Conservancy Applauds Linux Community's Promotion of Principled Copyleft Enforcement

[Software Freedom Conservancy]

URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2017/oct/16/linux-kernel-enforcement-statement/

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              Conservancy Applauds Linux Community's Promotion
                     of Principled Copyleft Enforcement

Software Freedom Conservancy congratulates the Linux community for taking
steps today to promote principled, community-minded copyleft enforcement by
publishing the Linux Kernel Enforcement Statement. The Statement includes an
additional permission under Linux's license, the GNU General Public License
(GPL) version 2 (GPLv2). The additional permission, to which copyright
holders may voluntarily opt-in, changes the license of their copyrights to
allow reliance on the copyright license termination provisions from the GNU
General Public License version 3 (GPLv3) for some cases [1].

Conservancy also commends the Linux community's Statement for reaffirming
that legal action should be last resort for resolving a GPL violation, and
for inviting noncompliant companies who work their way back into compliance
to become active participants in the community. By bringing clarity to GPLv2
enforcement efforts, companies can adopt software with the assurance that
these parties will work in a reasonable, community-centric way to resolve
compliance issues.

Conservancy believes that free and open source software communities can use
copyleft licenses to establish a healthy framework for collaboration and
cooperation. We also believe that, when seeking compliance with such
licenses, it is in the community and in the public's interest to bring
people and companies into the community rather than to alienate them or seek
monetary gain. That's the fundamental premise of our Principles of
Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement: yesterday's violator can be tomorrow's
valued contributor.

We co-authored and published the Principles with the FSF in 2015 to engage
the broader free and open source software community in a dialogue about how
to best achieve community-minded copyleft compliance. We believe that
GPLv3's termination provisions better reflect the collaborative and friendly
process of GPL enforcement that Conservancy, FSF, and gpl-violations.org
have historically employed. Accordingly, we've encouraged copyright holders
in GPLv2-licensed projects to forgive violators who cure violations in a
timely manner in accordance with GPLv3§8, despite the stricter terms found
in GPLv2§4. We are glad to see the Linux community express their formal
alignment with this position.

Some Linux sub-projects — such as Netfilter — have wholly endorsed and
adopted the Principles, and we continue to encourage the entire Linux
community to adopt all of the Principles fully. We want to continue the
conversation about how to best promote, encourage, and enforce compliance,
and we invite members from the Linux community to join our ongoing forum for
public discussion on the principles-discuss mailing list. Conservancy has
suggested to all Linux copyright holders participating in our GPL Compliance
Project for Linux Developers) that they sign this new Linux Kernel
Enforcement Statement to grant the additional permission.

In addition to coordinating a coalition of copyright holders, Conservancy
itself is a copyright holder in Linux, as developers have also assigned
Linux copyrights to our organization. As a copyright holder in Linux,
Software Freedom Conservancy signs onto the Linux Kernel Enforcement
Statement. We plan to continue our work enforcing GPLv2 for our own
copyrights (and those of our coalition), and will always afford violators —
as we have since our inception — the 60- and 30-day periods for violation
cure in GPLv3, even though Linux's default GPLv2 termination is much
stricter and always permanent. We will continue to do this, even in
defensive actions.

[1] The additional permission in the Statement does not apply when a company
    is defending itself from any legal claim, even one unrelated to GPL.
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