The Importance of Following Community-Oriented Principles in GPL Enforcement Work

The Software Freedom Conservancy is one of the few organizations involvedin GPL enforcement, and it has publishedprinciples regarding enforcement practices that seek compliance and notfinancial penalties. Bradley Kuhn and Karen Sandler urgeothers doing GPL enforcement to follow principles set forth by theSFC. "One impetus in drafting the Principles was our discovery ofongoing enforcement efforts that did not fit with the GPL enforcementcommunity traditions and norms established for the last twodecades. Publishing the previously unwritten guidelines has quicklyseparated the wheat from the chaff. Specifically, we remain aware ofmultiple non-community-oriented GPL enforcement efforts, where none ofthose engaged in these efforts have endorsed our principles nor pledged toabide by them. These "GPL monetizers", who trace their roots to nefariousbusiness models that seek to catch users in minor violations in order tosell an alternative proprietary license, stand in stark contrast to thework that Conservancy, FSF and gpl-violations.org have done foryears." The actions of one individual prompted the netfilterproject to make a statement endorsing the principles, which we covered earlier this month.