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

[Aaron Wolf]

Hi Patrick,

This is definitely nothing like a religion. It is a plain fact that we
have lots of history of organizations around the world coming into
compliance without a lawsuit. Now, if they *knew* that a lawsuit was
impossible, that may have been different. I'm not denying that law
matters. but potential of a lawsuit without even am explicit threat is
often enough.

Would a Chinese company say "I know you can't sue me so go away"? Maybe.
But there probably exists no way to stop such a company from using the
code at all without keeping the source totally secret anyway. Once code
is out on the internet in general, Chinese companies can get it, and we
have to deal with this scary new world where software really can't be
contained to certain countries. And even still, *some* Chinese companies
will comply anyway.

In the end, the level of international control you seek is likely
impossible. If any view here is "religious" i.e. that it's more based in
belief and faith than evidence, it's the view that there exists
practical ways to use simple legal tools to stop international use of
software that we don't like. Sorry to bring this worrying perspective.

We can hope that software freedom eventually gets respected in China,
but we already see a lot of efforts and positive steps in India at
least. We'll see how it all works out, and we just have to do our best
to be practical. The GPL or similar is probably not the right practical
tool to address human rights abuses across the world.