Welte: Report from the Geniatech vs. McHardy GPL violation court hearing

Harald Welte attended a hearing in one of the Patrick McHardy GPL cases andwrote upwhat he saw.

I'm not arguing for a "too soft" approach. It'salmost 15 years since the first court cases on license violations on(embedded) Linux, and the fact that the problem still exists today clearlyshows the industry is very far from having solved a seemingly rather simpleproblem.

On the other hand, such activities must always be oriented to compliance,and compliance only. Collecting huge amounts of contractual penalties isquestionable. And if it was necessary to collect such huge amounts tomotivate large corporations to be compliant, then this must be done in theopen, with the community knowing about it, and the proceeds of suchcontractual penalties must be donated to free software related entities toprove that personal financial gain is not a motivation.