv2 license. When FooCorp do this, their license is instantly terminated. Say the SFC notices, and goes after FooCorp. The SFC helps FooCorp come back into compliance. The SFC then re-instates FooCorp's license to the portion of the Linux kernel that the SFC owns the copyright to (and the portions owned by others that the SFC represents). However, FooCorp's license to the rest of the Linux kernel is _still void_! They are in violation of the copyright of most of the other copyright holders! Patrick (for example) could then sue FooCorp for violating his copyright, even though they are now in compliance with the original license and have worked things out with the SFC. He could probably make a decent living just following the SFC around and extorting everyone the SFC brings into compliance. Being able to resume using the Linux kernel after violating the GPLv2 and then coming back into compliance fundamentally relies on the rest of the copyright holders following the community-oriented principles and treating the license as re-instated.

Admittedly, this is just one aspect of the community oriented principles.

You are talking about it as if it was some kind of religion, and going some great length avoiding specifics. Why?

According to the article, Patrick uses GPL enforcement to sell proprietary license exceptions. FSF is a organization that was founded to stop proprietary licenses in software. SFC was created by the previous board members of FSF.

> I'm not sure what the SFCs goal here

SFCs own stated mission is to help promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects [see website]. Their goal with GPL enforcement should thus be to do the above statement. As such, we can derive that they do not think that selling proprietary license exceptions through litigation is going to help netfilter, and one might also suspect that they consider such activity to be harmful. You can agree or disagree with their assessment, but then please make a argument why you think they are wrong.

"gang up" on Patrick and pressure him into accepting their "principles" is just name calling, and is not refuting any argument that they make. Nor is it a counterargument. (see Graham's hierarchy of disagreement)

He has every right to sell license exceptions.

You're basically arguing for FSF's supremacy.

In any conflict, that FSF is or may possibly in the future be party to, all other right holders lose their rights and they have to accept whatever the FSF manages to achieve.

That's particularly grating in that the FSF's main goals are not exactly aligned with everyone else's.

He can only sell license exceptions if his copyright spans the entire project which it most likely does not.

He can sell exceptions with regards to himself.

Why someone would buy that is beyond me, since they would still be non-compliant, but hey, you can try!

SFC is doing basically the same thing: They settle without demanding any money, just future compliance, and the individual developer is left in the rain.

Well yes, and as a developer I am very sympathetic to the "author's right" argument.

But we must also allow that the netfilter people have the right to decide who is and who isn't one of their core developers, and publish their philosophical positions on their own mailing lists. So I am not sure how the "author's right" angle would assist us other than to say that everybody can, and in this case did, exercise their rights.

Perhaps a sounder analysis could begin on the basis that ideally, people would work together, and in order to work together, they must at least be able to talk to each other. It seems unfortunate to me that this person didn't engage in the dialogue that these people apparently sought, even to say that he objected to their position.

Then again, it is possible that this developer saw no upside in revealing his position before a potentially hostile audience, and perhaps removing him from the project in some way served as validation of that concern.

I do think one of the things we are losing as a society is the ability to tolerate different points of view. I think that might be the real story here.

In a simpler time there was merely a battle between free and proprietary software, but we seem to have decided that is not a sufficient set of tribes in which to divide ourselves. We must have copyleft vs permissive, and the copylefters must split into the watered-down LGPLists vs the full strength GPLists (vs the espresso-grade AGPLists). We must have a battle between the One True GPL2 vs the Revised Third Edition. And now apparently we need to sign Enforcement Principles to fix all the things we forgot in the licenses themselves.

I guess I understand the motivation to continue to do this, but when our differences are so large as to prevent people from even engaging each other constructively I find that unfortunate.

> But we must also allow that the netfilter people have the right to decide who is and who isn't one of their core developers, and publish their philosophical positions on their own mailing lists.

It's also perfectly reasonable for a project to refuse to accept contributions from someone they feel might tarnish their reputation, whether they are right or not. And it is entirely reasonable that the project might think that GPL enforcement that is done more harshly than the SFC's principles might have a negative effect on the project.

If they're wrong, and the refused contributions are worthwhile, then forking is of course possible. So it's nice that Free Software can continue to thrive in whatever way developers and users at large consider "best" in their collective, subjective judgement.

I think this is what you're saying too, but regardless I thought it's worth calling this out specifically.

I think the more interesting question here is what they do with the code he has already contributed. They can, of course, try to remove it but I wonder to what extent a "bad actor" could claim that the replacement code was a derived work of their original code.

I've always hated the practice of copyright assignment in projects, but it's things like this that make me wonder whether it is necessary after all.

> There is no real way to know how much the GPL has helped in the rise of Linux versus its non-copylefted alternatives, but it would be hard to argue that the license played no role whatsoever.

It would be very easy to argue that the license (specifically, the copyleft vs. noncopyleft FOSS license choice) played no role whatsoever, since Linux was available -- and the dominant FOSS unix-alike OS -- before there FOSS alternatives (copylefted or not) that weren't clouded by AT&T legal actions. (Indeed, Torvalds himself has said that, if that weren't the case and BSD had been available without the AT&T cloud over it, Linux wouldn't exist at all.)

That aside, the whole piece, coming from the viewpoint that a copyright-owner using the GPL license for their work and enforcing it as they see fit rather than in the manner that the SFC prefers is "abuse", is somewhat bizarre.

If you want to have binding restrictions on enforcement of the license, they need to be in the license.

The copy left license certainly has helped add driver code over the past few years.

What about a proprietary fork of Linux itself, had it not been copylefted? One that added compelling features and forbade copying back?

Conceivably, it could have been a significant competitor. Say, Ubuntu being born like that.

There seems to be some sort of feeling that GPL enforcement is "unjust", "harsh" and should be limited to the most severe of cases where it benefits some perverted vision of "license purity" and particular "pursuit of justice" or "bigger than the pieces combined" purpose. It's almost turned into a meme to call the GPL a "restrictive cancer" and push MIT so VC funded startups can appropriate technology and give back nothing, so big companies can just use the BusyBox-clone and shut us out of all sorts of devices.

To hell with it. If McHardy wants to aggressively enforce the GPL against violators, that is his mo. I have empathy with the single mother hit with a copyright C&D for music her kids downloaded, I have none with companies, designed for the single purpose of limiting liability.

Aggressive GPL enforcement is not problematic, what is problematic is using GPL enforcement to trick people into using proprietary versions of GPLed software.

How does he "trick someone"?

And yet MIT licensed projects are alive and kicking. Not being afraid to use one goes a long way.

> In effect, that turns the GPL into the BSD license, which has plenty of implications of its own.

You still need to retain copyright notices with the BSD license. I think there once was a case where some BSD licensed code was copied into linux and the BSD license was broken.

A better analogy would be public domain. There's nothing really wrong with setting your code public domain (e.g. through CC zero). You're setting your code free for everyone to use without any conditions. If someone wants to contribute, they will, if not they won't. No license is going to change that. And the code in the version you put up will always remain in public domain.

I would go after all and every license violator of any code I wrote. If Google tomorrow messes up with my code in the Kernel, I care not if they have to discontinue Android overnight.

And yes, they did lobby for GPL2 Kernel. Now eat it.