R: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)

[farmatito at tiscali.it]

Hi,
one more argument will show how your position
about the number of developers involved in enforcement
and the number of lines of code written by them is
totally wrong.
That is probably due to the fact that you yourself are a
developer and therefore your view of things is biased.
Let us go to the source of truth: the GPL license,

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, 
under Section 2) 
   in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 
and 2 above provided
   that you also do one of the following: 
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable 
source code,
   which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 
above on a medium
   customarily used for software interchange; or, 
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three 
years,
   to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of
   physically performing source distribution, a
   complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code,
   to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a
   medium customarily used for software interchange; or, 
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to 
   the offer to distribute corresponding source code.
   (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial
   distribution and only if you received the program in object code 
or 
   executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b 
above.)

By reading carefully what is stated above I nowhere see the word 
developer
nor anything about how many lines of code were written.
The rights stated above refer to the end user who get a copy of the 
binary
program in his device without any of point a,b or c being satisfied.
The end user is the one who is deprived of his rights and therefore
is entitled to do enforcement if he wants to.
Only one end user who never wrote a line of code is enough to start
enforcement.
Obviously this happens seldom as end user are usually not interested
and not informed about their rights, but some are.

Ciao,
Tito


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