Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [GIT PULL] Documentation: Add a file explaining the requested Linux kernel license enforcement policy | From | David Woodhouse <> | Date | Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:11:01 +0100 |
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On Mon, 2017-10-16 at 11:25 +0200, Greg KH wrote: > Documentation: Add a file explaining the requested Linux kernel > license enforcement policy > > Here's a pull request to add a new file to the kernel's Documentation directory. > It adds a short document describing the views of how the Linux kernel community > feels about enforcing the license of the kernel. > > The patch has been reviewed by a large number of kernel developers already, as > seen by their acks on the patch, and their agreement of the statement with > their names on it. The location of the file was also agreed upon by the > Documentation maintainer, so all should be good there. > > For some background information about this statement, see this article > written by some of the kernel developers involved in drafting it: > http://kroah.com/log/blog/2017/10/16/linux-kernel-community-enforcement-statement/ > and this article that answers a number of questions that came up in the > discussion of this statement with the kernel developer community: > http://kroah.com/log/blog/2017/10/16/linux-kernel-community-enforcement-statement-faq/ > > If anyone has any further questions about it, please let me, and the TAB > members, know and we will be glad to help answer them.
It's a shame you don't explicitly mention the FSF's / Conservancy's Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement: https://www.fsf.org/licensing/enforcement-principles
I think this approach is a good thing in general, and I know Conservancy have been talking about it for a while, including conversations with the TAB on early drafts of this — but I'm a little concerned that what we've ended up with is a bit one-sided. We're giving something away, for nothing in return.
In the long period of negotiation with violators, what typically happens is they keep providing "candidate" source releases which are ever closer to being compliant, but rarely *actually* compliant.
With a binding promise to forgive them for past violations as soon as they're fixed, we basically lose one of the few levers we had to encourage them to come *completely* into compliance. Now I fear some of them will only ever come close enough that they know we won't actually take the last resort of legal action, purely for what *remains* to be fixed.
This would have been better if it specified that it applied to *unintentional* violations, and also gave a time limit — automatic reinstatement *only* happens if complete compliance is achieved within 90 days, for example. That would help genuine developers who are only *accidentally* committing a criminal offence through not paying enough attention, while not giving succour to those who intentionally do so.[unhandled content-type:application/x-pkcs7-signature] | |