Re: GPL musings

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Carl Karsten wrote:
> 
> I agree.
> 
> Now, I want to explore something.  I don't expect Rudi to read of 
> respond to this and would prefer he read it when he feels like taking a 
> break from coding.
> 
> What would the course of action be to hold someone accountable for
> BIG GPL issue violations?  Here in the US, there are 2 ways you end up 
> in front of a judge: 1) you break a law, the police figure it out and 
> arrest you.  2) someone feels they have been wronged and sue you for 
> damages.  Rudi has broken no laws, so he is safe in that regard.  I can 
> see how he may have wronged someone.  Someone may have to do more work 
> than they should because of something Rudi did, or should have done but 
> didn't.
> 
> So assuming that person(s) wanted to pursue this, they have to come up 
> with an amount.  I don't see much mental anguish or life long 
> disabilities or other intangible things, just time.  (Not even sure 
> about the time - I lost track of what exactly the problem was - doesn't 
> really matter, I am more interested in theory than reality anyway.) 
> Given that you can't sue for time, you somehow convert time into money, 
> generally at some high hourly rate that is based on what you could have 
> made if you weren't doing something else.  This you can take in front of 
> a judge.  Of course you have to have some sort of support for your 
> amount, which is an unfortunate part of this process.
> 
> I am pretty sure the person being sued can just send a check for the 
> amount, and the issue is settled, no court appearance necessary.
> 
> So let's say this happened.  Rudi gets sued for $X.  I have a theory:  a 
> collection would be started to take care of Rudi, and enough would be 
> collected to cover it.  I know that I would chip in.  It is the least we 
> can do to help Rudi out given what he has done for "us."
> 
> Carl Karsten

As I understand it (insert normal IANAL disclaimer) an individual would 
not be able to sue someone for a violation of the GPL, or any other 
copyright that the individual does not hold. The only people allowed to 
enforce a copyright are the holders of that copyright, in this case the 
Free Software Foundation. If someone were violating a copyright, they 
would not be directly affecting you as the non-copyright holder, as such 
you would have no recourse against them. This is all according to my 
understanding of US copyright law, you locality may be different.
Also, my understanding is that the FSF does not typically kick your door 
in like a bunch of jack booted thugs and serve you with papers. They 
will typically alert you to a perceived violation of the GPL and attempt 
to get the violation corrected before moving on to legal action.

I'm going back to lurk mode now.

Josh


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