Top 10 FOSS legal stories in 2016 (opensource.com)
Mark Radcliffe surveysthe most important legal issues surrounding free and open-sourcesoftware on opensource.com. "The challenge for the Linux communityis to decide when to bring litigation to enforce the GPLv2. What it meansin many situations is that to be compliant is currently left to individualcontributors rather than being based on a set of community norms. AsTheodore Ts'o noted, this issue really concerns projectgovernance. Although permitting individual contributors to make thesedecisions may be the Platonic ideal, the tradeoff is ambiguity for userstrying to be compliant as well as the potential for rogue members of thecommunity (like McHardy) to create problems. The members of the Linuxcommunity and other FOSS communities need to consider how they can bestassist the members of their community to understand what compliance meansand to determine when litigation might be useful in furtherance of thecommunity's goals."