Re: The sad decline of copyleft software licenses? :(

[Jean Louis]

* Marinus Savoritias <marinus.savoritias@disroot.org> [2020-10-01 12:09]:
> That sounds very priviledged to me.
> 
> Today people are losing access to their software and they lose access to
> banking, democracy, free speech among others.
> 
> 20 years ago it may have been sharing. Today though Free Software is about
> equality, democracy, economic independence among just a few.
> 
> It is very much about justice.

Free software is not there to impose harsh justice on the GPL
violators.

When Stallman was speaking about justice at the time of begin of free
software movement, he was speaking about injustice caused by
proprietary programs in the world, he wanted to create new free
software that will be just, contrary to what was already established
as injustice.

Please read here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

and here:
https://www.fsf.org/licensing/enforcement-principles

Quotes:

Our primary goal in GPL enforcement is to bring about GPL
compliance. Copyleft's overarching policy goal is to make respect of
users' freedoms the norm. The

Legal action is a last resort. Compliance actions are primarily
education and assistance processes to aid those who are not following
the license. Most GPL violations occur by mistake, without ill
will. Copyleft enforcement should assist these distributors to become
helpful participants in the free software projects on which they
rely. Occasionally, violations are intentional or the result of severe
negligence, and there is no duty to be empathetic in those cases. Even
then, a lawsuit is a last resort; mutually agreed terms that fix (or
at least cease) further distribution and address damage already done
are much better than a battle in court.


Jean