"(...) Unfortunately the same processes that we use to assure fulfillment of license obligations and availability of source code can also be used unjustly in trolling activities to extract personal monetary rewards. In particular, issues have arisen as a developer from the Netfilter community, Patrick McHardy, has sought to enforce his copyright claims in secret and for large sums of money by threatening or engaging in litigation. Some of his compliance claims are issues that should and could easily be resolved. However, he has also made claims based on ambiguities in the GPL-2.0 that no one in our community has ever considered part of compliance.
Examples of these claims have been distributing over-the-air firmware, requiring a cell phone maker to deliver a paper copy of source code offer letter; claiming the source code server must be setup with a download speed as fast as the binary server based on the “equivalent access” language of Section 3; requiring the GPL-2.0 to be delivered in a local language; and many others.
How he goes about this activity was recently documented very well by Heather Meeker.
Numerous active contributors to the kernel community have tried to reach out to Patrick to have a discussion about his activities, to no response. Further, the Netfilter community suspended Patrick from contributing for violations of their principles of enforcement. The Netfilter community also published their own FAQ on this matter.
While the kernel community has always supported enforcement efforts to bring companies into compliance, we have never even considered enforcement for the purpose of extracting monetary gain. It is not possible to know an exact figure due to the secrecy of Patrick’s actions, but we are aware of activity that has resulted in payments of at least a few million Euros. We are also aware that these actions, which have continued for at least four years, have threatened the confidence in our ecosystem.(...)"
Vorstehendes Zitat von klaus818:
"Aber dass dan jemand, der dass angeht, aus den eigenen Reihen dafür angefeindet wird, einfach ekelhaft."
Hier geht es um Grundsätzlicheres, siehe:
http://kroah.com/log/blog/2017/10/16/
linux-kernel-community-enforcement-statement/
"(...) Unfortunately the same processes that we use to assure fulfillment of license obligations and availability of source code can also be used unjustly in trolling activities to extract personal monetary rewards. In particular, issues have arisen as a developer from the Netfilter community, Patrick McHardy, has sought to enforce his copyright claims in secret and for large sums of money by threatening or engaging in litigation. Some of his compliance claims are issues that should and could easily be resolved. However, he has also made claims based on ambiguities in the GPL-2.0 that no one in our community has ever considered part of compliance.
Examples of these claims have been distributing over-the-air firmware, requiring a cell phone maker to deliver a paper copy of source code offer letter; claiming the source code server must be setup with a download speed as fast as the binary server based on the “equivalent access” language of Section 3; requiring the GPL-2.0 to be delivered in a local language; and many others.
How he goes about this activity was recently documented very well by Heather Meeker.
Numerous active contributors to the kernel community have tried to reach out to Patrick to have a discussion about his activities, to no response. Further, the Netfilter community suspended Patrick from contributing for violations of their principles of enforcement. The Netfilter community also published their own FAQ on this matter.
While the kernel community has always supported enforcement efforts to bring companies into compliance, we have never even considered enforcement for the purpose of extracting monetary gain. It is not possible to know an exact figure due to the secrecy of Patrick’s actions, but we are aware of activity that has resulted in payments of at least a few million Euros. We are also aware that these actions, which have continued for at least four years, have threatened the confidence in our ecosystem.(...)"