Re: [libreplanet-discuss] suggestion/help. GPL enforcement.

[Daniel Pocock]

On 05/06/16 16:57, Patrick wrote:
> Hi Everyone
> 
> This is a horrible post and will probably trigger some very negative
> reactions. I am trying to help and I am being honest so please don't get
> too angry at me.
> 
> I've tinkered with the BSD world and I really believe GPL and the Free
> Software foundation are the way to go. I have frustrations with the FSF
> in that it seems to focus too much on all the bad things others are
> doing and not enough on what good is being done but overall I don't
> think there is much of a choice and I want to make things work.
> 
> So to the point!
> 
> I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to circumvent the GPL.
> 
> The GPL puts people like me in a bad situation. I work with scientific
> instrumentation. It's a corner-case market but world-wide.
> 
> I would never just take GPL code and mis-license it. I will obey it.
> However the people that use the software in my corner-case market are
> spread across the world. I can't sue these people if they violate the
> GPL and so many of their Governments don't care about the GPL.
> 

Enforcing the GPL is like playing whack-a-mole.  It may not be feasible
to sue every violator

More likely, it will be about suing violators who are somehow successful
and taking a share in their profits and recycling that money to sue
other big violators.

> I am in Canada and I don't have the money to sue a company in Brazil but
> the Brazilian Government respects the GPL and there may be many
> countries outside of Europe/Australia/New Zealand/Korea/Japan and the
> Americas that do too. I just might not be aware of them.
>

You may be able to buy a legal insurance policy or assign your
intellectual property rights (for any software you create) to some
non-profit organization that has legal insurance.

The legal insurers will then look at each copyright violation and if
they believe the long term chance of legal success is sufficient and if
they find the violator has assets worth seizing, they will gladly jump
in to fight for you.


> Would it be possible for a GPL compatible license to be created that
> would forbid GPL software from being distributed to countries were the
> GPL was weakly/not enforced?
>

That is a tricky question

Many people may be tempted to question whether that would be a free
license any more.

In a practical sense, such a modified license would be no more effective
than the existing GPL because violators just don't care.  Everybody else
would suffer a huge burden trying to stop distribution.

The actual number of countries where there is no viable copyright system
is not so large.

> What is the point of granting the user the rights to freely distribute
> the code under the terms of the GPL if the code is distributed to
> locations were the GPL is not enforceable? It just becomes public domain
> code.
> 

The point is that it is a good strategy and what you are proposing is
less practical.

> Chinese people do not call China, China, they call it Zhongguo. It means
> centre of the world or middle kingdom. It's an arrogant name but can you
> really blame them or ask them to change it. Everyone was crazy 3000
> years ago.
> 
> I think that we in the "west" (including Japan/Korea/Australia etc) are
> arrogant too and have a mentality "centre of the world" too.
> 
> Who cared about China and India 20 or 30 years ago. If people there
> stole software, it didn't matter, they weren't important economically.
> 
> They are now and we need to update our views so that software licensing
> makes sense. We in the "west" are not the centre of the world anymore.
> We need a GPL compatible license that acknowledges the problems of
> globalization.
> 

Or maybe we need to think about how copyright and intellectual property
law should work at a global scale, regardless of whether the subject
matter is GPL or not.

Regards,

Daniel